This morning I tortured myself. I went to Pricewatch.Com and browsed around to see what current buying prices are for computer components.

And I cursed and cursed some more.

Right now my desktop PC is older than dirt, by conventional standards. AMD K6-2/350, 256 MB RAM, 50X CDROM, Voodoo 2 3D card, Riva128 2D card and a SoundBlaster AWE64- that's what I have to work with these days. And my storage space is growing smaller every day. Let's not get into the nightmare that is my monitor and speakers, both of which are on their last legs.

For around about $300 I can get a serious upgrade and bring myself up to modern standards. For $300 I would be able to do the kind of 3D development that I want to do. For $300 I wouldn't have to sit around and wait half an hour for a 300,000-poly mesh to render. To do that would require this: AMD Athalon 1.2 gHz CPU, 512 MB RAM, GeForce3 Ti, 40 GB drive and a motherboard to handle it all. I could canibalize the rest from my current system and not think twice about it. But it'd cost $300 that I don't have- can't have on my current income. And there are other pressing matters to attend to before my computer.

I need to get a better job. I need to do this for lots of reasons, least of which is my computing happiness. Either that, or I need to sell a few stories. I've already sent one story out and I hope to hear back from that soon (though I still expect to get a rejection). As for finding a new, better, higher-paying job... well, that's entirely up to me.

Tomorrow is Monday, the start of a new business week. Perhaps I can try to wake up a little earlier and begin looking for a new job. Being a projectionist is all well and good, even fun sometimes, but it sure as hell isn't paying well enough for me to be self-sufficient.