Bad and good week, frugally speaking
Seerialmom
spent. Luckily no major cash was lost and I suppose the good deals
made the one stinker less smelly in comparison.
First, I ventured out on Black Friday and got the table saw I needed
for some projects I'm doing around the house for cheap (normal price
$119, on sale $79 and I had a $10 off coupon for the store, too). At
the same time I got 2 storage cabinets normal price $99 for $39 each.
Next, while perusing my favorite thrift store, saw the Mudd purse
(exact same style I currently use) hanging on the rack, no wear at all
and only $2. I actually did a little happy dance in the store since
mine is wearing out (cracks in the vinyl backside of the handle and
lining of the outer pocket separating).
After that, came home to look up something online and the display on
this lowly iMac Strawberry was very very dark. WTH?? Worked fine the
day before and I can "see" the display. No adjustments worked. My
first thought was "oh dang it, the CRT is shot". I hooked up an
external monitor and it displayed fine. So a little research was done
and apparently there's this pesky little battery on the system board
that controls this; paid $5.99 for it at Fry's, installed it and
"voila", happy display again. Radio Shack sells the same battery for
$19.99 so I guess that was frugal of me to go to Fry's, instead. As a
PC Tech this really floored me that the battery would be the fix for
the symptom. I'm wondering how many poor iMacs went to the computer
graveyard over that.
Last, for the bad. I saw this Samsung DVD Burder/VCR combo at a non-
favorite thrift store (store smells like old mildewy clothes) that had
the HDMI out and the marking on it said "tested works", $25. My
thinking was "great, it upconverts to near HD level on the DVDs being
played". Not really having a real way to test it there (they have
plugs to test electrical items, but to really test it you'd need the
cables). I took it up to the checkout and asked "How do they actually
test these?". The clerk said "Oh, they try out the tape and DVD
players in the back, they have a TV to do it". With some apprehension
I went ahead and paid for it, came home and plugged it in, pushed the
button to open the DVD drawer and NOTHING HAPPENED. Just says "open"
on the display. Ugh!!! Of course "all sales are final" at that
store. So I, and my son's friend the next day, did our best to see if
something was stuck by disassembling it; no such luck. Samsung's site
doesn't help, either, they just want you to send in for service. Now
that might be fine if I were the original owner and it was still under
warranty. But alas, I'm not. The best I might get is $10-15 at a
garage sale since the VHS side still works.
Anyway, off my soap box for now, I learned my lesson to trust my gut
instinct and not the sales clerk of a thrift store. :)