the guy with the ide drives is going to bail on me, too. ugh. i've had a lot of bad luck with electronics on kijiji.

he wants to sell 8 ide drives for $75, 6 of which are large drives and two of which are small drives. he'll probably eventually get somebody to buy, but the idea that he's offering some kind of deal with the smaller drives is idiotic.

i offered him $20 for the two small drives. he was sketchy about agreeing, kind of blowing me off, thinking he'd sell them all together. he relisted the 8 drives together this morning and clearly wants to push that as some kind of deal, as clueless as it is.

see, it's going to be people with pcs from before 1999 that are going to want the smaller drives, and people with pcs from about 1999-2005, or so, that are going to want the bigger drives. if your machine can take a 300 gb drive, there's no conceivable reason why you'd want an 80 gb drive, given that they're the same price, nowadays. the smaller drives should even arguably be saved and put aside for the older machines, and not wasted on machines built after 1999.

again: i'm sure he'll find somebody that wants a bunch of drives and will pay for it. what will happen is that the 80 gb drive will end up as a backup somewhere instead of being used. it's sad, but i can't make stupid people rational.

i have another lead on an 80, but it's not clear if it works out.

again: this is something i'll wait out, although i'd like to get my tv up and running.

worst case scenario, if the cost of the drives gets up past a certain point, i'm going to want to look at something like this, instead:
http://nanopi.io/nanopi2-fire.html

i just need to make sure i get one without a wireless connector.

it would be an upgrade, clearly, and a pretty cheap one. but, then what do i do with the old pc?  i don't want to closet it. and, i'll eventually find the drive i want, and feel stupid for getting the board.

again: i'll wait it out.

i hope i'm getting something across, though.

a lot of people rail against capitalism as this idea of big business monopoly, and want to replace what they see as capitalism with what they see as free markets. they think opposing capitalism means supporting small businesses (that usually pay minimum wage and don't provide benefits). the language is often confused. when you prod them, what you learn is that they're just liberals, and they're not really anti-capitalist at all. if anything, they've confused capitalism with socialism, and what they're really opposed to is the latter.

my anti-capitalism gets right to the heart of what it is: i'm vehemently opposed to markets, and so skeptical of their efficacy as anything other than a corrupt tool of corporate collusion that i'm willing to even act against my own self-interest in suspicion over a market, when i see it approximating the behaviour that the debunked theories claim they should follow.

i'll wait it out.

it's weird with this phone, because direct-from-amazon is usually the cheapest option in the list. with this device, it's the most expensive.

but i'd actually rather pay the highest price. if it means it's from a credible seller, than take a chance with some "marketplace" reseller.

i don't care much for brand names as status symbols or whatever other kind of idiotic capitalist bullshit. it might seem that i'm contradicting myself in insisting on a brand retailer. it's the same thing, right? well, that's the point in contention - how do i know it's the same thing? i'd have to trust the market, and i definitely don't. so, i'm actually not contradicting myself in my broader skepticism towards capitalism, it's just that the proper manifestation of that skepticism is to reject brand names at the status or symbolic level and insist upon them at the retailer level.

i'm hoping that it comes back in stock. i think it was out of stock last week, too.

yeah. i don't like my options with the phone, right now.

i'm going to wait for the distributor. hopefully it's temporary and comes back. if not, i'll revisit it once i have everything else taken care of.

so,

updated total:
phone (amazon): $105
battery (amazon): $27
2 gb laptop ram (amazon): $2x15 [ships to canada]
8 gb sd ram for mp3 player (amazon): $13 [ships to canada]
4 gb laptop ram (amazon): $2x32 [ships to canada]
2 tb external drive (amazon) : $117 [ships to canada]
50 cd-rs [amazon.com]: $25 [ships to canada]
500 gb sshd laptop drives (best buy or amazon?): $2x80-85 [ships to canada]
2 gb internal drive (amazon or best buy): $105 [ships to canada]
50 bd-rs [amazon.ca or best buy]: $40
ps/2 to usb connector [amazon.ca]: $5
100 dvd-rs [best buy]: $30
200 jewel cases [staples.ca]: $80
square monitor (pawn shop): <$50
  < 140 gb ide hds (found, not confirmed) (kijiji): $2x10
==================
$766-776

total phone: $105
total mp3 player: $13
total laptop 1:  $137-142 + usb sound card
total laptop 2: $149-154 + $117 (external) + editing software?
total desktop 1: $20
total desktop 2:
total desktop 3: $155
total optical media:  $175

i'm going to need to get back to dealing with the sound card(s) this evening.

i may be better off getting a usb phone until the price comes down a bit more.

i mean, i don't have any really desire to buy a phone. it's just going to sit on the table most of the time. and, if i can't make it fit into a specific budget, i'm not going to bother.

i missed the time window on my phone and it's out of stock by an official seller :(.

i don't want to buy from third-parties. i just don't trust the process.

i don't want to pay more than $100.

back to the drawing board...

the money should be cleared by monday or tuesday. i hope that doesn't happen again...

i had an acquaintance in high school; his name was rob blackman. he was a black male, as his name would imply. not a friend, really, but a friend of a friend of a friend. still, i ate lunch with him every day for five years.

there were never more than five people of african descent at this school at any given time. it was a catholic school in a largely italian neighbourhood of ottawa. keeping in mind that almost all afrrican-canadians can trace their history in canada to after 1970, the number of black catholics in ontario is relatively low, and i believe mostly of caribbean descent. this particular school drew mostly from the italians and poles of the surrounding area and the irish and scots of a wealthy suburb, called barrhaven. canada does not have a very large spanish-speaking population, either. the reason we have publicly funded catholic schools has to do with our large french minority, which is largely invisible in ontario.

rob was actually an incredibly passive guy. he was very quiet. he kept to himself. and, we had to pressure him for quite a while before he finally agreed to smoke some pot with us; he didn't like it much. i do not think he excelled academically, but it wasn't due to any clear level of delinquency. i don't know what happened to him.

despite these traits, the teachers tended to pick on him. i used to listen to him grapple with this: he really didn't get it. but, then, one day he did. he'd been sent to detention for something he didn't do, and wasn't sure anybody even did at all. and, he said it, sure of himself, finally:

"it's because i'm black."

this was actually met with the roar of pubescent male laughter, tickled by the absurd surreality of the situation, for we all very well knew it was true, and perhaps a good deal of time before rob, himself, did. and, what can a bunch of kids do in the face of absurdity but laugh?

and, laugh we did.

for, now every problem in the world was reduced to the fact that rob was black.

"shit. it's raining. have to stay in."
"...it's because rob is black."

this was a wonderful joke for, in fact, many years - and rob did not just laugh along, but often offered the punchline, himself.

i get it.

i'm not doing it, though.