You know how the saying goes...where there's a will...there's a way.
Well...I have a willingness...and now I've found my way.
Computers and I have always had a very interesting history. My computer buying experience begins in 2007, after I graduated from high school.
While we were growing up, my parents taught my brother and I the importance of saving money. We even each had a bank account growing up at the local bank in our small Ohio town starting in elementary school. Throughout my growing up years, I remember being taught the importance of saving...as well as the importance of tithing to the church. Over my several years growing up and making some-what regular deposits into my bank account, I had accumulated a pretty decent amount of money (at least it seemed like a lot to my 18-year-old self at the time).
Over the years that we banked at the bank in our town, though, although the bank building stayed the same...the banking institutions that came and went changed several times. By the time I was graduating from high school, the most recent bank institution to enter the stone building in our town's downtown didn't have the greatest of rates. So, when I graduated the decision was made that I would be taking my money that I got from graduation and opening a checking and a savings account with the credit union that my mom had begun using. Conveniently located right behind the hospital she was currently working for. (A few years later, I also opened up a credit card account through the bank after a not-so-great experience with another major credit card company). My mom had told me that when I opened up that account, I would then be able to use whatever money was in the town's bank account to shop for a laptop for college.
So, in 2007, I began my first computer search. I was hoping to stay in a budget of around $500. At that time, however, desktop computers were still all the rage...and laptops were pretty pricey. My mom's sister's husband (my uncle...for anyone that couldn't figure out the family tree) has worked for an electronics company for many years and was able to provide some thoughts of what we'd be wanting to look for in a new computer. In the end...there were only a few options available. I ended up buying an Acer laptop from Circuit City (FYI...Circuit City is no longer in business). Life was grand...or so it seemed.
My first year of college, my laptop saw all sorts of issues. My college was not very "wireless" yet in 2007, so an ethernet cable was required to connect to the internet on campus. At one point of living on campus, my roommate and I had decided to arrange our beds in such a way that the only way for my roommate to get into her bed...was to climb on mine first. One time, as she was stepping down, her foot was a little close to my computer...and somehow a small piece of the ethernet port on my laptop broke off. That was eventually "fixed" in some sort with a little USB-powered device that provided a new ethernet port. Over the next year or so, though, my computer began to go slower and slower. Now...this was probably the first major electronics purchase I had ever made in my life...so to me a slow laptop was better than no laptop (plus enduring YEARS of having only dial-up internet service helped me be a TAD more patient with the computer). The Acer computer lasted through my sophomore year...but by the end of the year, it was apparent that something was wrong with the computer.
As I was getting ready to head into my junior year of college, I was going to be moving back to college early to be working for my 2nd year as a summer Orientation Leader at my college. About 2 weeks before moving back to school to do more OL work, my mom suggested that I take my laptop to a computer shop in the next town over. The shop was advertising a $25 computer diagnostic. I took the computer to them, paid the money (still seemed kind of high for my college kid finances), told them the "symptoms" my computer was having, and then waited to hear from them. They called a couple days later. The issue? The motherboard on the laptop was failing. Really, the only thing they could recommend was to buy a new laptop. (They basically said that they COULD try sending the laptop back to the manufacturer, however, the warranty had expired so I'd be paying to ship it there, for whatever parts and service, and to ship it back...probably ending up being more than just replacing the whole thing).
So, less than a week before heading back off to school for my junior year, my mom and I ran to the nearest Best Buy store to find me a new computer. Again, we were armed with suggestions of what to look for from my uncle. With a little help from the nice people at Best Buy, we ended up buying a new HP laptop. That time, there were several more options of laptops in the $500 range. If I remember correctly, since this wasn't an expected expense, I believe between my mom and I...we used about 5 methods of payments to cover the costs.
The HP laptop seemed SO much better than the old Acer (which...I later did a "Consumer Reports" search on...most people with that same Acer laptop had reported similar issues happening. Shortly after the warranty expired, major issues would happen with the computer, resulting in Acer not willing to cover the issues and the person replacing the computer). The HP laptop got me through the rest of my college career and into my first teaching job...a total of about 3 years.
