It is 2:30 on Saturday afternoon and I have accomplished very little today. I guess that’s not entirely true. It’s just that I have accomplished very little of any great significance. I usually try to make Saturdays a profitable time where I spend a good bit of the day reading, writing and putting in some quality time with the family.
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For a couple of months now Aileen and I have been batting around the idea of getting a laptop. Aileen’s eBay business continues to increase and the tired old computer she has been working with has begun to wear her down. At the same time I’ve been given opportunities to live-blog some conferences and have not had a laptop to take with me. So this morning I decided we would just bite the bullet and go mobile. I dragged out all of this week’s flyers (Future Shop, Best Buy, Staples, etc) and did a bit of comparison work. Eventually I found what I was looking for at The Source (aka Circuit City and formerly known as Radio Shack). I decided to try my hand at haggling and managed to talk them down a significant amount. So here I am, posting my first entry from my new laptop. Life is good. Having a good computer almost makes it worth blowing most of the day!
Note to self: shopping on a Saturday morning in late-December is a bad idea. Staples wasn’t in terrible shape. The Source wasn’t even all that bad. But Future Shop and Best Buy? Oh my. There were just wall-to-wall people.
While we are on the subject of Aileen’s eBay business, her endeavours have given me opportunity to think about a modern day phenomenon dealing with online communication. She had a client who purchased an item and he felt it did not arrive at his home soon enough (even though Aileen’s terms clearly spell out how long items take to arrive). He sent her an absolutely awful email. He was angry, offensive and just plain mean. Only a few minutes after sending the email he called her and was perfectly nice and respectul (though not at all apologetic about the tone of his email). That emphasized to me the dangers inherent in non-personal communication such as we find on the Internet. It encouraged me take a look at myself to ensure that I am being consistently respectful and Christ-like in my communication, whether I am speaking face-to-face or firing off a quick email. I intend to write about this in greater detail at a later date.
Anyways, I am going to sign off and spend a little bit more time setting up this computer. And then I hope to find some time to write a couple of book reviews and to write the Challies family annual newsletter. It’s going to be a busy afternoon!