Most Recent "Money-Saving" Acts

In the past few days, I've purchased the following:

1. NEW COMPUTER HARDWARE - $130

I purchased a new, cutting-edge 500GB hard drive for my computer "server" at home. Those of you may remember my catastrophic data failure that occurred last year and which this month marks the one-year anniversary of that disaster. And, boy does time fly, or what! It seemed just like yesterday I was on the floor of my home office in my overpriced condo, breaking down the parts of my server, and about to break down myself from losing so much data. The event claimed the lives of 3 high-capacity hard drives.

Unfortunately, there wasn't a true identifiable cause, even if the timing of the failures was simply uncanny and coincidental. Not only did I lose my primary storage solution, but my secondary and even my tertiary backups failed.

To top of all off, my core processor fried, and ended up melting the motherboard away.

The cost of the failure, to lil ol' me, was immeasurable. The true casualty count will never be known. Countless logs, emails, contacts, pictures, legit media and software were forever lost. I even vainly attempted data recovery services which ran in the thousands of dollars. Only 1/2 of the multimedia was recovered-- the rest of the Outlook backups and anything else, gone.

Since that incident, I've sworn I will over-aggressively replaced significant portions of my computer storage on an annual basis.

Therefore, the brand new 500GB HD I bought for $130 is the first step for adopting this new mantra. I wanted to buy another 500GB'er, but that can wait a couple of months. (Strangely, that's what I kept saying to myself the months leading up to my computer failure last year.)


2. NEW AIR PURIFIER - $60

I capitalized on a deal for a very compact-sized well-rated DeLonghi HEPA purifier from newegg.com. $60 for the unit + something like 6 or 12 filters, regular price $100!

This is sorely needed as I moved the noisier HEPA purifier out into the living room but still need something smaller and quieter to suck up all this whitewall / post-construction dust that strangely keeps settling everywhere in my bedroom. Not only will it help my breathing, but it'd prevent that gunk from settling into my computer server.

Now, all I need to do is find a small cool-mist humidifier for myself.

3. 2 OR POSSIBLY 3 NEW SUITS - $350-$500

These aren't your Downtown LA pimp-style $199-for-2-street-deal suits in canary yellow and playa-purple. I cinched these from the Macy's Semi-Annual sale that occurred this past weekend. The Perry Ellis suit, if it fits right (online order only), totals less than $100. The Alfani gray suit totaled less than $190. But the real *steal* was the Michael Kors complete suit for <$150, online, *and* in my actual size of 42L! I've always thought good men's suits cost a premium, >$500 per suit. To actually be able to own *3* suits for the price I've previously thought of buying 1 suit with is a huge eye-opener, without shirking on quality settling on those Downtown LA garment district suits.

ALSO:

Today, I was invited to some automotive, moderated survey panel to be held May 8th, 6-8pm, and paying *me* $100 (no tax withholding! :D) to attend! It'll be in Orange County, so I figure I'll just swing by there on my way to my folks'.

Apparently, they're targeting current or previous enthusiast or exotic car owners. They've asked me to spread the word to fellow BMW, Porsche, Italian cars, and even high-end Japanese rally / sport car colleagues and friends.