In 2012, as I was moving to North Carolina, I noticed that my laptop was getting slow. Within the first week of being in NC, as my mom was still with me to help me move in, the battery on the laptop started giving in. I remember ending up running to a local battery shop in NC to buy a new laptop battery for the computer which seemed to do the trick for a while. The laptop had also started getting really hot when it was running. For years, my dad had been telling me how it's not good for a laptop to sit on a bed, desk, or human legs. For best performance, it NEEDED to be on one of those laptop/lap desk things (though I had plenty of people that told me that wasn't exactly true). But the laptop was getting so hot, I had to put either a blanket or pillow between it and my legs to make sure I didn't get burned. A couple weeks after moving to NC, I was sitting in my apartment watching Netflix (I bought a Wii a few months later with some unexpected Christmas money). In the middle of the show I was watching on Netflix, my computer froze, then turned off. I took that as God's sign to me that maybe 5 hours of watching "Bones" on Netflix was enough...and left the computer off and went to bed. The next day, I turned the computer back on and everything seemed to be alright again. For another week, at least. A week later, the same thing happened. At this point, I was already feeling over my head with stuff going on with my teaching job and being 600 miles away from home. I called my uncle for an opinion. No one seemed to know what was going on.
Again, I turned the computer back on after giving it a chance to cool back down. Two hours later, it turned off again. This time, I called my mom...in tears. I was 600 miles away from home. One of my major ways of staying in communication with people from home was through Facebook (we didn't have smart phones yet). My computer was necessary. After another call to my uncle, I made my way to the nearest Office Max store I could find, who performed a diagnostic test on the laptop. The "symptoms" I was describing about the computer seemed to be like those you'd find if the computer had a virus. They ran the scan...no virus was detected. I was told that IF there was a virus on the computer, most likely it was so deep in the computer, that it would be impossible to detect and destroy. I priced laptops while I was at Office Max. The nice people at Office Max helped me find a good laptop, and even offered to transfer all of my files and information to the new laptop...as well as get the whole laptop set up and ready to go for me. Again...I was buying a laptop with little notice. After spending money to move to a new city...I was spending even more to replace my laptop.
A couple months later, when I went to visit my aunt and uncle for a weekend, my uncle offered to do some updates and wipe the harddrive of the old laptop for me. Of the laptops he was working on, my old laptop was going slower than any others...and my uncle also noted how hot to the touch the laptop was (another words...something was REALLY wrong with that thing).
The new laptop from Office Max...another HP...again...seemed so much better after dealing with all the issues of the one before. Things went great. And then last summer rolled around...
As I was applying for various jobs last summer, I ended up getting a semi-impromptu interview for a possible Graduate Assistant position at the college I was going to begin my masters at. I ended up getting asked to do an interview for the GA position on a day I was planning on being in Virginia for a vacation for myself. The interviewer offered then to do a Skype interview. On the day of the interview as I was making sure Skype would work right, I noticed that Skype was indicating that it was having issues working through my computer. Thankfully (in a way), the interviewer had to re-schedule the interview due to being sick...and I had my cousin help me find ways to make sure my laptop would run faster. Long story short...I didn't get the position.
As I was driving back to Ohio from Virginia, trying to get through the Washington, DC traffic before it got too much worse, I got another surprise phone for a possible job with an all-online school. As I progressed through the interviews for that job (and...I'll save you the curiosity...didn't get that job either), I realized that if I were to get that job...I didn't think my laptop would be cutting it. So...a couple weeks after getting home, we scheduled to have a guy from our church come to the house to take a look at my laptop and see if he could give any suggestions, make it run faster, etc. This is a guy who owns an at-home business working on computers. The guy from church stayed over for a couple hours, took a few programs off my computer that were not needed, and showed me several programs that I could use to try to keep my computer running faster. I remember, though, when he left, he didn't think he had really done much to make my computer run faster.
Over the last year, it seems like the computer has been running even slower. Even today, as I'm typing out this post, occasionally, the computer is slowing down just not working as well as it used to.
For the last two years, I've been trying to NOT spend everything that comes my way for Christmas and Birthdays. Generally for Christmas and birthdays, I do get some cash. As a kid, I was pretty bad about just frittering the money away. But the last 2 years, I've been making more efforts to keep the money so that I can buy myself something I wouldn't normally buy myself. Last year, I saved my money and then in April, took a trip back to NC where I had lived. The money was my spending money to use on my little vacation. Since I had worked at an upscale consignment shop, I went back there and bought myself some new clothes to work towards updating my wardrobe. I did the same this year with part of my Christmas money, but I still have money from Christmas, birthday, and several other places.
