so apparently I had cable...

A young woman from Time Warner came by last night to explain that I still had active cable coming into my unit and she was there to shut it off. She offered to leave it on free for a month and bill me if I didn't cancel. I said no, because I needed to get work done... She told me twice I had good teeth. Her accent sounded like she was from Africa or the Caribbean. Just funny to think I could have been watching Daily Show, Colbert and random Univison programs for almost two years. Never occurred to me to try it and it's probably better that I didn't.

I remember one time when I was out with Keith and it blew his mind that I didn't have cable. I guess if I were a sports fan things would be very different. I watch some TV via Netflix and I like how the nature of it limits how much I can watch to maybe 6 hours a week max, with it sometimes taking a few days to get around to a DVD. I guess the average person in this country watches about 20 hours a week. I suspect that my Netflix plus World of Warcraft generally comes to well under ten. Perhaps one should add pointless internet browsing to that category.

cooking for one

I like to cook but have a hard time getting motivated to cook just for myself. So I often do ultra-minimalist things and eat out entirely too often. When I cook a real meal I usually invite other people over, which is great because of the company but means no or few leftovers, as opposed to eating off one meal for several days. So I'm proud of myself. I made meatloaf, mashed sweet potatoes (yams?), and microwaved some frozen broccoli. A good meal and plenty for the days to come. I also made macaroons last night, so I think I'll have a couple of those for dessert.

Once and for all, proof that Macs are cheaper than PCs

The author has links in the original post for where the prices come from. I also think that since Macs tend to last longer if you break down a per-day cost the difference is much smaller or nil, not even taking into account resale value. Oh, there's also the matter if how much you value your time.

Why this should be has to do with an economic truth that has not recently mattered much in the computer industry, but that, in an age of eBay and unyielding obsolescence, is now crucial. It is resale value. Macs fetch far more on the aftermarket than do PCs -- and after years of use, you can offset that cash-register premium by selling your Mac for a better price than you could your PC.

Consider this example: Last Thanksgiving, you could have purchased a fairly well-outfitted Windows desktop -- the HP Pavilion Media Center A1640n -- on sale from some retail outlets for $699. The machine came with 2 gigabytes of memory, a 250 GB hard disk, and it ran on a quick 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

Around the same time, you might instead have picked up Apple's top-of-the-line Mac Mini, which came equipped with a processor slightly less powerful than the HP's (a 1.83 GHz Intel Core Duo), a far smaller hard disk (80 GB), and less memory (512 MB). The Mac Mini would have set you back $799, or $100 more than the HP.

A good way to gauge the current market value of a computer is to check how much buyers have been willing to pay for similar models in auctions recently completed on eBay. Doing so for the HP shows prices ranging from $236 to $257 -- let's say a rough average of $250. Sales of the Mac Mini, meanwhile, go from about $445 to $550. Let's assume you can unload yours for $500.

If you used your HP for a year and then sold it, you would have spent $449 to own it -- that is, your purchase price of $699 minus your sale price of $250. The Mac Mini, for the same year, would have set you back far less: $799 minus $500, or just $299.