Upgrades

I bought an Acer Aspire One netbook laptop a couple weeks ago. The one I bought was suppose to be a 120 GB (was 160 GB in truth) and had a 3 cell battery. I wound up returning it after it gave me the BSOD twice and the battery life was only about 90 minutes. After having done that, I ordered the 6 cell battery verison for $318. Unfortunately the 160 GB hard drive turned out to be 144 GB. Fortunately I have a portable 120 GB if I really need to store more. That portable HD messed up though and needs to be reformatted. I’m in the process of savalging files off it. Also I had been worrying about what sort of sleeve/case to get for my netbook. Stores were demanding $20+ for a simple sleeve. After much searching, I settled on a $2.99 black canvas tote from A.C. Moore’s. I’m not looking for hardcore protection, just something to protect the case. I’ll be painting it later, maybe today, to individualize my “sleeve.”

Then yesterday I bought a Belkin wireless-G router for $27 from Walmart. It was fairly simple to set up. I was not aware that I had to plug it into the DSL modem I got from my phone company, but at least the old router isn’t going to waste. I now have wireless on my laptop and for select games on my Nintendo DS.

The final upgrade is that my eyes had been hurting. Reading printed materials was next to impossible as the words blurred and shifted. So I took the unexpected trip to the eye doctor and found out that my eye sight has improved slightly. It’s a minimal difference, but the eye doctor said new lenses would take some stress off my eyes. Since I was already throwing down the down pieces of my tax refund, I thought, “well, I might as well get new frames for $20 more.” The ones I’ve been wearing I’ve had for 9 years. My friend Sarah and her daughter helped me choose the new ones. They are nearly identical to the older ones except they don’t have a bottom rim. It’s a slight difference that I am appreciating.

And for a final note: the place I went for my eye exam and glasses is struggling to stay open, even moving to a new location half a mile down the road. To be honest, I may not have bought the new frames, but after the owner told me the stress of being scared she could not last the winter, I decided to do the little drop that I could so the bucket of her world can hopefully stay afloat. I’ve been a customer at this location for 5+ years and they’re the cheapest and friendliest joint in town.