Thrift StoreTechnology



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We were on vacation.

We can't afford the Bahamas or Paris.

We aren't really as outdoorsy as all that, so we never go camping.

There are a dozen different things we could do with time away, but we like to go to thrift stores...

Not just any thrift stores mind you, we like to hit the ones near the neighborhoods we dream of living in, but never actually would.  Not just because we couldn't afford it...but because every mini mansion looks sorta the same.  I have a philosophy that manicured lawns are really part of an illuminati plot to gain control over our communities through turf builder...anyway

This was such a day, we were in such a place, ready to walk out when my husband checked the glass case by the door.

Now, I never check the glass case, I have snubbed it because of too many 'porcelian' plates marked antique that say made in China on them...but the Jon is different.  He's a hopeful sort and so he checked.  And there, in all it's ragged box and secondhand glory it sat.  The Magellan GPS.  Insert beam of light and angel chorus here.

It was twenty dollars.  Twenty dollars to us is like, well twenty dollars before the goverment printed extra and made it worth like, fourteen dollars.  But it was a piece of technology that had hitherto eluded us, and to my husband it was like honey in the comb.  So we bought it.  It didn't work.  You knew that was going to happen didn't you...?

But when we tried it there had been the smallest flash of a screen, so we took it to Best Buy and decided to gamble on a charger and the knowledge of someone almost pre-pubescent.  The kid was right....and it worked!

Later on in the life of the Magellan GPS Roadmate 300, we had to call customer service where they transferred us to an old guy in the basement near a moldy stack of product manuals from the 19th century.  He was evidentally the only one who remembered how to change the hamster in a wheel battery on the thing.  Ok, no hamster, but our GPS is really really old.

So old that it doesn't know that certain roads exist, or lakes even...but it has been a faithful companion on many a thrift store expedition.

Lesson here...you can sometimes get decent technology--if you are willing to use older tech, and if you are wise enough to look in the glass case.

Happy Hunting!