Christmas day has arrived, they always do, on the 25th of every December.
Plenty of gifts, food, comraderie etc and so forth, perhaps even lending a hand in doing dishes or taking out the torn remnants of wrapping paper..
Enough of that, now that Christmas has passed, it is time to regift oneself from the ghosts of Christmas, Birthdays and splurges past.
The average purchaser of electronics, be they Play Stations or Laptops or even a PDA uses maybe 10% of the capacities of those devices, typically what happens is the gadget is used for one, or maybe two things, everything else is just not bothered with, at the Last Cause that is unacceptable.
We are all about increasing capacity by using what we already own, for example:
-Old Gateway laptop, 1 Ghz processor, DVD player has morphed into a 15 inch media center that can watch sports events or shows online for little to no cost in preperation for dropping Satellite Service once the cheapy intro rate expires.
-Old Palm PDA the M500 series, found a kit online for less than 40 dollars that allows it to transform into a GPS unit.
-Bread Machine, no new tricks with that, merely a schedule and Jankesque committment to a schedule, fresh bread is quite a treat, the capacity is already there, why not use it twice a week to create preservative free, tastee bread?
-Found an old Fax for Computer program that should increase capacity if I need to send a fax.
-Reformatted some old 1 gb thumb drives and installed DSL linux
-Went through the book library and found some old titles that I have not read in years, as the saying goes "If you wish to learn something new, read a book you already have read".
-Open Office installed on the media center Gateway to create spreadsheets for the Alpha Strategy purchases that need to be made, as well as synching the laptop with the old palm pilot for penny by penny budgeting purposes.
-Cheapy digital camera that can record film, plan on going through self defense techniques with a blade in order to see where improvement can be made, most cellphones already have digital cameras in them, it does make one wonder if the camera is still good even if the service is dropped.
-Blew the dust off of old workout equipment, if 2010 is as bad as I think it can be, it will be a great time to get back into top shape, from the old Nordic Tracks to some dumbells, that equipment still works just fine and it is a positive outlet for frustrating times.
And it beats watching Oprah and wallowing in self pity.
-Langauge Course, these are real gem, picked them up for 5 dollars on sale at Office Max, 51 langauges, coupled with "The Quick and Dirty Guide to Learning Foreign Languages Fast" and by Spring basal competence in 5 different languages can be mastered rather easily.
A few examples of recycling older tech and items and making them useful again, if one has ever shopped at a thrift store and found similar items keep in mind the item is not useless, the former owner just was not creative enough to find a new use for them.
Have a Merry Christmas, save your money, be cautious, but decisive when acting.
