Because Spending Money IS LITERALLY Going Out of Style.

That's what a recession is. No one spends. Add on deflation--which is, everything will be cheaper tomorrow--and no one really spends.

So I will singlehandedly keep the economy afloat.

No, I don't do New Year's Resolutions. But that one seems to be my unspoken resolution.

Last year I bought a new laptop--okay, a netbook, less than $400.

But it's my little attempt to spend our economy out of its doldrums.

And then there was the turntable that records LP's to mp3's. Another $150--which is really pretty cheap for a turntable. (It's got a CD player built in--almost like a freebie.)

But now is the big stuff.

I bought a fairly big color inkjet printer.

It prints 13 x 19" prints.

It's the entry-level machine for this marketplace: it was $400 with a $100 rebate.

The next better machine starts around $600!

So still a bargain. ("Watch out! Falling prices!!")

And at MacWorld I saw an externa dual hard drive box that functions as a mini-RAID system. No it's not a server, not NAS (network attached storage). But it's got two drives, and they mirror each other, so you're 100% backed up on your backups.

It's 2 terabytes. Yes 2TB. That means with mirroring it's one terabyte.

I bought an external 1TB drive as a backup in December: it was about $120.

This was (predictably) $250. But now I can migrate everything to the RAID drive, back it up on the non-RAID drive (because both the RAID drives could die), and I'll be set.

Then I can sell the RAID box I bought from a very adorable chainsmoking Russian computer programmer who lives in Silicon Valley and has his whole house wired to play mp3's of bad German rock and roll from anywhere in the house via a Palm-driven remote control system. (But that is SO another blog entry.)

All my mp3's backed up! All my photos in one place! All my movie clips from teaching, all in one place!

So Newegg.com--I love those folks!--would sell me both the printer and the RAID drive with free shipping.

Yes, I pay in-state tax. But some people wanted $50 or $70 just for the shipping. So the tax was a bargain.

And by paying the tax--are you seeing a theme?--I'm helping support the struggling State of California.

I'm just a standup guy.

A standup guy with a netbook, a turntable, a printer and a RAID hard drive.

--E. R. O'Neill