The Wacky World of Chris Knight

Eight years ago I took a spring off from Reality. I was living in a school bus, working renaissance faires, and generally having a good time. But, living in a school bus isn’t all it is cracked out to be, and pretty soon I was jonesing for a more complicated life. My friend Robin, who was out in California, asked me if I wanted to help him on a contract gig doing programming for a huge website project. The gig was in a language called perl. Well, I could make in two hours on this project what I would make in an entire weeked working a renaissance faire; so of course I said Sure! I then promptly hit a book store and bought the first O’Reilly book I could find on the subject: Learning Perl by Randall Schwartz. Within hours I was writing perl scripts on a FreeBSD box I had cobbled together from spare parts. By the time I got to Berkeley I was able to carry myself off as if I’d been writing in perl for years. I spent the next few years making a more than decent living largely based upon my perl skills.

Snap to the recent past… Nancy, Mel and I go to DragonCon in Atlanta. Randall Schwartz is part of the (white hat) Hacker panel. I decide to pay a little tribute, and I buy him a bottle of Glenmorangie single malt scotch. I thought it was fitting, since my scotch habit was fed for years by way of my perl habit. I gave it to him at the panel, and he seemed to be pleased.

A couple of days ago I wrote him an email, to see if he enjoyed the scotch. He didn’t. Apparently someone walked off with the bottle.

Who the hell stole my tribute to a perl god?

When people talk about the cost of living, they usually mean housing, food, transportation, utilities. All the mundane things needed to survive in our society. So, for the most part, when people compare living in Tampa to living in San Francisco the criteria they call the cost of living is a bit more expensive in San Francisco. Living is more than just surviving, and I’m getting sick of just surviving.

I recently flew out to San Francisco for a set of job interviews. Literally, the trip was going home for me. I spent the better part of a week visiting friends. The job interview was an experience, which I will probably document elsewhere once it has finished playing out.

As part of my visits to the San Francisco area I had to make two side trips. One to Fry’s, for which I snuck some clandesdine photos in order to torture Doug. (After spending an entire hour at Fry’s I only purchased a bag of RJ45 connectors. I can’t find them in bags of 100 in Tampa, and Home Despot wants for qty 10 half the price I paid for qty 100.) The second trip was to Beverages and More, to buy Nan some Stroh for her rum cakes. It was at Bevrages and More that I learned a lesson regarding the cost of Living.

First, let me step back in time by a month or so. Tampa has its own Science Fiction and Fantasy convention: Necronomicon. This year the guests of honor were Spider & Jeanne Robinson. I rather like Spider Robinson. I’ve read everything that he’s written that is in paperback, and I’ve been anxious enough to buy a few in hardcover. (Now I step back four years…) In a couple of the Callahan books his character Jake praises Bushmill’s single malt aged Irish whisky; not the cheaper blend. At the time I first encountered this praise I was a scotch drinker, but I was open to expanding my horizons. Spider’s character was right, and the 16 year old Bushmill is a delight. I used to by the 16 year old rather frequently while I lived up in the Oakland Hills. (Back to a month or so ago…) So, I decided, silly fanboy as it may be, that I wanted to give Spider Robinson a bottle of 16 year old Bushmill’s at Necronomicon. A week or so before Necro I went to Carrolwood Liquers, a small independant liquer store that has been very good to Haus Boheme. They didn’t have it, but they let me look through their vendor catalog. Their catalogs from their distributors listed the wholesale price for Bushmills 10 year old as $79 and the 16 year old at $139. One part of me was sad that I just couldn’t afford to buy Spider Robinson a proper tribute, another part of me was incredulous because I had bought an unknown quantity of bottles when I lived in Oakand and I had never bothered to look at the price. I wasn’t sure this was the price I had paid, but it fitted my old lifestyle, and I was a little shocked.

Snap to present-ish. I’m in Beverages and More, looking for Stroh. I pass through the Scotch/Irish section. (Section, not just a shelf!) There, right in front of me, is a lesson in the economics of Living, and the difference between Living and surviving. Twelve year old Bushmills for $34.99 and 16 year old for $56.99. The price for the same bottle of whisky was less than half in San Francisco, where the cost of living is more. Had I been in San Francisco I could have easily afforded a proper tribute to an author I respect.

I also realized at that time how tired I am of just Surviving. Tampa is less expensive. Tampa is safe. Tampa is easy. I don’t need safe and easy. I need back in the game, and the game just isn’t played in Tampa.

It all started with World of Warcraft. Silly, eh? It seems that several recent real life adventures started as a result of the on-line game World of Warcraft. In this episode, our adventureres headed to Best Buy so that Doug could buy a mouse to better play WoW on his laptop. While wandering around, looking for open box sepcials and holiday price leaders, Doug checked out the gigabit ethernet switches, as he has during every trip to a geek store over the past few months. His eyes fell upon the NetGear GS105 five port 10/100/1000 switch. The gasp came as he read the price: $19.99. We had the price checked. Then the inventory. Only one in the store. Then the inventory of nearby stores. Thus began the oddessy. You see, with a price like that a single five port switch just wasn’t going to do it. So, after determining the nearest store with more inventory we headed out. The second store had three, so Doug bought one and I bought two; so we now both had two. Two works great for me, I can chain them together and essentially have an eight port gigabit switch for $40. Not bad, eh? Doug is the decadent one. He’s using one at home and tossing the other in his laptop bag in case he ever needs a portable gigabit switch…

But it couldn’t end there, could it?

We had to know if this was a fluke, or if the price had just really dropped that far. CompLuser has the same switch for $91.99 Circuit City has if for $98. PriceGrabber shows the cheapest price at $74, and they are selling on eBay for $55. Best guess? Someone at Best Buy pulled a dyslexic typo on a $91.99 price, and we scored. So by now we are thinking of things we could do with them. Stocking stuffers for friends, selling them on eBay, etc. We just need more. We tell Bass what we are up to and he wants in. While Nan, Mel and I were spending some veg time in the living room Doug was in my office calling around. The next nearest Best Buy was out of stock. The next one had ‘a bunch’. It’s 9:15, this particular Best Buy is about 40 minutes away… We do what any hard core geeks would be expected to do… We hauled ass.

Apparently ‘a bunch’ is now defined as two. We do another inventory check, expanding our search pattern. The St. Pete Best Buy has two in stock, and Ft. Meyers has five. Even selling them on eBay the return on the effort is starting to lose its shine. We buy what we have and head back to Haus Boheme. We now have six Netgear GS105 switches for a little more than one would normally cost.

I think Doug got the mouse. I hope it’s the right one. Otherwise, we might be driving to Ft. Meyers to return it…