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Easily Amused Sami is Easily Amused.
Today, I bought a Nintendo DSi and several games. I haven't even turned it on yet - it's charging - but it has still been awesome fun.
One of those games was Guitar Hero On Tour: Decades.
What I didn't realise about this game is that it contains two sheets of decals. Cool ones!
I decorated my DSi's carry case, the DSi itself, and put some on Zecter, my EEE PC, as well.
This was, seriously, the second-most awesome thing that has happened to me my entire time in Britain.
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So, I went to Officeworks today, to buy printers and an external hard drive. I ended up buying a more expensive inkjet printer than I intended to get, but I don't actually mind, particularly; this one is awesome, with all the features I want, and my father has one from the same line that has had very heavy use for about six years, so I expect it to last me pretty well.
While I was there I also bought photo print sticker papers, because I have several items I wish to decorate with stickers, and have been unable to do so due to inability to find appropriate stickers. Now I can make my own, and shall do so, and my things will be decorated forthwith.
(I also bought some more rechargable AA batteries, because I've been intending to do so.)
I think I've finally cleared off my backlog of Things To Buy from the last two years of non-money-having. (Except for clothes, but I hate clothes shopping and will continue to put that off as long as I possibly can.) Though the new external hard drive was something that was just upcoming, because my last one is only now at the point of being almost full. (In terms of combined values for convenience, cost effectiveness, and practicality of storage, external hard drives are my best data storage option.)
On the way back from returning the trolley, I stopped by the Save the Children charity shop, where I bought a couple of shirts to cut up for various purposes, a Bible printed in 1958 (I like old things, I wanted a Bible, it was $2), and an absolutely beautiful soft brown leather belt. (Also $2.) I plan to attempt to turn the belt into a more comfortable camera strap. Failing that, I'll find some other use for it - there was no way I wasn't buying a beautiful leather belt I loved on sight when it was two Australian dollars.
Op shops are in one way dangerous, because I'm way more likely to buy things just because I like them if they're invariably VERY VERY CHEAP, and in another way totally not, because even when I buy a bunch of stuff just because it's cool, it never costs me more than five bucks total, and the money is for charity anyway.
Oh, and I also bought a Ricoh YF-20 N 35mm (film) camera for $2, mostly because I wanted the bag it was in to use for my digital compact. (Which has no bag, and I have a preference for keeping my cameras wrapped in something.) The camera itself will probably be put in my storage box of Miscellaneous Techish Bits until I turn it into a taser or something.
The recycling part: old, unwanted, ugly shirts into useful items, and things like camera bags for now-worthless cameras into usable things.
Now, though, I need to dig the batteries out of this camera before I toss it into storage.
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The folk at my local Officeworks are pretty cool. They invited me to use one of their trolleys to get my shopping home (my shopping was big and bulky, as I bought storage containers), even though I explained I was going to be walking back to my house, so long as I promised to return it. Promise I did, and return it I did. And getting stuff home was much much easier than it might have been.
I bought:
- storage boxes, for to make my room tidy; it is difficult to achieve Tidiness when you don't have anywhere to put most of your clothes except on the floor in variably neat piles. I recognise that, due to various factors, I will not keep my laundry *neat and tidy*, but if the "dump it" strategy is involving dumping it into boxes, then at least I can put the lids on, and the untidy remains contained.
- a multi-tray document storage thing. This is for keeping uni papers and articles and magazines I haven't finished reading so they don't go all over the place all the time.
- two powerboards. One to replace the one in my bedroom that died, and one with a long lead for downstairs, so I can have a more convenient option for plugging my laptop in downstairs - that's got good surge protection, because it's one of my areas of vague paranoia with expensive and treasured electricity-powered goods. Both of the ones I got have an awesome feature: some of the sockets are spaced out, for all those stupid devices that plug straight in at the adapter, or whatever, and are all wide and otherwise block multiple power points. @manufacturers: PUT A CORD AND SEPARATE PLUG ON, YOU BASTARDS. I might also plug my guitar amp into this one, now that I have it, as an amp (with tube no less) is, as far as I know, likely to be *spectacularly* susceptible to destruction by power surge.
- I'd like at this moment to throw a shoutout to Mrs Rochfort, my year 6 teacher, whose voice is always in my mind whenever I write or type the word "separate". I was always a near-perfect speller, but the thing is, I imprint on a word when I read it; if I imprint wrong, it's hard for me to remember the correct spelling. I had somehow acquired the word as "seperate". To this day, I get to sep- and have an image of Mrs Rochfort, who I adored, standing over me repeating, with emphasis, sep-AH-rate! sep-AH-rate!.
