Amy Currioman

My horoscope said nothing about how great today was going to be. First, I went to Starbucks and they gave me a free chocolate cherry mocha coffee. They had made one for someone else who decided they didn’t want it and the barrista didn’t want to throw it away, so she asked me if i would like it. Heck, yes!

Then I went to Home Depot to get a couple of rakes for my overdue yard work and went to the self checkout. The rakes both had the bar codes on them, but the second one would not scan. the checkout display said to wait for assistance. I waited and waited and even with 4 idle workers milling about, no one came to help me. So I got a little ticked off and loudly asked “Where’s my assistance?” the clerk came and tried to scan the rake, but it didn’t work. So he went somewhere else and left me standing there along with a growing line of other impatient customers. When he came back he tried to scan it one more time. It still didn’t work. He leaned toward me and said softly, “I’m not going to charge you for this rake. It’s not your fault the scan won’t work and I’m sorry you’ve had to wait so long.” He smiled and handed me the rake – another freebie!

One thing I learned a long time ago, as a woman, is that there are a lot of times that people will try to convince you (me) that things are broken when they are not, or charge more money for something than they should.  For example three years ago I took my sister’s ford escort to the local fast oil change shop (which I will leave unnamed, but it is a huge national chain) to have the oil changed.   I was doing her a favor because she was having a hard time managing the time to get out and do it herself.

The mechanic that worked on the car tried to convince me that she needed a new  water pump, battery, windshield wipers and timing belt!  He gave me a huge estimate of the cost!  I told him that I’d let my hubby check those out before deciding to do anything.  Well, my hubby took a look at the car and said that the car didn’t need any of that!  And even if it did need all that, the cost should be half of what was being estimated!

Aside from having to change the windshield wipers once, the car is still running fine three years later!  No, it didn’t need a new battery.  Needless to say I have not returned to that particular fast oil change shop.

That is why I like the repairpal.com website – it helps me find reputable mechanics and get estimates on line.  That helps me to determine if I’m being treated fairly on repairs.

In today’s technological world Online Trading seems to be a very popular way for the investor to be involved in Stock Trading.  I think that having an Online Broker would be a very convenient way to deal with investing!  There have been many times when I wanted to talk to my own stock broker and had to leave messages on his voice mail and wait for a return call – sometimes several days!

With doing stock trading online, you don’t have to wait for a return call – you place your order and “poof” it is done the same day!  And the fees for trading with an online trading firm are often much lower than the fees for a “regular” stock broker!  And nowadays you can get just as good advice about stocks online as you can with a “real” person.  In fact, sometimes the advice is even better because it is impartial and just relays the facts and figures.

I was taking a nap three days ago when my son came into my room and announced that my computer had been infected with the nasty malware program that calls itself “Security Tools.” What a pain in the neck that was! Fortunately I have a younger brother who lives nearby that makes his living doing IT support. So I called him and he told me that I could bring my CPU to his place and he’d fix it for me. He had to squeeze it in with his paying clients, and while he was at it he installed a bunch of new programs for me. I had to “make do” with my back-up computer in the spare bedroom while my “main computer” was at my brother’s. That was a pain in the neck, but I struggled along.

Thankfully I was able to pick up my CPU last night and bring it home. So now I’m back to almost normal, have to do a little bit of catchup bookkeeping! Whoever created that awful malware should be ashamed of themselves! I’d like to say some very strong things about/to that person, but that would ruin my “family rating” on this blog! All I CAN say is that they have created some very bad Karma, and it is well deserved bad Karma!

One of the things that I think is so marvelous about living in this technological age is how quickly technology is evolving.  I can remember when I was a young child, going to the store and having the old fashioned cash registers at the check-out counters.  The cashier had to punch in the codes and prices manually.  Now with modern technology, the cashier just has to use something like a PSC Powerscan bar code scanner to ring up the purchase; all the cashier has to do is make sure that the bar code is passed over the scanner!

That certainly lessens the human error side of incorrect charges.  Of course, the data has to be input correctly in the first place; as “they” like to say “garbage in, garbage out!”  And that is certainly true with electronics and computers!