This trip back to Hawai`i in April has got me in a covetous mood.<\/p>\n
It's not enough I bought an iPod to keep me sane on a 9-hour flight from Austin to Honolulu. It occurred to me as I cut the commercials out of the TV shows I transferred from my TiVo that it would be fun to watch some Battlestar Galactica<\/em> or Friday Night Lights<\/em> during the flight as well.<\/p>\n I came to my senses when I realized a portable DVD player would really only be used on a flight, and I don't travel enough to require it.<\/p>\n That didn't stop me from going to Best Buy or Fry's to look at some. As affordable as some players may be, I knew it would be a one-time use purchase and an unwise expenditure.<\/p>\n But a laptop? I could probably bring that on the plane, play a DVD, perhaps even write or work on music. A laptop would be a real investment. And that's how I found myself in the laptop departments of both Best Buy and Fry's, seeing and touching but not really expecting to spend anything.<\/p>\n Because there's nothing to spend.<\/p>\n When I was saving up for my car, I was pretty disciplined about savings. I made sure my Waterloo checks I earned on the weekends would go straight into savings, and after a year, I had 1\/2 of the necessary down payment. After I bought the car, I stopped exercising that discipline. I haven't really been saving (nor have I been paying down debt, either.)<\/p>\n I'll try to save, then I find a toy that needs my immediate attention — an old keyboard on eBay, some home studio software.<\/p>\n Perhaps saving up for a laptop will make me disciplined again. Or a trip to Japan in 2008. I just have to resist the urge to get Ableton Live or QuarkXpress.<\/p>\n Or I could just remind myself I can't spend money for which has already been accounted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This trip back to Hawai`i in April has got me in a covetous mood. It's not enough I bought an iPod to keep me sane on a 9-hour flight from Austin to Honolulu. It occurred to me as I cut the commercials out of the TV shows I transferred from my TiVo that it would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Bkgj-6","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregbueno.com\/vexvox\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}