On The Road Again

Posted on April 5, 2006

I have spent the last 2 days on the road. I took a couple of vacation days, Monday and Tuesday, and didn’t really rest. I actually didn’t plan on resting, I had my days pretty full.

We went to Tulsa Monday and we were able to see some friends. Then today I had a pretty full day planned, I was doing some work at home in the morning, then going to a client’s office in the afternoon to check some things out. However, my plan’s quickly changed.

I did actually buy a laptop, since this post, and it’s been nice to have some added freedom, but the CD/DVD drive has not worked at all. It doesn’t register that there is a CD in there. I knew I had 7 days to return it and I was on about the 5th, so now is the time to act. I called the store and confirmed that I could return/exchange or whatever and I was told yes I could. I asked if I could bring it in on Saturday, even though that was outside the 7 day window and I was told that would ‘probably’ be ok. I wasn’t ok with ‘probably’, so I decided I had to get it done quickly. The problem is that the store is 2 1/2 hours away in Kansas City. Since I had nothing better to do (right!), I boxed up the laptop and met my wife for lunch then hit the highway.

I do have to say that MicroCenter really bent over backwards to make me happy. They were willing to do whatever I wanted, exchange or full refund. I liked the laptop I got, I’m pretty particular in my specs and this thing was fully loaded, it was an Acer, XP Pro, 1gb of ram, AMD Turion processor, 100gb hard drive, non-functioning CD/DVD burner. Beyond the CD drive, it was a nice machine. The biggest problem with exchanging it was it was out of stock. They say that particular laptop is the best value for your money, and I agree that it is. They can’t keep it in stock.

I didn’t find one that I wanted, so they gave me a full refund. My original intention was to buy a Dell, but I probably got more for my money in the Acer. Mary pressed me, when I was contemplating what to buy, as to what my intentions were for wanting a Dell, was it just for the name? I admitted that it probably was, but the fact is, Dell has a track record. I know several churches that are 100% Dell or working toward that, including my old church that I used to volunteer at. When I started, we were about 50% Dell and about 8 months ago or so, we achieved 100% Dell and the only incident we had in the 2 years I was there was 1 bad hard drive, which Dell quickly replaced. That’s not bad for 40+ computers.

So, at this point, I’ve got my eye on a Dell. I’ve got some money coming in, so I’m gonna wait a few days and get as much of a laptop as I can, including 17″ screen this time, plus the accidental coverage, which is probably money well spent.

I was also able to drop in and see Clif and some of the guys at Church of the Resurrection, which is always good. By being there, I was able to upgrade some software for a project I’m working on with them and as a result, that solved some critical issues. So, now I can blaze ahead and actually be productive. Wooohooo. There’s just a few guys doing a ton of work, and those guys are busy, so I didn’t stay long.

So that was the beginning of my week, fortunately, I love to drive, and I did put close to 700 miles behind the wheel in 2 days.

This morning, my car wouldn’t start, I’m guessing it was protesting! My car has a finnicky battery cable, actually where it clamps onto the post. It’s hard to make it tight and a couple of months ago, I got it on there pretty good. The cable had just come loose again, I think I need to replace it. I drove it to work, but I’m not sure that I got it securely in place so I may have a problem tonight when I leave. Oh well, I can manage that kind of problem.

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