The relative cost of living…

When people talk about the cost of living, they usually mean housing, food, transportation, utilities. All the mundane things needed to survive in our society. So, for the most part, when people compare living in Tampa to living in San Francisco the criteria they call the cost of living is a bit more expensive in San Francisco. Living is more than just surviving, and I’m getting sick of just surviving.

I recently flew out to San Francisco for a set of job interviews. Literally, the trip was going home for me. I spent the better part of a week visiting friends. The job interview was an experience, which I will probably document elsewhere once it has finished playing out.

As part of my visits to the San Francisco area I had to make two side trips. One to Fry’s, for which I snuck some clandesdine photos in order to torture Doug. (After spending an entire hour at Fry’s I only purchased a bag of RJ45 connectors. I can’t find them in bags of 100 in Tampa, and Home Despot wants for qty 10 half the price I paid for qty 100.) The second trip was to Beverages and More, to buy Nan some Stroh for her rum cakes. It was at Bevrages and More that I learned a lesson regarding the cost of Living.

First, let me step back in time by a month or so. Tampa has its own Science Fiction and Fantasy convention: Necronomicon. This year the guests of honor were Spider & Jeanne Robinson. I rather like Spider Robinson. I’ve read everything that he’s written that is in paperback, and I’ve been anxious enough to buy a few in hardcover. (Now I step back four years…) In a couple of the Callahan books his character Jake praises Bushmill’s single malt aged Irish whisky; not the cheaper blend. At the time I first encountered this praise I was a scotch drinker, but I was open to expanding my horizons. Spider’s character was right, and the 16 year old Bushmill is a delight. I used to by the 16 year old rather frequently while I lived up in the Oakland Hills. (Back to a month or so ago…) So, I decided, silly fanboy as it may be, that I wanted to give Spider Robinson a bottle of 16 year old Bushmill’s at Necronomicon. A week or so before Necro I went to Carrolwood Liquers, a small independant liquer store that has been very good to Haus Boheme. They didn’t have it, but they let me look through their vendor catalog. Their catalogs from their distributors listed the wholesale price for Bushmills 10 year old as $79 and the 16 year old at $139. One part of me was sad that I just couldn’t afford to buy Spider Robinson a proper tribute, another part of me was incredulous because I had bought an unknown quantity of bottles when I lived in Oakand and I had never bothered to look at the price. I wasn’t sure this was the price I had paid, but it fitted my old lifestyle, and I was a little shocked.

Snap to present-ish. I’m in Beverages and More, looking for Stroh. I pass through the Scotch/Irish section. (Section, not just a shelf!) There, right in front of me, is a lesson in the economics of Living, and the difference between Living and surviving. Twelve year old Bushmills for $34.99 and 16 year old for $56.99. The price for the same bottle of whisky was less than half in San Francisco, where the cost of living is more. Had I been in San Francisco I could have easily afforded a proper tribute to an author I respect.

I also realized at that time how tired I am of just Surviving. Tampa is less expensive. Tampa is safe. Tampa is easy. I don’t need safe and easy. I need back in the game, and the game just isn’t played in Tampa.

Dyslexia is my friend

It all started with World of Warcraft. Silly, eh? It seems that several recent real life adventures started as a result of the on-line game World of Warcraft. In this episode, our adventureres headed to Best Buy so that Doug could buy a mouse to better play WoW on his laptop. While wandering around, looking for open box sepcials and holiday price leaders, Doug checked out the gigabit ethernet switches, as he has during every trip to a geek store over the past few months. His eyes fell upon the NetGear GS105 five port 10/100/1000 switch. The gasp came as he read the price: $19.99. We had the price checked. Then the inventory. Only one in the store. Then the inventory of nearby stores. Thus began the oddessy. You see, with a price like that a single five port switch just wasn’t going to do it. So, after determining the nearest store with more inventory we headed out. The second store had three, so Doug bought one and I bought two; so we now both had two. Two works great for me, I can chain them together and essentially have an eight port gigabit switch for $40. Not bad, eh? Doug is the decadent one. He’s using one at home and tossing the other in his laptop bag in case he ever needs a portable gigabit switch…

But it couldn’t end there, could it?

