WillWybrow.com

PEE CEE WOOORLD!!!

Hm, I got back earlier from a friend’s house. CJ messaged me telling me his laptop screen was broken, and he had an essay to write. I took my spare 15-inch TFT monitor over to his house to help him out, but it turns out that more than the screen wasn’t working. Never mind. We’re going PC shopping soon!

It was a passing suggestion that we check out some actual shops. While I don’t mind browsing shops (in fact, looking at a shelf of toys is better than an index page where you click, go back, click and go back), they are dreadfully… expensive.

As a little example of how badly computer shops rape you on the price (because they know if you’re in the shop, you probably aren’t interested in/able to shop online), I bought two kettle leads today (the standard shape power cord that goes into the back of your PC or kitchen kettle) on eBay for 99p each. Free postage.

Some years ago (and I struggle to remember how long exactly, but in the vicinity of four or five), my dad and I went to see one of my dad’s former colleagues to give her (she was an older lady) her first home PC. It was excess to requirements at home. I think it sported a 233MHz Pentium processor, and 3GB of hard drive space. Windows 98. Anyway, we either didn’t have spare power cords or forgot to pack them up, so we drove to the nearest computer shop (this was many miles from home, impossible to go home and bring them back in a reasonable time) to pick some up. One for the base unit, one for the monitor. How much did we pay? I’ll give you a moment to guess. Go on, think about it.

When we left the shop (a PC World), we had parted with fifteen pounds and ninety-eight pence. Each of those 99p cords set us back £8. Now, assuming this eBay user is making no profit (false, but for the sake of argument, let’s suppose). This means the PC World markup was 700%. Now obviously this doesn’t hold for everything; if you were paying eight times the internet price for a laptop, you’d be forking out thousands, and nobody would buy them. But on the little things where nobody necessarily knows better, such as USB cables or blank CDs, the price difference is alarming.

I picture the markup of computer components as somewhere in between the staggeringly large and relatively small differences I’ve described. Probably not as ridiculous as eight times the going online rate, but certainly enough to make me never even consider buying from them, or anyone like them (Maplin are just as guilty).

Before any of you leap to the defence of these money-grabbing bastards with claims of more costs than online businesses, don’t forget the inferior service places like this provide. People employed to give advice are thick as shit, because the clever ones will say “buy from online.” A related anecdote: I knew a person who was offered a job there after answering the following phone-interview question: “what brands do you know that PC World offer?” giving a list of brand names with “Dell” nestled discreetly in the middle. Just take any remotely technical query to some of their sales staff to see what I mean. An internet favourite is the classic “how much more does a hard drive weigh when it’s full compared to when it’s empty?” Not my idea but I don’t have an original source. Google it if you want. So yeah, even if PC world have higher operating costs, it’s not nearly worth it. You’re paying to propogate false knowledge and sustain idiocy in a field that’s understood badly enough as it is.

To round things off, if anyone knows a place that’s good for cheap LCD monitors, you’ve got to hook me up. I’m all for saving energy and that, but unless someone can get me a reasonable (as in, reasonably priced) replacement for my two 19″ (a bit vague there, they’re dual 1280×1024 resolution) CRTs (we’re talking in the mid 20s for size), I’m going to have to proceed with destroying the planet. Or steal some.

Interesting fact for the day: there are thirteen pairs of parantheses in this post (including this one).

…but Relentless prices up?

It’s a bit of an economical mixed bag. I was enjoying it when a can of Relentless was cheaper than a litre of petrol. Fuck petrol! Though the fact that it’s getting cheaper is probably a good thing. It’s less than 94p per litre at my local supermarket, but they put Relentless Inferno up about 10p just a few days ago! Nightmare!

But I went to 24 hour Tesco on campus yesterday night and bought some where it was still under £1. It’s good.

I don’t think I am being affected very much by the, ah, “credit crunch.” Things still seem to be costing the same as they always have. And, as usual, it’s easy to spend too much. Especially with my housemates; they don’t really realise that students aren’t meant to live in comfort and luxury. They’re supposed to buy all the cheapest things possible and barely live on them. It’s a nightmare when other people come back from shopping and ask for my money. They didn’t ask what I wanted to put my money towards…

Oh well, got a little bit of cash coming soon enough (in time for the holiday season, in fact), and maybe a little pocket of cash as gifts from Santa. Money is a bitch, but it’s the only path to true happiness.

They say that a bad workman blames his tools, but I think that’s a little unfair on the workman.

Sure, if he unfairly blames them, the saying still holds. If the tools are in full working order then he has no excuse. Should have practised more.

If he’s got a shitty set of tools but has every opportunity to get new ones, the saying also still holds. He has only himself to blame.

If, on the third hand, the workman has no choice but to be supplied by a third party and cannot do anything to improve the quality of his broken hammer or blunt saw, he can’t exactly take responsibility for doing the best he can with what he’s given. I think there is a minority of unfairly blamed metaphoric workmen who are struggling along in silence, unable to point out the flaws in their shoddy equipment because everyone jumps to the conclusion that he’s projecting his own faults onto his stuff.

My best wishes go out to them, wherever and whoever they are.

Some professions just look like a really good time to me. They don’t necessarily have to be the most prestigious or well-paying jobs, nor do they have to last forever. But these are a few things I would love to at least try, and why.

Train Driver

This one might sound weird, but I love travelling on the train. Not only would I have the perks of being the one who announces stuff on the train, but I’d get the added bonuses of: free (or discounted) rail travel so I could go all over the country; a really good working knowledge of rail lines, so I can seem really useful when people are casually wondering about train times and distances and prices all around the country; and, if I’m feeling vindictive, the chance to utterly nuke people who haven’t got the right tickets, like I saw one woman doing once. I don’t remember her name, but she looked like my old Biology teacher who loved nuking kids who didn’t do their homework, to the fullest extent she could, so I will call her Zoe. I’ve been on two of her trains (I remember what she looks like), and on one of them, there was this Chinese guy in my coach who had bought a ticket using a Railcard discount, but only had some vague paperwork in place of an actual Railcard; it might have been the application form, but he was really far away. Anyway, the outcome of it was that he was absolutely buggered, and had to pay over £40 to get the proper ticket. Boom!

Astronaut

I never really “had” this when I was a child. That is, I never really wanted to go into space like it is stereotypical of children to want to do. But recently, the idea has been appealing to me more and more. It’s ever since I started obtaining all the Futurama episodes and wrote that Biomars article. So I am a late bloomer, maybe they all are? Space is getting more attractive these days. Maybe it’s subconsciously metaphorical for escaping?

Film Editor

All that slicing and splicing of film into itself… it’s only going to get more digital in the future, and digital is what I do best. Imagine how good the computers are that those guys have… With all that raw digital footage in really high definition, they must be some machines. That would make me happy on a day-to-day basis. Also, I’d get to see films in the making.

I love films. I would love to be involved in the filmmaking process. I think it might be a bit farfetched to set my eyes on the director’s chair. I have the visions for films sometimes, but I’m not sure they’d be sustainable enough to make me a good director, who has to manage the whole feel of the film, made up of all the bits, throughout the filming. But if you shoot it, I can put it together, I guarantee it.

Plus, holy fuck, I bet these guys get to hang around on set on all the best films. They get to see all the bits that might not make it in and get to see bits of movie before everyone else does. And I’d bet they get invited to the premieres. With all the stars. And when you go and see the film at the cinema with your mates, you can look at it and think, “yeah, I put that together.”

These are some of my thoughts for stuff I would like to do one day. It’s a nice and varied list. In an ideal world, I’d get to do all of them at some point. That would be great!