Monday, September 21, 2015

SQUEEE!!!

Sometimes the stars align perfectly.

Back in August, I had a meltdown when, as I was headed to Rock Island, the Jeep malfunctioned. I know I need a newer car. I have a new car fund, but I also use it for those inevitable repairs to refresh the duct tape and baling twine which holds the Jeep together. Given what the beast was doing, or not doing (staying running) as the case may be, I had real feelings that Jeep repairs would take all of that meager account. I completely fell apart thinking about this, forgetting my cardinal rule to find gratitude in every day and slivers of happiness in every situation.

After the situation was diagnosed to not be as horrific as I had convinced myself it would be, I remembered that, in years past, even the $225 it took to fix the Jeep would have left me destitute. I had that. AND I would still have a bit left in the new car fund. There are things which need to be done but I am nowhere nearly as bad as I was 3 years ago.

So, it was back to saving for things for my vacation in November. I've been on the road again and those trips and the long days associated with them, have helped pad my BlizzCon and car fund. I've been able to cross off things that need to be purchased. BlizzCon ticket. Check. Air fare. Check. Ground transportation to hotel. Check. Material for shirts. Check. I still need to pay for Disneyland tickets and my part of the hotel room. I know how much I need to reserve for those items. That will leave money for food and souvenirs. It's 6 weeks away. I'm starting to get a bit nervous. I've never done anything like this before so there are nerves. I even ordered compression socks for the plane ride which will make me feel more comfortable and I won't show up in LA or back in Chicago with swollen ankles and feet.

The other thing I wanted to get, but it was not a need, was an ipad. In my head, if I had an ipad, I could upload photos from my camera to the ipad and then they could go into all the things I maintain; my Facebook page, my guild's web site and this blog. After a lot of discussion, a friend suggested an eyefi card for my camera. This is an SD card with wifi built in. You use wifi technology to upload your photos to cloud-based storage and then have access to them with other devices. It all sounds so high-tech and, if there's one thing I'm not, it's high-tech. The other option was an adapter for the ipad. With any wifi network, I can upload photos from anywhere to my storage. In buying an eyefi card, the price came with a year of free storage. That's the route I've taken.

But what about the ipad? It's not a priority. I could do without it. Yet, road trips for work provided money not expected. I could afford an ipad. Savings for me. Savings for the car and save for BlizzCon. Viola. A box came to work today.


I did a lot of research. I wound up buying a refurbished older model from a company called iTParts. Their prices were very reasonable and there was no shipping. Other places I looked wanted to charge me shipping and their return policies on refurbished equipment were the same as this company. For what I want to do, low price was the determining factor.


I had it shipped to the office because the last thing I want is a Priority Mail box containing an ipad stuck between my front and screen doors. It's a pretty nondescript box but look at the goodness contained therein. The sale came with a charger and ear buds.


The charger I expected. I don't know that I'll use the ipad to listen to music. I have so much music on CDs that hasn't been uploaded to my Mac and then I'd have to port it to the ipad. Not an impossibility for sure, but a huge time sink. Right now, I don't think I have that kind of time without sacrificing other things which are important to me. I could, if I desire, get Pandora or Spotify music streaming services on the ipad, since this is akin to an oversized cell phone. I just don't listen to music like that. They tend not to have what I like.

It needs a charge before it can be used, so I plugged it in.


Up pops the familiar Apple logo. And then came the greetings.


Bonjour to you.

What's happened here is that I have really entered the information age, in a huge way, no less. The SD card isn't here yet for me to try that out and get it synced with my computer and my ipad and get them synced with this cloud service. I'm always afraid I will explode something when I start messing around with electronic devices. My way more tech savvy friends have said I'll do fine and the world won't explode because I hit the red button instead of the blue button. (Extra points if you know THAT reference.)

So, here we are. I need to get a case. I'll get this one because there isn't a good World of Warcraft case available right now. In my mind's eye, I see a large selection of cases in various fabrics in a pile in my house. There are ipad case patterns and lord knows I have the fabric.

I'm really excited to be able to sit in the recliner in the living room, feet up, and updating my blog while I have a lap cat. That is the best part of this.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

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