While working, I randomly take breaks to clear my head. I can only look at code for so long before I begin to go crazy. My main big thing to do when taking these breaks is research for future purchases.
My future purchases include:
– New Cell Phone
– New Desktop
– School Enrollment (5 courses)
Cellphone – In December, my cell phone expires. My father, my sister and I are on the family plan and it’s been two years so the plan is going to be reset. My father won’t be adding my number, and my sisters, back to the plan. I do pay him the monthly fee’s, don’t sit there and think that I’m not worthy of having it under his plan. The problem is with my sister. She runs her phone bills up 300+ each month, just for HER PHONE. Meanwhile, her plan is only supposed to be somewhere in the $20 range, like mine. Because she has abused this, my father is canceling everything all together. I’m not complaining because I’m sick of the telemarketers. So instead of having a monthly plan, I’ve decided to go back to a prepaid phone. Considering I rarely ever, if at all, use the phone. I figure it would be easy to spend $70-$80 on a phone that comes with 60 minutes, and then just put maybe $10 a month on the phone to keep it active. This is the financially sound thing to do, and the exact route that I’m going to take. I’ve been looking at phones everywhere, and oddly enough the one I’m going to go for can be found right through Wal-Mart – isn?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢t that some shit? It’s $75 for the phone, comes with 60 pre-paid minutes and then within a month – I have to put maybe $10 on the phone. I’m content with this purchase.
Desktop – I know that for the past few months I have felt completely content (and extremely happy) with my laptop. The mobility factor is amazing. I have not, however, realized how many programs I use on a daily basis for designing and what not and now my laptop is beginning to fill up a lot quicker than anticipated. I’m using around 40 gigs of my 80gig hard drive, and I know that doesn’t seem like much but I was using 40 on a 120gb hard drive on my desktop – so you do the math there. I’ve been looking for desktops in places like Tiger Direct, Microcenter, CompUSA and of course HP. No matter which one of these companies I go through, I’ll be sticking with an HP desktop. I do not need anything over the top with bright lights and pretty colors like my last desktop. I just need something with a 120 gig hard drive and enough room to load my old hard drive into it so I can regain access to those files.
Now that I have mastered the art of linking computers on the network, I’ll be using the computer as a file server – mainly – this is why I do not need to be too concerned about the statistics right out of the box. I do know that anything less than a gig of ram is unacceptable because I will begin using the computer for heavy graphics. Over time I fully intend to be up to my ass in learning flash so that I can bring in some more money for business. So if spending $400 on a desktop is the route that I have to take, then so be it.
The reason for this – I’m going back to school. I’ve decided that sometime over the next few months I will be enrolling in new courses through Penn Foster and Stratford. Penn Foster will cover the technical aspects of things. I’ll enroll with them for Web Programming, Web Design and Graphics Design. I’ll then go to Stratford for Business Management and Accounting. My reason behind the Stratford courses is not only for me, but for Joe. He was going to school for Accounting and he was only a few months away from his degree before he passed away so I think this is my way of finishing what he started. Whether he’d appreciate it or not, I don’t know…I’ll never know. But there are cases when someone sets their mind to do something just because it feels right…this is one of those times. It’s my way of honoring him and, in my head, that’s all that matters.
In any event…I need to get back to work. I’m finishing up on a non-profit/Wordpress set of templates and my creative streak has been shot to hell because I’ve been ass-deep in work for a long time now. I can’t wait to finally be able to complete a project in its entirety and not feel bad that it’s taking me so long. I apologize to any client who comes here and reads up on things. I really am trying my best – I’m just balancing 13 clients right now and it hasn’t been easy on me at all. The power issues because of last weeks heat wave didn’t help me much either :grr:
I sent in the account approval forms for my digital camera on Monday. I got some freakish test-email today so I’m watching my account closely to make sure that things actually completely go through. I’m anxious about it. So far, none of the referrals have changed and I’m still at 10/10 so I’m going to assume that everything is full speed ahead (for the time being at least). They’ve changed their gifts around. Originally I was going to get the Olympus SP-350 which is 8megapixels. They have the Fuji FinePix E900 with better zoom and stats in general, so I’m going to get that one instead. It has a smaller storage card, the Olympus gives you a 25mb the Fuji gives you a 16mb. It really doesn’t matter though; I can purchase a 1GB Fuji card later on for like $25-$30, so there really is no loss there at all. I’m excited about it, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