I wonder if Mrs Rochfort thought of me when she learned about AD(H)D, an unknown thing in 1991 in a Perth suburban government school. I remember her talking to my mother, while I waited in the next room; she had taught my older sister, who got better marks than I did, and was telling my mother that my sister was clever, but I was genuinely brilliantly intelligent, and my work didn't reflect that - but my behaviour and attitude were excellent, so something else had to be wrong that was hurting my academic performance.
That thing would be ADHD, clearly, but no-one knew that then, even though Mrs Rochfort wanted very much to try and work out what was wrong with me.
I just looked up her number in the white pages and called. Left a message to tell her she was awesome. I called her once before, about ten years ago, and she was then touched and delighted. I don't think good teachers are rewarded enough... I like to do my part.
Anyway, time to go pick up my camera and accessories - except the 50mm f/1.4 lens, which is still unavailable. (As far as the woman at my camera shop can say, is not in stock in Australia at all. *sigh* Dammit, I want a 50mm lens.)
ETA: CAMERA GETS. Including a 50mm lens - Sigma, not Canon, but it came highly recommended, so!
And I am impressed with my own space estimation ability, because everything fits perfectly and exactly in the camera bag I bought.
I've unboxed everything, now I'm just waiting for batteries to charge so I can play. :D
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So! My weird actually-it-was-Chinese-characters problem has been solved, thanks to my google-tastic brother-out-law, who worked out that I'd accidentally hit a keyboard shortcut that switched the inputs to Chinese. Which WAS A PROBLEM FOR ME, since I do not, in fact, speak, read, or in any way comprehend Chinese.
Meanwhile, today I either spent, or promised to spend, more money than I ever have before in my life. Arguably topping the days I bought motorcycles, although in fairness, I bought very cheap motorcycles.
I bought:
- Two bras. I wanted to get more than two, but two was all they had in my size, so I will be getting more in the future, most likely.
- A Gibson Les Paul Studio, wine red with silver pickups.
- A Vox AD50VT Valvetronix Tube Modeling Amp.
- A Tibetan singing bowl from the Oxfam fair trade shop.
- A bar of fair trade chocolate, ditto.
- A DVD.
- A headphone jack adaptor so I can use my existing headphones with my amp, so I can practice guitar without it being particularly loud to housemates.
- A 3/4 size acoustic guitar (child's size). This will be a present for Layanna, if she decides she wants to learn guitar, in which case I'll buy another one to do the other thing I will be doing with a child-sized guitar, which is: taking it to Princess Margaret Hospital for Children to volunteer giving the kids there a chance to play with it.
- A digital tuner.
- A gig stand.
- A guitar strap.
With the music stuff, it's worth noting that I got a bundled price deal on it that saved me quite a bit of money on buying all the bits separately, as it turns out, because my guitar dudes are awesome and will work out the cheapest price they can give you for stuff even after you've already said you're totally buying it.
I did not pay for, but engaged to buy:
- A Canon EOS 50D DSLR, with a couple of lenses, and assorted filters and other accessories; the camera and one of the two lenses were out of stock, so the woman at the shop is ordering them in, and has set aside all the things I want that they did have in stock so I can buy it all as a great big bundle. (Because some things sell out, and a couple of things I wanted they only had one left already.) In theory I'll probably be able to pick that up around Monday or Tuesday. At which point I'll be spending quite a lot of money again.
On the bright side, all of this stuff is awesome.
The guy at the guitar shop showed me all the things the amp can do. Including attempting to show me its volume capabilities, but when he'd cranked it up and was exhorting me to play a chord firmly instead of lightly flicking a single string, I was left to wail: "I can't! It's too loud!" My amp can play louder than I can listen, but fortunately it can be turned down from there.
I am, however, exhausted, because I did an awful lot of walking (including a fair amount I shouldn't have had to do, but the Transperth Journey Planner steered me awry), and, at the end, because nobody was answering phone calls including the friend who had promised he could help me with stuff this afternoon, I carried two guitars, gig stand and cables, my backpack (containing laptop, bras, singing bowl, etc), and an extremely heavy amp to the bus stop.
I had to stop every few metres to rest and now my whole body is aching and exhausted, but I have my new darlings. (I called Chas and he helped me carry everything from the bus stop to the house - he carried the heavier guitar and amp.)
So, an exhausting day, but productive, and I even have bras that aren't old and crap now.Current Mood:  exhausted Current Music: dean asleep in the chair next to me, boys playing with their computers
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