2002-12-09 -

Mostly Harmless

Liralyn decided that she didn't want to read The Hobbit anymore, at least for a while. I can't say as I blame her, really. I remember liking it a lot when I was eight or so, but I forgot how huge the leap from four to eight is. She wants books where things happen, not where people wander around a lot. Well, it will be there when she's eight herself.

For whatever reason I was thinking about my obsession with knowing the details of every technology I interact with, and I had a notion. The list of features on a product represent a history of problems solved from previous generations. Knowing that in the last several years the price of a certain type of camera dropped while the lens got faster, the flash improved, and a dual-mode autofocus got added makes me feel a sense of economic progress that my (declining) 401k portfolio doesn't. Drooling over the specs on a new WRX helps me cope with the fact that it costs maybe four times what a family car did when I was five.

There's also a vague delusion of thrift in there somewhere. If I'm getting a good deal, spending lots of money is less of a vice. I know I'm getting a good deal because I've practically memorized the specs of the thing I bought and the eight things I could have bought instead, and researched the price of every single one of them on the web. So it's OK to spend the money now, even if I maybe ought to save it for the house, right?

Sometimes I feel that the most I can say for myself is that none of my issues manifest in truly destructive ways.

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