We had to know if this was a fluke, or if the price had just really dropped that far. CompLuser has the same switch for $91.99 Circuit City has if for $98. PriceGrabber shows the cheapest price at $74, and they are selling on eBay for $55. Best guess? Someone at Best Buy pulled a dyslexic typo on a $91.99 price, and we scored. So by now we are thinking of things we could do with them. Stocking stuffers for friends, selling them on eBay, etc. We just need more. We tell Bass what we are up to and he wants in. While Nan, Mel and I were spending some veg time in the living room Doug was in my office calling around. The next nearest Best Buy was out of stock. The next one had ‘a bunch’. It’s 9:15, this particular Best Buy is about 40 minutes away… We do what any hard core geeks would be expected to do… We hauled ass.

Apparently ‘a bunch’ is now defined as two. We do another inventory check, expanding our search pattern. The St. Pete Best Buy has two in stock, and Ft. Meyers has five. Even selling them on eBay the return on the effort is starting to lose its shine. We buy what we have and head back to Haus Boheme. We now have six Netgear GS105 switches for a little more than one would normally cost.

I think Doug got the mouse. I hope it’s the right one. Otherwise, we might be driving to Ft. Meyers to return it…

World of Weenies

We’ve been playing the World of Warcraft open beta for a couple of weeks, and it has been cool. Sales were to begin tonight at midnight. We joked about trying to find a store open at midnight. But, we aren’t that kind of game weenie…

Then Nan said the house was getting too hot, and she asked me if I could do anything to improve air flow. Well, one of our box fans died, so I guess I could replace it. Suddenly we were headed to Wal-Mart at 11:30 at night. The same night that World of Warcraft was set to start selling… Can you see where this is leading?

So, Doug and I go to the Wal-Mart around the corner. We happen to pass by electronics on the way to the box fans… There are a LOT of people in the electronics section for this time of night. Not the usual walking dead you normally see at Wal-Mart this late. These are alert guys and gals, our age and younger. I recognize the gleam in their eyes… Someone asks us if we are there for World of Warcraft… We say yes, and he tells us that we are too late, they have already sold them all. Uh, huh… then why is this guy still hanging around?

So, we wander, wondering who we can ask. Someone calls out to Doug, someone waiting. We get clued in that they store only has so many copies, and the manager has been taking names and they are all spoken for, not sold yet. Bummer. This guy tells us that the other Wal-Mart a couple of miles downt the road has seven that are not spoken for. Suddenly we are headed down the road. How did this happen? We only needed fans…

On the road… driving… pull into CompUSA’s parking lot, just in case they have opened up for a midnight sale… We are such weenies…

Wal-Mart number two… Electronics… Nobody there. Well, OK, there are other people clustered around the electronics section, but they are all waiting for the latest Harry Potter DVD… I find a manager, and ask about World of Warcraft. He goes and checks the back, and can’t find it. I give him some BS that I had spoken to someone and was told that there were seven copies. He can’t help us, he looked everywhere. So, we wander off dejected. We stop by electronics, in the hopes that maybe someone there knows something different. And then we hear on the PA: “Can the people looking for the video game come to the double doors in the bath section”. Repeated three times. The manager is standing there, with a box of World of Warcroft copies. He went back and kept looking, and then was cool enough to page us on teh PA just in case we had not left yet. He has five, and he gives us three. I ask for the box they were shipped in, just for kicks; and he gives it to me. This guy who followed us to the doors winces, and says “I was here first, and I want one.” We are not sure how he defines first, as he only walked into electronics when Doug and I were about to give up. We hadn’t seen him for the fifteen minutes we were working the manager to go searching in the back for us. Well, he got one, and was happy. Sorta. He looked like the walking dead type.

Doug is logged in creating characters on all the servers with his favorite character name and I’m posting this, with pictures, so I can gloat…

We are happy gamer weenies.

-Chris


I use Amazon affiliate links in some of my posts. I think it is fair to say my writing is not influenced by the $0.40 I earned in 2022.