Remorseful Waiting

Between my tax refund and my bonus at work I've come into a large amount of extra money recently.

It had been my intention to use part of that money to get a replacement for the current Hugin, my main computer, which, while still a decent machine, as it was top-of-the-line when I bought it back in 2008, is starting to show its age, and it just generally feels like it's "that time."

Originally I had planned to simply buy the components and actually put together my own system, but the more I thought about it, the more I realized what a hassle and recipe for disaster that would be.

A while back I had configured an HP system that (mostly) had the components I wanted, so I was toying with the notion of just buying that and then adding in the additional upgrades that HP didn't offer. However, after pricing the components, I found that the total cost of the HP + the extra bits was $300 more than the cost of buying all of the parts I wanted and putting them together myself.

Plus there was a particular computer case I really liked, and I had some concerns that one of the components I wanted to add wouldn't fit in the stock HP case.

Still, whenever I thought about the work involved in assembling the pieces, my inner Homer moaned, "Can't someone else do it?"

I remained on the fence about buying the HP, and then found that my decision was nearly made for me. I wanted to buy a particular Intel CPU, and was looking to save some money by ordering the CPU and Motherboard together, as you usually get a better deal when you buy them as a combo. However, I wasn't able to find any CPU/Motherboard combos that had that particular CPU.

So HP it was...until I found another site that does custom-built complete systems which offered a lot more choices than HP, including the particular case that I wanted.

Sadly, I couldn't pick out the particular graphics card that I wanted, but that seems to be the case everywhere. As a consumer, I can actually buy the card from an online retailer or a brick-and-mortar electronics store, but as part of a system build? Nope.

The other component I'm looking to add is only available from two sources, so there was no way to get that thrown into the build.

I went through and configured the system, going mostly top-of-the-line with the components, and managed to put together a system that was somewhere between the cost of building one myself with the individual components - with a slower CPU - and the cost of the HP.

I found that I could knock the price down a bit further - still above the DIY version, but, again, faster CPU - if I could exercise patience and tell them that there was "no rush." This would be an absolute lie, of course - want it nao! - but a 5% discount made up for the fact that I'd have to wait about three weeks to get it.

So I put together all of the components and added the system to my cart.

And left it there overnight as I got preemptively hit with buyer's remorse. I need (note "need") a new system, and it was an incredible amount of bang for the buck, but it was still a lot of buck.

Finally, early Sunday afternoon, and I went back to my cart and, as I knew I would all along, made the purchase.

The buyer's remorse kicked in instantly, and so did the realization that I'd lied and said that there was no rush.

So I'm stuck in a period of remorseful waiting. My order status says that the expected ship date is 3/29/11. Given that I went with the cheapest shipping option, I most likely won't actually get it until sometime in early April.

*Sigh*

In revenge, we can receive emails from him.

On Wednesday my ability to restrain myself was put to the ultimate test, a test that I passed by not screaming “Son of a bitch!” at the top of my lungs in Best Buy after walking in and seeing my TV on display, on sale for almost $200 less than what I paid for it.
As soon as I spotted the display I told myself not to look at the price because I knew it would be bad – though not that bad – but I was unable to avoid the temptation.
Despite this, by the time I left I did so with an HD DVD player in hand.
If you’d asked me a couple of months ago, I would have told you that Blu Ray was going to come out on top in the HD format wars, but things have changed since then, and now it looks like HD DVD has the edge.
Still, somewhere along the line I’m going to buy a nice new Media Center PC to hook up to my TV, and I’ll be getting one that has a Blu Ray burner, thus giving me access to both formats.
I was on the fence about buying the HD DVD player. Shortly after I moved into the new place I got one of those “welcome to the neighborhood” packets from the post office, along with the confirmation that my change of address had been accepted. In the packet was a coupon for 10% off at Circuit City.
So it was my intention to use that and buy an HD DVD player from Circuit City. Of course, well after I left home and was on my way to Circuit City I realized that I’d forgotten to bring the coupon.
With the trip to Circuit City cancelled, I had time to kill (I was going to be meeting Scott at the comic shop and didn’t want to go home and then head back out again), so it was for that purpose that I actually stopped at Best Buy.
The reason I decided to buy the HD DVD player at Best Buy was that it had a nice feature set, was a known brand (Toshiba), there only appeared to be one left, and it included two HD DVD movies in the box, one of which was 300.
(The other was the Bourne Identity, which, yeah, okay, I can stand to have.)
Unbeknownst to me at the time, but beknownst to me after I paid for it, it also came with a rebate for five free HD DVDs. I had a list to choose from, and most of them were decent, for the most part. Nothing really great, but, especially given that they’re free, nothing to really complain about either.
I have no idea which ones I chose; Wednesday was far too long ago for me to remember. I know I picked Swordfish over Full Metal Jacket, even though Full Metal Jacket is vastly superior as a movie (Well, the first half is. The second half not so much.), simply because Swordfish has something that Kubrick’s movie does not: Halle Berry’s boobs in high definition.
That trumps Vincent D’Onofrio’s brains splattered on the wall any day.
Oh, right, spoiler alert. In Full Metal Jacket Vincent D’Onofrio’s character blows his brains out.
In any case, it’s taken all day to write this, so I suppose I should post it and get it over with.
Oh, and the post title comes from a wonderfully bizarre translation from French (I guess) to English in a spam e-mail I received that was going on about some nonsense about not being able to send e-mails to one of our customers.