So...as I've been trying to figure out what to do with that money, I decided over the last couple weeks, that maybe...especially if God really is going to be calling me into the missions field...or even to another area of the US...it would be nice to not be buying a new computer a couple weeks later. Or...if nothing else...just in general...actually looking for a computer before I absolutely NEED a computer and am just buying whatever I can find first. I realized that I probably had enough to make a pretty decent dent on buying a computer.
Last week, my mom and I were out shopping before we were going to be meeting my dad for dinner. There's a new Costco store that recently opened and we went there (my mom got a membership there with my dad). We weren't really looking for anything at Costco, but I did see their electronics while we were there. So...I decided to just take a look for fun and see what was on the market and what price I was going to be looking at. My mom had bought herself a tablet a year or so ago and thoroughly LOVES it. So...after going through 3 laptops in 8 years...I thought it would probably be okay for me now to look into a tablet rather than a laptop. I ended up finding one that I liked that seemed to be at a pretty decent price.
We still had time to kill after getting out of Costco, so my mom suggested, since I was looking at tablets, since we were in the right area, to go to Best Buy and see what they had available. So, as I was at Best Buy, I managed to get a couple of nice people helping me, who were able to suggest a great tablet and some recommendations for some other things to accessorize the tablet. A day or two later, I went back on the Best Buy website, and just in a general sense, got myself a "price range" that I was looking at. I took the list price of the tablet and the keyboard that I thought I'd get. This particular tablet also has a Micro SD card slot so that you can expand the memory usage and I was planning on getting a Micro SD card for that use. I added all the numbers up...then grabbed all my money and added that up...and I was $100 short. I actually started praying about it this week. My goal, was that if I was to buy this tablet and if God really wants me to do it...somehow I'd be able to cover the majority of the price...not just 2/3 of it. I thought maybe God would bring a good samaritan my way to pay for the rest, a winning lottery ticket to blow up at my feet, or even to possibly sell some other unwanted and unused items for some extra cash. Nothing came.
For the last few days, I've been looking at various ways to afford this tablet. The other day, as I was looking for a couple things in my room...I came across an Amazon gift card from probably 2 Christmases ago...and loaded it onto my Amazon account. But at only $25, that still wasn't solving enough of my $100 shortage.
Just this afternoon, I decided to look again at the tablet. I had been thinking that I'd just buy the tablet and extra stuff from the Best Buy store...so that I knew I'd be getting what I wanted and excellent service. I noticed that if I bought the tablet through Amazon...it seemed a little cheaper. So...I went to the Best Buy site to compare (earlier when I compared the prices, it was about a $10 difference). Best Buy had put the tablet back at it's original price...making the Amazon price $30 cheaper! So...just for "fun"...I decided to put that in my Amazon cart. Amazon recommended pairing the tablet with a Micro SD card and a folio case...taking the price to about what I was thinking it would be at Best Buy. I really wanted a keyboard/case, though...so I replaced the folio cover for a keyboard...which turned out to be cheaper than what I had originally put in my "price range". And...I realized that the SD card they were putting with it...I could get by with a smaller one (I can buy an SD card many places...if I really want the bigger card, I can buy that later). I told my mom about the deal I was finding...and then realized I could save even MORE money...if I decided to get a blue tablet instead of a black one (seriously...who really cares what the outside of the tablet looks like?).
Put everything in my cart...and started doing the math. After subtracting the Amazon gift card, and my saved cash (which...I'll have to stop by the bank tomorrow and deposit)...the grand total that I'll be paying that's not accounted for? $17.55. My $306 order is going to be paid because of saving...mostly in cash...and I'm left to pay less than 20 bucks. AND...I signed up for an Amazon Prime membership a while back...so I also am getting FREE 2-day shipping.
No good Samaritan, no cash for unused items (though, I still have some things to figure out how to get rid of), and no winning lottery ticket blowing to my feet. Maybe it wasn't a HUGE sign from God. But with a little bit of faith, a little bit of patience...and a good calculator...I think this can still be considered an answer from God.
I should be getting my new tablet by Wednesday. :)
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