Buy a BlackBerry and Check Your Engine!

Published on Friday, May 22, 2009 by Katherine

I just posted a review of 7-11 Iced Coffee on Agoosa – check it out!

Here is my “doh!” of the week. You just never know what the future will bring, do you? I found that out yesterday.

Long story short, I needed to add a line to my cell phone plan for one of the kids, and my phone was due for upgrading. I had been putting a bit of money aside for two months in anticipation of splurging on a touch screen for myself. It will be invaluable for my website work and for social networking – something integral to a successful blog. Oh, and it’s COOL.

Verizon had a two for one special. Buy one, get another phone of lesser or equal value for free. I have a discount through my employer, and also had a mail in rebate. I researched the phone (some like it, some don’t – but you find that with every cell phone you search for) (AND Consumer Reports likes it)… I saved the money and I figured out how to swing it without it being an irresponsible purchase.

I did manage to embarrass myself while making the purchase. No surprise there. I asked the sales rep if he could move my contacts from my old phone to my new. “Sure, we have a machine that does that.” So as he was getting everything set up behind the counter, I saw him place and HOLD a piece of equipment over the phone. (This is almost too embarrassing to tell…) I blurted out, “Oh, is that the machine you use to move over the contacts?” He burst out laughing. Snorted. And then he said, “No, this is the bar code reader!” How embarrassing. After all, I am an A+ Certified Hardware Technician. And I can’t tell a bar code scanner from some kind of “mysterious contact switcher-over.” How stupid.

So here is the doh part. I took my happy Verizon bag to the car, full of two new phones, screen protectors and manuals. I got in the car, started to drive home, and ¼ mile down the road, my “Service Engine Soon” light comes on. Picture my hand hitting my head with a super fat, “DOH!”

The engine light might as well read, “Get Ready To Spend Money You Don’t Have, You Blackberry Toting Fool.” And we are DRIVING to the Outer Banks this weekend and DRIVING back. This is NOT good. And it is memorial day weekend – holidays do not equate to quick car maintenance turnaround.

I am just about to turn over 52,000 miles. I am about 50 miles shy of that. I’ve already put a call into my service guy – a brother of a co-worker. It is my VERY GREAT HOPE that this is a coded message, telling me a big service is due at 52,000 miles. It is my VERY GREAT HOPE that tonight, with a van full of kids, my car will not explode on a rural, dark road. But hey, at least I’ll have a cool cell phone to use for calling help, right?