2100 Bucks Holy Shit!

Discussion in 'Off Topic International' started by hezzey, Aug 7, 2021.

  1. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    My formerly expensive top notch Linix PC has kicked the bucket. It does not even power on it’s just momentarily hums and then shuts off and I have declared it died of complications of old age.
    It hasn’t been top-notch for a year or two now….
    I cannot see the hassle of taking it to a repair shop going through all the hell finding parts after finding what is wrong with it and paying for all that and still having to pay to fix it….

    after some used to be fun shopping for new stuff (it is now epidemic time and shopping is not easy or convenient anymore or even any fun)…
    After some thought I have decided that buying one thing and it has everything I need in it is much simpler for me as a disabled and sort of addled guy.
    Hi need to look at the Internet I need to communicate with people and I am in need of something suitable but he desktop PC is too fucking much for me too much hassle too much trouble but I don’t want junk

    hi want good computing/computer I don’t want junk but I don’t have the brain anymore to sort through all the crap to pick and choose and then finally go get it and finally bring it home to just find out it’s crap anyway.

    I don’t have any fucking time for that.
    In this slash my life hi only have so much time and I don’t want to waste any more learning another competing technology.



    I consider Apple stuff to be blackbox technology it is beyond me but I find it visually pleasing and I find it easy to use and I don’t know hardly a damn thing about it except that Apple works.



    Ipad pro with 16 GB of RAM and 2 TB of storage and that is all. Is one part.
    One piece it is not complicated it is simple.
    Should occupy me for about five years….
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2021
  2. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I'm an extreme case of non-consumerist.
    I rarely buy stuff, because I don't like buying.
    Not only the actual spending, as in "having less money afterwards", but the buying. Having to go to the store or even to order online.

    I also don't like getting new stuff. As everyday trousers, I always have one pair, that I wear for a year or two, until they start tearing. And one pair of short pants, for the same amount of time.
    One pair of shoes and one pair of sandals. Several t-shirts and maybe two pull-overs. One coat and one rain jacket.
    And then I have the good clothes, that I get to wear at most once a year.

    It's probably related to the years of poverty that me and everyone around have passed through, but I'm not sure. It's not out of environmentalism and not out of current poverty (tho I'm barely over the line).
    It's maybe because I kept away, without much effort, from the consumerist ideology.

    Maybe your grandparents were living in a similar manner. I know mine did. So does my father.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2021
  3. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    my fathers parents and family were upper middle class they had lots of shiny stuff they had a big house. My grandad who we called Pappy owned a pool hall and behind it was a speakeasy (A speakeasy was an illegal tavern house for about 100 years this area did not allow anything alcoholic so my grandad called into that market and started bootlegging along with running a pool shop and a barbershop) they never lacked for money because he was a crafty English merchantmen. He was a salesman and made lots of money.
    His wife who we called granny was a music teacher which was a suitable job for a young woman in the beginning of the 20th century because there wasn’t much else for a smart female to do if she wanted to work and granny wanted to work.

    my two other grandparents were the grandparents that were members of those weird religions and they and both sides of their families lived in dirt and dug turnips and lived in log cabins with rain leaking through.
    Both of those families the Russian immigrants and Scotsman lived in poverty and in leaky shelters for many many years and both of those families drag them self out of poverty and became middle class and eventually upper middle class.
    Both grandad and babushka regretted having been so stubborn and saying no and arguing I am so special and both sides I have grandma and granddad‘s family had troubles for hundreds of years wherever they went but Canada eventually went from being slavery and dirt and crawling around in the bush looking for stuff to eat eventually they got into middle class and then upper middle class but that took till after the second Great War.
    It doesn’t matter a bit I just wanted to continue the conversation!
     
  4. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    It's a good conversation.

    What I see here is this change in ideology related to consumerism. It's not a political ideology, but still an ideology. An here and in some other places in the developing world, it came on fast forward, so it's very visible.

