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I hate being poor. My roomie and I went grocery shopping this weekend. One store didn't take "non-member" checks, so I ended up spending a chunk of my meager cash - $31. Along with $25 into my gas tank (at $1.52 a gallon), it took the $65 I started the weekend with down to $9!! That is the most cash I've had in my hands in months, and it's mostly gone - and I have very little to show for it. I shop cheap (see my cheapskate page.) but with a household of four adults, stuff costs. My roomie spent about $150 - but at least she's working (temp, but it's money.)
Of course, when it rains it pours, and my rent goes up by $100 in July. We're still getting a really good deal, considering we live in Silicon Valley, but with two of my roomies on disability (and one spending nearly her entire check on medications - cardiac meds co$t a bundle) we still don't have enough income.
Last month we finally broke down and bought a cheap answering machine to take calls from creditors. It has reduced my stress level by lots, I'll tell you. I don't have the money to pay more than token amounts to these jerks anyway, and I get sick of having to tell them that I'm unemployed, broke, and "no, I can't borrow money from my family and friends to pay my MegaBank balance, you are an asshole for asking".
Then some idiot says "Oh, the tech sector is recovering, profits are up". Baloney. Profits are up because companies have laid off most of their expenses^W employees, and are selling the back stock of goods that those people produced. The layoff have hit support and overhead people the hardest - so these companies are just sort of coasting, and hoping that nothing goes wrong with their IT infrastructure. When it does, of course, it is often so badly messed up that they have to hire very senior people to fix it - which leaves junior people like me still sitting at home, growling at stupidity.
So I have other projects: upgrade a system from Debian Potato to Woody, set up an Apache server on it for testing, *and* truly grok the zen of DNS and name server records. Plus trying to do regular updates to this journal.
Finally, a humor quote: when discussing the pleasing appearance of some athletes' bodies (like runners and swimmers), my roomie came up with "Well, I guess that lets me out, I'm just a trackball racer..."
Of course, when it rains it pours, and my rent goes up by $100 in July. We're still getting a really good deal, considering we live in Silicon Valley, but with two of my roomies on disability (and one spending nearly her entire check on medications - cardiac meds co$t a bundle) we still don't have enough income.
Last month we finally broke down and bought a cheap answering machine to take calls from creditors. It has reduced my stress level by lots, I'll tell you. I don't have the money to pay more than token amounts to these jerks anyway, and I get sick of having to tell them that I'm unemployed, broke, and "no, I can't borrow money from my family and friends to pay my MegaBank balance, you are an asshole for asking".
Then some idiot says "Oh, the tech sector is recovering, profits are up". Baloney. Profits are up because companies have laid off most of their expenses^W employees, and are selling the back stock of goods that those people produced. The layoff have hit support and overhead people the hardest - so these companies are just sort of coasting, and hoping that nothing goes wrong with their IT infrastructure. When it does, of course, it is often so badly messed up that they have to hire very senior people to fix it - which leaves junior people like me still sitting at home, growling at stupidity.
So I have other projects: upgrade a system from Debian Potato to Woody, set up an Apache server on it for testing, *and* truly grok the zen of DNS and name server records. Plus trying to do regular updates to this journal.
Finally, a humor quote: when discussing the pleasing appearance of some athletes' bodies (like runners and swimmers), my roomie came up with "Well, I guess that lets me out, I'm just a trackball racer..."
