$500 and nothing to buy

I’m sitting here enjoying the never-ending joy ride that is waiting for a query to run. This sucker has now been running for nearly seven hours, people. I have officially done everything I had on my plate to do that didn’t involve what this query is doing.

In short, I am just sitting here. Watching the timer count up…executing query batch…6:56:07…6:56:08…6:56:09…

Oh, yeah. This is the part of my job that is downright scintillating. What’s distressing is, I still do have a fair chunk of work I need to get done. It isn’t like “I’m all done except for this one thing”. It’s more like, “I have a good thirty hours of work I can’t start until this thing finishes executing…”

7:01:47…7:01:48…7:01:49…Execute, you transistorized tormenter, EXECUTE!

It’s also the part of the job where I find myself pondering the imponderables of life.

For example, why is it that if you give one person $500 they will blow it out their…wallet-region…in about six seconds on nothing in particular, you know, just this and that and oops! all gone!, while another person will be able to produce that $500 in its entirety six months later, still folded just the way it was when you gave it to them, while yet another person will say, “Oh yeah, well, I bought this other thing, painted it, put it up on eBay and made $5,000. Cool, huh?”

I tend to be a hoarder. When confronted with ‘bonus’ cash, I neither spend nor invest it – I just sort of sit on it. For months. Years, even. Especially if it’s given to me with one of those ‘…and don’t you spend this on groceries, it’s for your birthday! Buy something YOU want!’ things.

Gads.

I have $500 I was given by various parties for various events – anniversary with the company, birthday, wedding anniversary…and all of it has that ‘don’t spend this on groceries’ string attached to it. Which is not to say that I couldn’t just sneak out in the dead of night and spend it on groceries anyway – I really don’t think there’s a tracking device on it that would betray me to the interested parties.

But I promised I wouldn’t, so…there it sits. Waiting for me to come up with something frivolous to do with it.

On the one hand, I suppose I could spend it on knitting supplies (but not yarn, because I am on a yarn diet until September). Or I could buy some socks or something.

But I find the idea of trying to make money with it far more amusing. (Either that, or my aversion to going shopping has hit an all new high, which is entirely possible.)

So, as I sit here watching the counter increment on the blasted query, I have all kinds of wild notions bouncing around in my head. All very small potatoes, all very well suited to someone who tends to be rummaging around at strange hours (read as: done over the Internet), some involving slightly, erm, advanced banking techniques, some involving estate sales and eBay, some involving a little travel.

It makes for a fun fantasy-thought session.

What do you think? If you had $500 with which to start a business…what would you do with it? Or would you say, That’s not anywhere near enough, to do anything! Waste of time to even try! Just spend it on socks! Geesh!!

Discuss, people. $DEITY knows, I have nothing better to do right now...7:15:39...7:15:40...7:15:41...