e-Waste

Early this morning, baby C and dad actually went to Wal-mart and Frye's to dare the Black Friday crowds in hopes of picking up a laptop for something around $150. To no surprise, they were all gone and no one was available to help them out. Secretly, I had hoped they would come home with a story involving fistacuffs and hair pulling, but in reality, this Black Friday seemed rather low-key. In fact, every Black Friday since the dawn of internet has been low-key. Whatever happened to soccer mom's getting ugly or strangers holding each other at gunpoint for a Furby? It doesn't really feel like a Black Friday without a story. I think I was trying to live vicariously through them--you know, like experience the long lines without actually experiencing the long lines.

But anyway, since dad didn't get the laptop he wanted, baby C and I were thinking that maybe the four of us kids would combine our funds to buy him a Macbook! I mean, mom and dad are terrible when it comes to virus protection and compressing their computer, so at least by switching over to Apple, they'd never have to worry about that. Plus, there's the built-in webcam so they can Skype the Philippines, and I let dad borrow my laptop for a week and he seemed fine with the Mac interface. I haven't run this idea by N yet, but big C is definitely down. Hell, she was so down she went out to buy a MacBook Pro herself, hah! I'm glad she's converting to the likes of Apple, meh heh heh!

And speaking of electronics, since I was sick & bed-ridden all day, I was left to do some Black Friday shopping on Amazon, which btw, has awesome deals! I ended up getting a new printer. I consider it a school investment. I couldn't pass it up--it was 74% off and laser! I currently have big C's old printer, and when I say old, I mean like more than 8 years old. The trade off to getting a free printer was getting a printer that eats paper and is completely unpredictable when and how it'll print. It got to a point to where I had to print each page individually and for each one, I had to turn off and on the printer, insert a "sacrificial" page, and keep my fingers crossed that the printer wouldn't totally fuck up. At that rate, I could no longer consider it "free" when I was losing out on wasted paper, time, energy, and hair being pulled out as a result of frustration. I would end up having to get up early to print at school anyway and invest a good $40/mo just to print at the clinic.

But now, I have a new printer coming on Tuesday, yay! I also just learned that Washington and Oregon's Department of Ecology provide a free, environmentally responsible e-Cycling program for old printers and other electronics, including computers, monitors, and televisions. I may try to convince my parents to take advantage of this program for their old TVs, especially since they've been in talks of getting a new one for their room anyway. Hell, some of the TVs they have at home date back from our Houston days. I think one of them is so old, it isn't even compatible to the new digital format that took over the state, yikes!

post-edit: oops, I just learned that the e-Cycling program does not include printers, but Staples has a recycling program where you can take old electronics in and they send it out to recycling plants. You have to pay a $10 handling fee for bigger items like printers, but I figure that's not so bad considering I'd be getting rid of clutter and it's environmentally sound!