Monday, November 30, 2015

GoofBoy's Cyber Monday Nightmare

GoofBoy has been perusing flyers for new electronics and musing that perhaps his laptop will have an accident and we will need to take advantage of the Cyber Monday savings and get a great replacement.

When GoofBoy got his first laptop, which was of decent quality, the hard drive crashed. I replaced it. Then, months later, the hard drive crashed again and I had had enough. We bought the least expensive laptop that met his needs (I made him do the research.) I fully expect it won't last him through high school. But an early demise is unacceptable.

I warned him if there were such an untimely accident, I would replace his laptop with the cheapest, crappiest option possible.

"But Dad, I already have the cheapest, crummiest laptop out there."

"Oh knucklehead you have NO idea. I'll get an old PC and strap it to your back with duct tape. You'll have a fifty foot extension cord for a tail. The monitor will hang from your neck on a harness."

"That sounds great, I'll be Cyber Boy!"

"Yea? Keep pushing me, how about writing your papers in text messages on a flip phone."

"No, you can't do that, the school requires everything to be in GoogleDocs."

"It's easy to route texts into Google Docs. Anyway, I can do worse. I'll make you use your sister's laptop."

"What, NOOO! It doesn't even have touch screen!"

"I can't do that, why should your sister suffer." A couple years ago when GoofGirl felt like she "wasn't good" with computers I stumbled on a sale of really good refurbished Chromebooks (for less than a decent phone). She's fallen in love with it and is learning to code.

"No," I continued, "But if something happens to your computer I will definitely get you a laptop with no touchscreen!"

"Good luck, they don't even make them without touchscreen anymore."

"I'll pay extra!"

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