New computer vs. Spring break

Since none of you have ever seen it before, I'll just come out and say it: my computer kinda sucks. It's your typical Dell POS I got freshman year and has lasted me through college, but it's jsut real bent outta shape. Moreover, I just haven't been taking care of my baby. I've never reformatted the harddrive. I've maybe repaired the OS once. I haven't used windows update in a WHILE. I've downloaded mroe than a few corrupted files, which has given my computer a few...let's call them neuroses. At times, in fact pretty often, it takes forever just to load a program or a webpage.

My computer just isn't in the best shape. I've erecently been trimming down the files on my computer in the hopes that more space might help (even though it still refuses to defragment properly), but ultimately I'm going to buy a new computer. In particular, I'm going to MAKE my new computer. This scares me. I know some theoretical stuff about computer structure, I used to know how to program, and I know my way around windows pretty well, but I definitely don't know much about components.

Suffice it to say, I'm going to need to do some reserach. But moreover, I need to save some money. My hope is that building the computer myself will save enough money that I can afford the thing soon, build it before school let's out (I wanna get ahold of my friends' music), and hav a computer powerful enough that I can use it to game with. however, saving up this money is going to be a bit of a sacrifice. Currently, I'm approximately halfway there. I just got a 3rd part time job, which pays significantly more than my other 2, which should put me over realtively quickly. The only problem is that spring break starts this weekend, and I now have 2 jobs I would need to get subs for (the third is on campus). I'm a supervisor at the first job, so it's not the easiest thing in the world to get a sub to begin with, and I just GOT this other job, so I'm definitely not in a position to ask for vacation.

So in case you couldn't read between the lines, I'm not going anywhere for spring break. Really, I only have to actually WORK 4 days over my 2 weeks of vacation, but they're spread out enough that I can't really go too far away. I mean, I'm in southern california already, AND I have a car so I guess I shouldn't really complain, but this is my last semester in college and I was really looking forward to going on some epic trip with my friends. I've stayed on campus for spring break before and immediately regretted it afterwards (cabin fever). My only hope is that I remember to get off campus and have some fun. Maybe road trip it up to the bay area or the grand canyon. Worse case scenario I'll go snowboarding alot (rough life for Dave, right?). I guess I shouldn't mourn my vacation too much, I just sorta feel like this is one of the last vacations i'm going to get. My older friends always tell me how hard it is to make your own time once you're out in the real world, and that's where I'm presumably going to be hanging out from this summer onwards.

This computer had better be worth it.