The Great Amazing Trip! (Of stupidity...)
The Grand Preparation
Okay, let me start out this litany of travel fun and learning and cultural clash or what not by stating that I am flat out broke. When I signed up for and paid for this, there was a grand and sound financial plan based on logic and much thought process and many, many, MANY hours of planning and plotting. All apparently structured on inaccurate information. So the trip almost got canceled due to lack of finances and the struggle of being a responsible person before my dad actually kinda forced me to go (I'd already paid for it, the refund was 75% and non-existant on the airfare) and argued accurately that there was no guarantee that something like this would come round again. So plan set, brokenness guaranteed…I am going to Italy.
Now, on to the adventures in trying to get there…
The importance of power….
Okay, so my previous extent of international travel was when I went on a cruise earlier this year where I lived on a boat and stood on a port (I was broke that time too). I brought gaming devices and stuff but no laptop and gadgetry was not considered the forefront of importance. However, I’m going to Italy for five weeks. Between leaving Houston and returning to it, I am going to spend more than 24 hours in flight, and likely more than 24 hours in airports. It will be so damn friggen necessary for my gizmos to feed off of the outlets that give them life. I mean, there ARE enough books to cover all that time of forced public awkwardness but they would definitely put my luggage over the weight limit. So the obvious answer was that I needed an adapter to turn our obviously superior American outlet male bits do proper with the feisty Italian female bits (continued proof that sex is in everything including the naming of electric bits). And that is easy enough. It requires a gizmo.
The problem lies in the fact that the Italian female bits are truly feisty and put out more than twice the voltage American contraptions are built for. And I reaaaally didn’t want all of my electronics to explode (as hilarious as that probably would be) so, after hearing rumor that at least my laptop didn’t need a voltage converter, I had to sort out how many of my gadgetry parts charged off of USB. I mean, everything does these days, right? And really, after a fashion they do. Phones, cameras, ereaders, whatever. Even the PSP will charge off a USB if necessary (though I found out that the clever people at Sony made the charger dual voltage like my laptop is so nerts to them). This made me happy. Cause, for those of you who don’t know, voltage converters can be damn friggen expensive. They START at around 25 bucks. Adapters start at like…10. (This is all in store. I am never prepared enough to order shit online. Don’t even think it. P stands for Procrastination as much as Parker.)
Then a sudden problem emerges. My DS doesn’t charge USB. It is not newfangled that way. And, in all that airport, flight, insomnia in dorm time that I am preparing for, there is no way I am going to leave my DS behind. I have TWO barely started RPGs on that sucker (one of which Kevin is about to murder me if I don’t actually finish). But…did I really want to spend an extra fifteen bucks for a gaming system when I am reaaaaaally broke? The thought processes went around my head endlessly. Being pragmantic has absolutely no use here either because I can argue very practically that I don’t have the money to go out at night that much and if I’m going to be wasting brain cells, it would be better to do it on a DS in the courtyard at night than on my laptop or whatever.
The practical arguments just got WORSE when I found out that low and behold, someone HAD created a USB adapter for the DS. The interwebs informed me of this grandwondrousness but then failed me in how to obtain them (again, this is like three days before the trip so ordering it wasn’t an option). Hope was lost. And THEN the internet revealed to me that some of those superduper packs that they sell for mobile gaming devices might have one. This was even more awesome news because they typically come with ear buds and I wanted some new ones since mine are dying and they also come with game cases (and mine are friggen LAME!) so for one price I’d get all that! Two pointless purchases under the guise of a pseudo-necessary one! And then the tables turned again because, well, my technology is kinda old. The 3DS came out and they aren’t selling as much for the DSLite anymore (morons). SO I couldn’t find any site that stated that they were in stock. I sighed and decided that I was being dumb. It would have been more money that way and I am very poor.
Finally, by absolutely chance, I see that there is a car adapter that uses a USB cable instead of a direct plug (it was one of those cheap offbrands that charges multiple systems. YAY CHEAP!) OFF I went to GameStop only to find that their cheap knock off didn’t have that. Just two lines at the end (bastards) yet sitting next to that on the shelf (or hanging actually on a hook) was a little box that flat out reads “USB Converter for DS”.
I have so much hate for the internet. It lies to me. Constantly. *sigh*
Anyhow, ten bucks poorer I head back over to target where I saw the ten dollar adapter. Except when I get there there is only one and it is hanging on one hook where there is a gadget that is hanging on like four hooks that all have different labels. I take it over to the price scanner and it says item not found. Rolling my eyes at the predicatability of my shopping adventure going wrong (because much of this attempting to find a DS USB adapter was in store I must state), I took the box of adaptation to the technology check out and asked them. It wasn’t in their computer but luckily (finally) the guy helping a customer right next to her had one of those little gun things. She shoots it looks at me and says “$2.98”
“I”ll Take it!”
Which, in the end, means that in my attempt to play my damn video games, I found a converter for three bucks AND got a usb charger for my DS which I can use with one of my USB car chargers for other stuff.
Complete and total win.
IF it works…