…I’m doing such strange things lately. Today I turned one $30 purchase into a brick unintentionally (a CVS “one time use” digital camcorder, now useless), and one $5 purchase into a brick intentionally (a self-hardening modeling substance which I combined with $7 in electronic bits to form a sort of USB ‘dock’ that the CVS “one time use” digital still cameras and digital camcorders can plug into). I created a sort of steadycam device from less than $20 of hardware, but when I bought the parts I did it from memory, and got it a bit wrong. I’ll go buy a couple of pieces of additional hardware to “fix” this one, and a couple of additional hunks of metal and I’ll have two steadycam devices for under $30. Of course I’ll have to buy at least one more camcorder from CVS (which I don’t brick) in order to make use of dual steadycams…
…I finally managed to put the Taguchi Method of experimental design to use, after learning it a couple of years ago just because it was interesting. I determined with only 9 recordings (as opposed to the 32 it may have taken to be thorough (not to mention the fact that the subjective nature of the judgement would make the results of the 32 recordings nothing less than ambiguous)) what the best settings for these CVS cameras is to get the best looking image possible. It was not the most obvious answer, but it did turn out to be the one I had intuitively selected before even laying hands on the camera, and I checked the math three ways and there was a large statistical margin between the optimized variables and all the others no matter how I looked at it. I did happen to look at it using OpenOffice.org software, since I’ve already paid to have Microsoft office on my Macs and don’t feel like paying for Office yet again for this WinXP laptop. The only trouble I had with it at all was that IF functions use semi-colons to separate arguments rather than the commas that MSExcel uses…
…and I keep spending money on things. Eating, even sweets or in excess or the most comforting of comfort foods, doesn’t seem to even appeal to me. I’m beyond that, somehow, in my depression. I’ve moved on to overspending. If I’d been allowed to shop for other people for Christmas I might have done a bit of this overspending on other people. As it is, I’ve been putting a certain amount of it towards other people, but most of it towards myself. I’ve always got such fun excuses, but I know I’m just digging myself deeper into debt with every purchase. I might have been alright, except I signed up for all that medical insurance for 2006, and then a Flex Spending account on top of that to help force myself to actually go to the doctors. (That is, if on top of the monthly premiums for the insurance itself I’ve got money which cannot be used for any other thing but medical expenses (co-pays, prescriptions and the like) coming out of every paycheck, I ought to be more likely to go to the doctor. I mean, the co-pays are “already paid for” in an irreversible way.) I took the best possible option for the insurance, since I haven’t been to a doctor in over 5 years (and then he just looked up my ass, agreed that I had a hemorrhoid, and told me to eat more fiber) but have quite a few symptoms and intermittent symptoms and chronic problems and if I just report them all and make them do all the tests possible I hope I use as much insurance as I’m paying for. The problem with going to the doctors, it seems, is you just have to keep going, and if you actually turn out to have a condition you’re required to keep paying for “insurance” for the rest of your life without fail or you won’t be able to buy insurance again due to your “pre-existing condition.” Anyway, with the extra money going to medical expenses next year, unless I can get books and paintings and such to more properly supplement (rather than deficit) my income, all the spending I’ve been doing is too, too much. Too much as a habit to be in, too much as a debt to try to pay back in thriftier days. I have things to show for my money, and like I said, I have excuses, but consumerism isn’t really a virtue. Having a giant DVD collection won’t help if I can’t pay the utilities or buy groceries. Putting together the equipment to build a micro-mini-movie-studio may help me create ultra-low-budget movies that barely look good on a TV and it may provide good practice for the general skills required to make larger-budget independent movies and perhaps even “real” studio pictures, but it doesn’t exactly leave money in the budget for watching movies, going out with friends, dating, anything…
…not to mention the glut of video games surging into my collection. Animal Crossing, Mario Kart, and Phoenix Wright on my DS, plus I talked Angela and Heath into buying DS units, so there’s playing with them and soon Nintendogs for all (Heath has already begun training his dog). I also got Civilization IV, Bejeweled 2, Scrapland, and Myst V (not to mention Myst IV which I never quite finished before, getting distracted by some such something like writing a novel or the like) to play on my new WinXP laptop. Between these games and the stack of DVDs I’ve been buying and all the projects I’m trying to get myself to do, there just aren’t enough hours in the day…
…heck, this post is nearly entirely procrastination. I’m thinking of taking a nap as soon as the current movie runs out, but I’ve got to go down to the library to return a late book and then a bit further to buy another camcorder to try not to brick. So maybe a nap after that. Except half my list of things to do yesterday isn’t yet done, no the least of which was to make a new list of things to do today. Ugh, and then there’s watching movies in theatres, which I love, but during which I cannot even pretend to be doing something else; Munich, The Producers, Brokeback Mountain, and maybe Casanova and The Ringer – all yet to watch. Well, there roll the credits, I suppose I’ll run my last errands, then perhaps nap…
