Friday Five – Things you’ve wasted money on

Welcome to the Friday Five! Each week I help you get to know me a bit better through the magical art of a top five list! This week: Things you’ve wasted money on!

I flew out to California for Comikaze expo late Wednesday, so I didn’t get to put as much thought into this weeks picks as I normally would. Being a single adult with no girlfriend, no kids, and lots of disposable income, I tend to waste a good bit of money on dumb stuff. Be it hundred of dollars of quarter priced comics, or just stuff I’ll never really use. Looks like one thing we all agree on is VIP passes are almost never worth it. And college, be it fancy name brand school or something you saw on the TV, there’s probably a better, cheaper way to go to learn what you need.

1. A giant collection of Wishin’ Trolls when I was like 12 (probably $200) – I must have had like 100 of these stupid things. Why? I have no idea. Every other kid had them at the time, but they were dumb, and pointless, and I ended up just throwing them all out.

 

2. Almost every dollar I ever got for a full year in 7th grade on Star Trek: Customizable Card Game Cards (at least $1000, as a conservative estimate) – I literally have two shoeboxes full of these things. Total net worth? Maybe $5. My goal is to get a house, and literally wallpaper an entire room with them. It’s about the only use anyone would ever have for them. Even 20 years later, you can still buy sealed boxes for about five dollars. I still have yet to get the full set, because there were 121 rare cards and only 1 rare per pack. At 36 packs in a box you needed at minimum to buy 4 boxes to even have a chance.

 

3. Captain Kirk Chair ($2700) – While it’s cool, I don’t really use it much anymore after I was told I couldn’t have it as my desk chair at work. It’s huge, it isn’t comfortable to sit in, and because I don’t want my dog pissing all over it I have it up on a raised platform in the corner of my room, where it acts as a cumbersome storage space for comics and toys. Still awesome to have, but not really useful.

 

4. Space Camp (about $2100 with airfare) – While it was cool to go, it wasn’t nearly as epic as I thought it was going to be. Especially since I couldn’t do the underwater trainer, as I couldn’t SCUBA after the brief three minute course because I’m a nose breather, not a mouth breather. My brain was all like “You are underwater, this should not be happening!” I was also not told until after I got home there was a non-SCUBA option for that, which I thought was the whole point anyway. There was also a lot of BS team building stuff. I’m here to fly the Space Shuttle, not on a corporate retreat. Just wasn’t as cool as it was in my mind.

 

5. College (Roughly $100,000 total) – I didn’t really learn a lot at college, though that is mostly my fault. I was too busy having sex with my girlfriend or dealing with issues involving said girlfriend that I didn’t make it to class a lot. My final semester, I was ranked 771/772 students. I wonder what that kid’s problems were, as I didn’t attend a single class for nearly two months, but still managed to squeak by with some D+’s, and they don’t like to give those out. While it looks great on paper, and I did have one teacher who taught me that the point of college wasn’t to learn things, it was to teach you HOW to learn things, I would have been much better served just going to a tech school and getting my certifications (which I still ended up having to do anyway because no one hires non-certified tech people). Probably wouldn’t have had as much sex though, but I could have saved a ton of money and then used that money to buy a lot of classy hookers. That’s what I get for picking a Jesuit institution based on the cookies on the tour and that the CS lab had a fishtank and a couch in it. Not really good factors to pick a school on. But the dorms were huge and I had a dishwasher. So I guess that’s a plus . . ?

JohnScott is the proud owner of a life size replica Captain Kirk Chair. He is a hoarder of Comic Books, Transformers, and Star Trek action figures. He attended Space Camp as an adult. He has taken vacations to the closing of the Star Trek Experience and the final night Shuttle launch. He has been known to yell at his television when the kids can't put together the damn statue in the Shrine of the Silver Monkey. When not writing for InsufficientScotty, he is a Software Engineer for a major healthcare communications company. You can Email or follow on Twitter @NotEnoughScotty or Facebook