Full of (Sea) Beans and Laptop Buy From Hell
Last week I made a discovery of something I'd never laid eyes on before. Or maybe I'd seen them and it didn't mentally register. This time I stopped and picked it up.
That's a sea bean in my chubby little hand. What's a sea bean? A seed from a tropical plant that gets carried on the ocean currents before landing into the flotsam of beaches at high tide. I picked it up without knowing what it is. Now I've fallen down a sea bean shaped hole and have been back and forth several times to Grande looking for them. Few and far between. Once it's finished with the freezing that kills any potential bugs the old dremel is drilling a hole and we're stringing it up for a necklace.
My new crazy searching fetish means I've been beach walking twice as far even as I'm having some post Covid fatigue. At the same time my legs look like I caught them up in barbed wire or something because I'm ringed with scabs. I'm having crazy nerve pain that's making me itch something fierce! Like itching my own skin off. It's been the weirdest thing. I have to think it's post Covid too, misfiring nerves.
Jim spilled water on his laptop, not very much, but he ignored my instructions to turn it off, unplug it and turn it upside down. Dead, dead, even the guys at the computer shop say it's a fried motherboard. So Tuesday after another lengthy beach walk that saw me nosing through the sea flotsam for sea beads Jim insisted we go to Price Smart for a new computer.
We get to Price Smart and Jim tells me we need to get the exact same model. He said de nada about it needing to be exactly the same. Things more fast in the computer world and exact is nearly impossible, even on a 3 month computer. He also never mentioned it to me so I don't have the model number. I know the manufacturer and what processor and memory it possesses. I pointed out the three acceptable models that are virtually the same as the mid grade computer he had. They do not have his exact model.
He's had a hell of a bad time with computers lately. His old Lenovo just died a few months ago.
Annnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddd it goes haywire. Jim refuses to make a decision, asking the same questions again and again. I throw my hands up in despair after the tenth trillion time explaining the difference between a Celeron / AMD / Intel processors being like brains and you want a fast powerful brain. At this point we've been there roughly 2 hours and I am starting to feel like the goo on the bottom of a dirty shoe. I did our Price Smart shop, leaving Jim to torture the poor Price Smart computer dept another hour.
By the time I got back Jim was asking the same questions. The rep and I were pointing to the best 3 midrange computers yet again. Finally he buys a low end Celeron with almost no RAM. I tell him it's a huge mistake and why. He persists. Price Smart employees tell him that the floor model is the only one left and they have to unload their propriety software and reinstall for us. We say 'Cool beans' after they say it's going to take an hour. We go grab lunch/dinner and wait.....
.... and wait....
.... and wait....
.... and wait....
We get told they're having some issues with how slow the new Windows 10 install is happening. I ask Jim again if he's sure this is the right one. He claims again this is the one. We wait three more hours and they finally say they have working right. I take a look and see we're at the setup point to put in internet connections and passwords. We take it on home.
Where I am dragging my super exhausted carcass around with this new laptop and the setup is crawling until suddenly it crashes and nothing I do allows for the critical repairs to the disks the computer needs. It's another expensive paperweight. I come in here to do some research to try to fix this software glitch and find out that Celerons cannot run Windows 10 or 11. We've been sold a computer that will never run the way Jim needs.
Jim teaches on Wednesday, so I had to sea bean hunt alone, and this morning it was back to Price Smart. They did agree to take it back and give us a store credit quickly. Then it was back to the computers and the rep and I pushing him to buy one of those three models by a certain maker. A couple of hours pass and I just start losing it. It's not brain surgery, it's not a hard choice. Buy one with the right combination of processor and memory!
He balks, says he has to consult Consumer Reports. Now?
I end up pulling up the list of best mid range computers at PC magazine and showing him the one we're both recommending is the best rated one and he finally buys it. Grrrr. Hours of passed with his useless dithering. A total of about two work days spent dithering over a dumb computer! I don't get it.
Told him no more of his circle of chaos. He's going to have to pull up his big boy panties and do this shit alone because he's making my blood pressure go up.
He's in the other room right now gleefully watching You Tube and looking at fantasy football sites with abandon.
Men! Can't live them, can't bury them in the backyard and pretend they've merely left.
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