    Two years ago (it was right before the pandemic) I met some old high-school mates, who got married and moved away.
    And they came back for a week-end and we met them and their younger kid. We went for a coffee and then they wanted to enter a mall. Their kid wanted to buy an expensive pair of sport shoes, like 100 euro. His mother was split over this, didn't really want to discourage him, but I guess she didn't really want to spend the money that day.
    For he had another 4 or 5 pairs of shoes of similar prices at home. I know well his parents, for we grew up together. In the 90's there was no such thing as having a wardrobe. His parents had few clothes, for back then they were poor. Today, they buy their kids 5 pairs of unneeded expensive shoes and are split over buying the next one.

    To me, that's spoiling. To them, it's normality. To me, their kid just reacts to commercials. To them, he wants to be well dressed, explores and defines his own style or whatever other bullshit they might think he's doing.
     
    Last edited: Aug 12, 2021
  5. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    One of my grandfathers that is the Scotsman… his dad died when the boy my great great grandad Scott, was 10 and he was the oldest of I believe there were eight children.
    That means that my grandfather at eight years old had a widowed mother seven Brothers and sisters and there was no dole money for poor people in Canada, or very little except perhaps Cherokee and prosperous friends and neighbours you remember the old times right ?…..at that time if you had hard times you could starve…
    So my grandfather, at eight years old scratched and struggled to support his brothers sisters and his mom and I am sure they have their own story too but there’s only so much for a kid to learn or listen to the story ….. Allan Scot became a hillbilly a bushwhacker a hunter a trapper lumberjack he fished….. I believe he stole and high jacked and rustled livestock and stuff like that too …. but of course he never talked about that when you were old and you want to brag you don’t brag too much about the bad stuff you did anyway my grandfather Scott he was a savage he was a simple man he had broken rough hands and missing teeth and he used to swear talk foul he would fistfought.
    He did lots of fighting during his strong years but he never said a word about that none of us kids I guess that would be his nieces nephews and grandchildren ever heard a word about that grandad had his private history too I guess all of us do that….
    The older I got the older he got the more I learned about him….
    He read thousands of books he read everything and anything including science and philosophy and stuff like that but he never said a word about all the reading that he had done…
    He told me that if there is a library by you you should use it and read everything in it and costs nothing it’s free learning free…



    And the learning and the culture indeed the culture but he never talked about that he like pick fights with any man that was a little bit aggressive….
    Yeah my grandad liked to fist-fight hand hi didn’t hear about him fighting or stealing ……. then stories about him starting to come forward and holy shit what a guy he was….
    A bible thumping hillbilly with a backpack full of books… Leaside leant-too shelters log cabins….. in the hills and shooting and stuff like that and if you could hunt you didn’t have to farm if you were good because you just trade for vegetables and fruit stuff…
    He could hit a penny with the rifle at 100 yards. Cricket track any animal you can imagine and get it tired out and sick of the whole deal and then it would slow down and then he would shoot it right between the eyes and he never missed…
    He went to jail for seven years and holy shit I cannot imagine what that would’ve been like what that was like and even what it is like.
    He read thousands and thousands of books everything from scholarly works to fairytales…
    In his 50s he got a bachelors degree in electronics….
    In his 40s he decided he liked TVs and record players and he decided to make a buck and learn how to fix them and that is why he got a degree in electronics…
    And all he had learned became junk in the 60s because human kind and humanity changed its ways maintaining electrial stuff… The coming of integrated circuits fucked my grandad right up he had to make some professional choices because integrated circuit for a guy who learned about tubes and string and stuff like that that was a whole gnu technical education thing so I guess he just dropped it but he never talked about it I saw all the electronics downstairs that was pretty awesome but he hardly ever used it…..
    By the time I have about 1968 electronics did not have tubes anymore they were not manufactured with that sort of electronics and that nailed my grandad broadside and floored him…
    For a few years perhaps for a decade he helped his neighbours and friends for a buck or two by repairing and fixing their older technology like their record players and stereos and TVs and radios but oh by about 1975 or so those things were not to be found and therefore there was no way a guy could do handy repairs from his basement because all the stuff for him to repair was gone and obsolete and disappeared….
    My grandad was about 55 at that time and it was then he didn’t so much begin his recline or his decline he just stops driving his house was paid off his second house was paid off he had a little boat and lots of fishing tackle and he had the whole basement to himself and it was full of stuff all sorts of stuff a wonderful place for grandchildren especially me his only grandson….

    there is more to come I mean write it I may not and nobody cares I am just smoking a Doobie it is my first for my day probably my last two but I don’t care anyway I’m feeling like writing so there….

