Penny Wise and Pound Foolish
Oh ya . . . let’s buy a camera for $89.00 and run with that. This ole Grammie needs a bit of a tweak upside the head. I went to our Radio Shack, aka: hardware store, to purchase a USB cord for the Nikon camera. Nope. “We do have this pack that has a multiple of sizes and yes, one of them is small enough for the camera.” Thirty one dollars and I am at my home. I followed all the directions for my HP notebook to like my new camera. All I got was a “malfunction” message. I trundled on down to the sewing studio and tried my Dell laptop. Same message.
At supper on Friday night, visiting with Dennis, I ticked off all the things that frustrate me. The top of the list was the bra straps that don’t stay on my shoulders. New shoulders have limited wiggle abilities. To get the bra on, I cannot tighten the straps enough to allow for them to stay in place . . . unless I am sweating so much they are stuck in place. The next item of frustration was learning to do more things with my left hand as the right wrist is busy working with an abundance of arthritis. Last on the list of frustrations was the ever changing techie things. Dennis being the wonderful ole cowboy that he is, listened. I am sure the rant did not help the digestion of his supper.
The end result was making an appointment with the Geek Squad in Mankato for Saturday noon. Saturday morning had me returning the thirty one plus dollar product to Radio Shack and we headed for a road date to Mankato.
I was early for the appointment and I found a fellow in Best Buy, where the Geek Squad is located, to direct me to the USB area so I would have a power cord for the Geek fellow to help me. “Sorry, we have not carried a size like that in a long time. Have you had this camera for a long time?” I know my eyes were the size of ping pong balls. This was Saturday and I had purchased my new camera three days before, how old could it be? Yup, minimal Grammie had been sold a product that was no longer viable. Maybe the fact that it took two AAA batteries should have told me so.
My new camera is up and running . . . on both computers. I am one happy Grammie. No! I did not buy a selfie stick.
Before I let this helpful clerk go, I had picked out a Canon Power Shot SX620 camera. Still the same small size . . . but it had a battery that would need charging . . . not batteries to toss when used up. No USB cable needed. For $9.98 a thing-a-ma-jig with the product name of “Insignia,” that in essence is a flash-drive that the memory card is plugged into, is used for downloading photos. WHO KNEW! By that time the Geek Squad fellow was ready for me. All I would need to do would be take photos and to get them downloaded was to put the memory card into the flash drive and plug it into a computer. It would recognize whatever was needed for whatever computer I used to import the photos. I had come prepared with both the Dell and the HP laptops with me for the appointment. Zack, the Geek, did demo the Insignia product into both of my computers to allow me to feel confident. With a pre-paid plan for service, I paid for the camera and the flash drive. I would have floated out of that store like a cloud if not for the heavy bag of computer equipment.
This entire time, Dennis was patiently waiting in the parking lot as the driving rain lulled him. As I have mentioned, my arms don’t do “up.” The fellow bidding shoppers goodbye was nice enough to put my hood up on my jacket to give me some protection from the rain before I left the store. I was on the move. I kept hearing a horn blow but I had the red pickup in view and I was moving as fast as I could to get out of the rain. The honking of the horn continued and it was Dennis. We had driven to Mankato in THE car and I was hell bent on getting to someone’s red pickup for a ride home. Now that would have been the cat’s meow to have a theft alarm go off as a senior citizen was trying to break in complete with enough computer equipment to take over Mankato. Hang around old people, they are entertaining.
Before we left Mankato the Nikon camera had been returned for a full refund. My oh my, what a lesson this ole Grammie had. On the positive side, I am determined to get through whatever comes my way and learn from it. Dang it, it is true. You get what you pay for. It is a good thing it is not very often I need to make informed purchases.