Well, the person that I tried to buy Bub a Steam Deck from tried to scam me, but they didn’t get very far in the process. Within minutes of me making the initial purchase from them and sending them a question about shipping, they closed their entire eBay account in response, refused to answer e-mails from me about the status of the item, and have so far refused to answer PayPal’s inquiries about the status of the item or whether or not they are even going to ship it (they’re not). As soon as they made it clear that they were not going to respond to any of the e-mails that were sent to them, I had PayPal place a hold on the transaction money and begin to investigate it on their end. Through eBay, PayPal can see when they closed their entire account in response and how they have refused to answer any inquiries about the item though. I am in the process of being refunded for the item now. So I’ve been searching for another appropriately priced one…

I’m not going to have to pay more than I have to for one of these (and at that, the 512GB one, because let’s face it, Bub has amassed a tidy collection of games over the years), but at the same time, I just want to find one for a decent price. I can finance it on PayPal Credit and then pay off more than the minimum over the course of several months, so there is that. That’s always kind of been my plan going into this to raise my credit score beyond what it is. Having, and raising, a credit score has always been an American problem.

I have some credit through a line on PayPal, and for some reason using less than 10% of it and paying that off in full when my statements hit caused my credit score to lower a bit from what it had been… so I’m like, hey, if “they” (the arbiters of credit scores since this appears to be a uniquely American thing) want me to prove that I can handle a little bit of self-made debt by paying something like this off every month until it is paid off, there is that as an alternative. So I am considering that. Bub has already made it clear that he would love to have a Steam Deck, and they have a microSD card slot that I could easily add more space to by popping a 1TB card in. I could also pay it off with the child support that his father’s family has voluntarily paid since 2019. The order has, barring some brief periods where the “chief ombudsman” of the child support office has forced it to remain open in spite of there being approved good cause waivers on it (and her name’s Stephanie Neely, by the way), been in non-enforcement since it was declared unsafe to enforce.

Anyway, this thing is about as difficult to find and purchase as a PlayStation 5, so wish me luck, y’all!