How much stuff can a stuffed backpack carry?

You would think laundry would be a relatively simple task.  But of course, for somebody like me, it's a real endevour.  Pumpkin's laundry needed to be done, so I thought I'd be the best s/o ever and bring it over to my house where I have a washer and dryer and then bring it back all done the next day.  Door to door delivery, if you will.  

Also, that meant I could run the laundry on a weekday night (better for the environment, because it puts less demand on the grid but weekends work too) and air dry the heavier items in the backyard. 

Long story short, I ended up with this beast on my back the other day.  It included a few glass jars (always useful), some CSA meat (always delicious), and my bike u-lock (which I normally find heavy, but not so much that day).  Luckily the route was mostly downhill, but man, it's days like that I sort of wish I wasn't such a nut and drove my car.  Sort of.

Done!

Err, I mean, done!

Who says leftovers are boring?

One of my favorites, insert-meat-name-here hash.  In this case, ham.  Why is it my favorite?  Well, I'm always not finishing carbs (potatoes), I always have eggs and onions on hand, and it allows me to have meat for breakfast!  By the way, eggs easy over is the only way to have this. Yum, splayed egg guts!

Big Purchase- $11.91!

I knew eventually my not-buying-new streak would end, and so it did on Monday. Just 2 days shy of 3 months without buying anything new. That I couldn't eat, that is.  Sweet.

But this purchase was long overdue, and I was very happy with what turned out. Without further ado, my purchase(s):

Thermal paste and a SATA cable

If you recall back to my post about the trifecta of sustainability, you'll remember that my good friend O gave me a bunch of his old computer components.  Well, over Christmas he also bought me Windows 7 and gave me his old 200 GB SATA hard drive and another better CPU.  When I had installed the first round of his components, there was quite a maneuvering to get my IDEE hard drive, DVD drive, and CD drive to fit on the one IDEE cable.  I had to leave the DVD drive out because it simply didn't fit.  At the time I was thinking of buying a SATA hard drive to alleviate the problem, but lo and behold, another month of flexibility and a got one for free!  This is the first time I've had a hard drive over 80 GB!

Of course, by that month, I had already packed away my SATA cable with my old motherboard and left it in my parent's house, which has since been torn down.  So checked craigslist/freecycle and I asked all my nerdy friends if they had extra SATA cables or extra thermal paste lying around (and this is what took me a month).  But they didn't (for shame!) which meant...buying new.

However, I knew I didn't want to just get it online, due to the environmental impact of shipping.  During this time of pleading with nerds for parts, one informed me of a small shop right in SOMA.  So off I went to Central Computers, which is just about as local as you can get for computers.  By which I mean, the company seems based in China.  Not only were the parts reasonably priced (student discount) but they had limited packaging too (everything I took out of the store is pictured).  

At home the next day, I tore apart my computer, and by tore I mean I gingerly laid it down on it's side (on newspaper, so I wouldn't have to deal with carpet's static electricity) and opened it up.  I unlatched my heat sink, unlatched the old [old] CPU, and put in the old [new] one, put a dime size amount of THERMAL PASTE (such a cool thing to buy), and then reattached the heat sink.  Then I installed the hard drive, hooked up the DVD drive (instead of the CD drive that had fit on the IDEE cable) so I could install Windows 7 DVD.  Closed it back up and installed Windows 7, which only required a little troubleshooting with O since it wouldn't recognize the old [new] hard drive so I thought I might have broken it in transit.  But I didn't, and with a little more troubleshooting with O (a genius) over the HD audio, I FINALLY had a AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4200+, 200GB SATA harddrive, 2GB RAM desktop.  All for the low cost of $11.91.  Told you it was a big purchase!

Awesome.