Typhoid Eric came and spent a few nights at my place in the middle of last week. I now have a cough, faucet-nose, and a temperature (collectively known as The Death). I’m blaming him.

Yesterday I pretty much drooled on myself and played Ridge Racer.

Today was a bit better: I got my garbage out, cleared out (and refilled) my dishwasher, and went in to work only to discover that they were shutting the computers down early for maintenance. And then I drooled on myself some more.

…

Tomorrow’s MacWorld keynote by Steve Jobs looks to be a (relatively) monumental one; John Gruber’s predictions seem as reasonable as any I’ve seen—and even the Wall Street Journal has gone on record saying that Apple will release some sort of cell phone tomorrow.

Too bad I’ve already bought more minutes for my T-Mobile pay-as-you-go phone. (I don’t talk enough to justify a real cell phone bill.) Since the word on the street is that Cingular will be Apple’s partner, I looked at their plans this evening… and their pay-as-you-go plan doesn’t look terrible, either—provided that you’ll mostly be talking to other people on their cell phone (i.e. not a land-line). Hrm.

…

Much of my time, recently, has been spent dealing with the ramifications of a realization that’s been growing stronger over the last couple months: renting is for chumps. (Okay, that’s going too far. But.) Plusses: lower monthly amount; flexibility with respect to moving in the future. Minuses: that’s all you’re getting—shelter for a month at a time. Once that month’s up, you have nothing but the fact that you were dry for that one month.

The one bit of advice I remember from Dr. Moulton, a finance professor I took a few classes form back in the day, was to buy a house as soon as you could afford one. The advice struck me as somewhat odd at the time—I’m what you might call debt-adverse. But I now see the side I was missing, back then: the idea of getting something enduring for your money. Renting fails; house plus mortgage does not.

The real problem is: can I afford it? (Answer: certainly not without renting, ostensibly to my sister.) Also: is there any place that would work that is available? The jury’s still out… though I do have a good bit of life on my current lease.