The Gway Rides Again...

So a few weeks ago, my computer crashed. Some time in the middle of the night, it had "updated" and then crashed or crashed during some kind of update. You never realize how much you rely on your computer - for just about everything - until it is gone. Of course, I am such a geek that I backup my whole system every night, so it was so easy to replace everything. Yeah, right. We lost everything!

It took a few weeks, but I finally found another harddrive to replace the old 80gb EIDE I had - and even upgraded to 160gb HD for about $80. In trying to recover any information off my old HD, I purchased one of those shells to plug in my old HD to my newly configured computer. After struggling to dismantle and reconnect the old HD to the device, it didn't work. All info had been wiped out. The reason it took a few weeks for me to get the right HD was the fact that I had to order a recovery system from Gateway to restore all my original programs on the new hard drive -- it was either that or go buy a new computer.

While waiting for my data disk to be sent from Gateway, I went searching for a new laptop. I thought that since it had been a few years, I should upgrade. After searching for a few days and walking away from several purchases, I decided that cheaper was better since I don't need all the bells and whistles. I settled on a decent purchase from Best Buy and a Compaq laptop for about $600, including 2 year extended warranty.

As soon as I got home and set the thing up - I got sick to my stomach. Here I was sitting in front of a machine that I didn't need...feeling sick of spending the money instead of waiting to fix my old one. I hate it when I know that I have done the wrong thing and then I sit stewing about it, trying to rationalize the purchase. My wife is awesome. She knew the other one blew up and was trusting that I knew what I was doing to make it work for us. What she didn't know is that we both hated the new purchase and that I felt horrible for making it.

Everything came together Friday night and Saturday morning. I put in the new $80 160gb HD and ran the recovery CD. I added the home version of microsoft office 2003 and the old Gateway was humming like new. I knew what must be done. I ripped through the Compaq and quickly transfered everyting that had been installed on it to the new Gway system, packed up the Compaq, grabbed my reciept and headed out to Best Buy. I had the computer for a week and realized that the store might not take it back, but I had to give it a shot.

Thank God, seriously, Best Buy took the computer back and for a low price of a restocking fee $67, and I had my $600 back (well $533)! Basically, I rented a new computer for a week for the fee.

The morale of this long tail is this: In the past, I would have ran right out and bought the top of the line whatever to replace what had broken. This time, I shopped around for a decent replacement and still felt horrible at spending the money. I also ended up returning the device instead of saying "oh well" at dropping the cash. I paid a small (relative to the price) fee to return the item and have never felt better about fixing and making do with the "old" one.

Sometimes I think that God is done working on me, but now I see the little things that he is doing in my life to make big changes in my attitude, character and stewardship.

What is HE doing with you?