We seem to be throwing money around two thousand dollars at a time lately (er, no we can’t afford to do that, who can?). Today’s winner of the Landfill Lotto? None other than the Planet Ann Arbor Apple Store! Congratulations guys. And gals.

Nobody around here had any plans to visit the Apple Store this weekend. I certainly didn’t. The last place I ever think about spending any time on a weekend is Briarwood Mall. Alas. Last night, after our guests left, the monitor on the Mother Ship, aka the GG’s iMac, went dead. Just. Like. That. It was [arguably] time. The Mother Ship is at least seven years old. The GG has been telling people it’s 10 years old but I did some figuring… We didn’t buy it until our beloved old strawberry iMac died and that was after I bought my 12″ screen G4 powerbook and *that* was the winter of Lizard Breath’s freshman year in college and **that** was in 2003. Seven or ten years is old for a computer but he did not want to give this one up.

So this morning, after trying a few more magic tricks and work-arounds, he pronounced it dead and was out the door 20 minutes before the Apple Store opened. I declined to accompany him. I have a new MacBook Pro, a new Windows beastie (for work), an iPad and an iPhone. I am over-satiated with computers and I have no interest in desktop machines. 27″ screen? What for? Opening a bunch of different browser windows? Maybe. Watching movies? I’d rather watch them up close and personal on my iPad. To each his own though and I wished him well on his little shopping trip.

Odyssey would be more accurate. They had what he wanted. Almost. He wanted more RAM. They had to install that. But then. Both our credit card and our debit card were declined. Say what? Actually, I wasn’t surprised about the debit card. I knew there wasn’t currently enough money in our checking account to pay for a computer so I’m glad that was declined. But the credit card? Hmmm… Did I pay the bill? I went out to their website. Lemme see. Outstanding balance: $1.50. Date due: 9/12/2011. Available credit: four times the price of the first new vee-hickle I bought. Disclaimer: I am not suggesting anyone should use a credit card to buy a car.

While I scratched my head about why a credit card with a negligible balance and no deliquency was declined, my brain went into full-tilt boggie boogie (boggie? boggart?) problem-solving gear. I could transfer money from our savings account to our checking account. Oops. I couldn’t get to that bank’s site today. At least not with my laptop’s browser. Carefully crossing my fingers, I began the login process on my phone. Success! Whew!! A few other glitches ensued but he was finally able to pay for his new 27″ screen iMac. And then. Ka-thunk. It was a lemon. Having to get that RAM upgrade installed may have been a blessing in disguise because the lemon was discovered *before* he left the store. A non-lemon was found and f-i-n-a-l-l-y the GG was on his way, huge box in hand.

A few things are making my brain hurt. 1) All of the gyrations involved in getting the right amount of cash and/or credit in the right place to make a successful transaction and 1a) the fact that I could do it just by clickety-clacking around the internet here in the Landfill Chitchen. 2) Wondering if it’s possible to count up all of the computing devices we have bought since the first Apple II+ back in 1979 and 2a) how many of them are in the Landfill Dungeon (not the strawberry iMac) and 2b) when did we get to the point that we are so dependent upon computers/internet that we can’t even wait for a new computer to be delivered via overnight mail. 3) How many years is it since Elizilla was a freshman in college? Yeeesh. Somebody please quit hitting the fast forward button.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 21st, 2011 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.