Startup cost of life & PortableApps

I have burned through far too much money since i got to Olin for the summer. I've purchased cutlery, plates, bowls, mugs, pitchers, salt, pepper, a pillow, etc. but I'm counting these as startup costs. Actually, even some of the consumables are kinda like startup costs: 18 packs of hot cocoa will last a long time. I've also started buying groceries to eat and stuff; it's messed up.

I'm also getting new glasses; I just feel like I'm buying stuff for being old. It's a little bit saddening but I temper it with bouts of playing Magic and Smash Bros. Oh yeah. I also purchased a Smash Bros. cartridge.

Anyhow, I'm excited to see what NASA has in store for us on Friday. We're currently just learning stuff about x-rays and imaging and the beginning of the universe and whatnot. Also some modeling. I got to model some circuits today: hooray circuits!

----------------------
To make this more lifehackerish like I like it, let me tell you about portable apps. These rock. They're stand-alone executables which means you can run them from anywhere like, say, a USB drive. They're super-handy! There's a few that make this suite priceless:

-LCISO Creator > tell it what drive you want to make an iso from and your done. so simple. so beautiful. my cd carrying baggy thing will soon be obsolete. (I suggest you get VCDrom to mount the iso files so that you don't need to use your cd drive again!)

-Deepburner > not quite Nero, but way better than the junk they package with new computers

-OpenOffice Portable > that's correct. a full office suite on a stick.

-explore2fs > incredibly cool. browse your files stored in linux from windows!

-wireless keyview > see WEP keys that are registered on a computer real fast-like! great for when you visit someone and they don't know they're own WEP key. Also good for being an extremely lame hax0r!

-7zip > uncompress anything and get some lean mean compression.

-Firefox, Filezilla, Gaim and you are online!

-foxit reader and vlc media player mean you have better ways of seeing pdfs and every sound and video format imagineable than comes on a normal computer.

+ a lot of programs to look at your computer's inner workings (processes, registry etc.)

You can also have antivirus stuff etc to get ppl out of fixes...

I love these b/c I can use them on the computers of people too lame to have decent programs. :-)