Saturday 13 August 2005

Pic of the day: It's all Net banking all the time baby!

Bills

The pay has come in, but the banks have already closed for the weekend. Well, the Net banks are open, which I use, but they don't actually do anything during the weekend. You'd think logically that since you can access the computers all through the weekend, and since it is you and the computers that do all the work, there would be no need to wait for the Monday for the changes to take effect. It is really just a leftover from the time when actual humans moved the money. These days, it is all electrons. But I still can't pay my bills on a Saturday or Sunday.

But I'm lucky that I can pay my bills at all. I don't earn a lot for a working man, but I don't need a lot either. For the last few years, it has been easy to pay my bills on time. I use a credit card to even out the bills: If I buy a new computer or some such, I use the credit card, as well as the various online shopping I do (mostly at bookstores and of course the online game I subscribe to). This month there was just my City of Heroes subscriptions (on both the US and Euro servers), and one book from Fictionwise.com. The computer stuff this month (a new home network) was paid right out of my bank account already.

Unless I hurry up and buy something more substantial, the credit card will be down to zero again next month, and I will have to put that money somewhere else. I suppose I could have a separate account so I could still set aside the same amount each month, even if I don't buy much. Or I could just buy another computer, I suppose. Then I could have more City of Heroes accounts running at the same time. Since my bandwidth is set to double soon anyway, I could buy a row of cheap computers, connect them all to the home network and raise an army of superheroes! Yeah! The Legion of Super-Itlands! OK, perhaps I should just set the money aside instead.

Oh yes! For the winter I should buy a treadmill or at least an exercise bike, right? But the winter is unimaginably far away. Entire civilizations may rise and fall before that. (At least in Civ3, which I'm playing recently.) More to the point, since I usually have a new fad every 2-3 weeks, I may suddenly find a better use for the money long before then. We shall have to wait and see, right? Also, laying plans for the far future is hubris and could easily be punished. Especially when rich people do it. God keeps a sharp eye on people who have more money than they need and start to make plans. (Luke 12:16-21, James 4:13-16.)

The Internet and telephone bill is also here this time. They come every 3 months. I could cut down on the both of them, and get faster Internet to boot, by changing ISP. But that would mean closing down the online.no website I have had for all these years. Already I have a domain of my own, chaosnode.net, with my archives and fiction and stuff. I guess I am gradually moving that way, but my readers are used to this place, some have bookmarked it and the search engines are pointing here. It is this that keeps me back, otherwise I would have got a cheaper and faster supplier long ago. There are very few impressive things about the former state monopoly. On the bright side, they are likely to stay in business for quite a while, I suspect. The state still owns a large part of the shares. Yay for socialism. And the way the upcoming elections seem to be going, we can look forward to more of it.