    I may delete this….
     
    Last edited: Aug 14, 2021
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  6. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Don't delete it, man.

    Cricket track any animal you can imagine and get it tired out and sick of the whole deal and then it would slow down and then he would shoot it right between the eyes and he never missed…

    How would you define "cricket track?" I watched my grandfather (with my father in tow) chase a critter up a hillside, shooting all the way with a pistol, firing along the way uphill. Story was that this critter type was eating away at our hunting cabin's foundation. Everyone was shouting. But this critter was easy to track -- she ran up a trail without deviating, presenting a big target (relatively). Man, I was about eight (8) years old. I can still see the bullet holes in that poor little porcupine.
     
  7. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    The words “cricket track” were typos as rendered by the voice to text functionality that is in these machines it wasn’t me!
    I was tiring of editing the thing after almost finishing it and I left eliminating or changing those two words because they sound kind of neat when ya roll them off your lips….

    I mean just imagine hearing the expression Cricket Tracked….
    Not being familiar with that nonsense phrase would make a guy raise his eyebrows holy shit what is that mean?
    I mean it’s like something a bounty Hunter would do or maybe a pirate?
     
  8. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    You're right, it's weird I admit, but somehow that memory of that poor porcupine's death came back to me. Another thought: today I was working at my house, dressed only in my skivvies due to the heat, and someone began knocking on my front door. Loudly and for a long time. I cursed and looked for some clothes, yelling from upstairs "Hold on a minute!"

    I open the door and see it's a lady who lives a few doors down. She may have some issues (hint, hint): "Please can you help me?!"

    "What's wrong?"

    "There's a big insect on my door! I don't know if it's dangerous, it's like this big! I'm scared. [My husband and son] are out of town today."

    I mumbled OK and grabbed a stick lying on the sidewalk and headed over to her house. She grabbed a broom -- "Here's a broom; it's better" she said. "OK, gimme the broom."

    So I go to the door, see a local beetle about an inch long (including legs, so not big). I flick it away with the broom and that's a job well done. I would have picked it up with my fingers but I was feeling lazy.

    "Oh, thank you, thank you so much!"

    Ai ai ai.
     
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  9. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    Did you ask her whether she's also afraid of stick insects and would she like to see a live one
     
  10. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    No, sir. She's quite big and seemingly crazy. Why don't you visit? I'll introduce you to her. Just kidding. But you get the picture (and the picture is rather large and not focused ;)
     
  11. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I love those
     
  12. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Well, if you want to meet her... I'll meet you at the airport and deliver you to her home. Her husband is very drunk by 20:00 on most nights. But he can be dangerous. He's one of those "old goats." You don't want to fight a guy like that :) He's not Albanian, but he acts like an old-school Albanian or a tough guy from the Caucasus region. Never take your eye off a guy like that, and try to maintain friendly relations.
     
  13. vasco

    vasco Well-Known Member

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    I'm alright, thanks. Fortunately, our local gods have provided us with plenty of those.
     
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  14. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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    Of course, yes :) This is how nature works, and it's a good thing.
     
  15. hezzey

    hezzey Well-Known Member

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    Oh the way that nature works cough.
    It has been my experience that when a female human stops smelling like that and is able and capable to buy her own fucking drinks…..
    She is too fat and ugly and opinionated and I am repelled.
    (Hey it’s just me… my thinking OK?)
     
  16. OldUncles

    OldUncles Well-Known Member

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