Life Happens

In March of 2015, it seemed as if life did not want to co-operate with me. As many of you may be aware, last year I was taking courses that, upon completion, I would then be able to use the new skills in a situation of employment. I completed the courses in December and in late January, began my search for the very elusive ideal position.

At the beginning of March, I took my laptop in for a minor tune up and a repair to one of my USB ports that was not working. Because I wanted the laptop back as soon as possible, the repair department sent the laptop to Toronto for the work to be completed. At the end of a full week, I received a phone call stating that my laptop could not be repaired and that they were sending me an in-store credit that could be used against a new laptop. This happened because of the fact that I had extended warranty on my laptop. I was not given a choice in the matter.

I did get a new laptop but it took time for the credit to come through, so in the meantime, I was stuck using my netbook which is now extremely slow. The credit came through and I was able to get the laptop that I wanted.

However, there were problems. I made an error while setting up one of my programs and could not correct the problem. I finally contacted the Microsoft tech through their chat. It turned out that the problem I was facing was caused by malware. It took 4 full working days spread over a week, 3 levels of technicians and a reset of Windows before my laptop was working properly.

From this, I learned that I will leave any new computers with the techs to do the updates and check everything out to make sure that there will be no problems. This experience caused me a number of headaches as I believe that the opportunity for a particular employment was lost because I had to do the testing on my netbook.

Now, my laptop is working well and I am starting to really like it. It is up-to-date as is some of the software that I use and it lets me do things that I couldn’t do before. There is a learning curve to it. I have had some frustrations with the learning curve but it’s now just a matter of learning the new technology and remembering where things are.

You might just say that about family history. The technology that we can now access to research our ancestors is so advanced from when some of us started in the 70s and 80s. Then, we had to wait up to 3 months for answers. Granted, we don’t always get the answers fast, but we can learn more about our ancestors than we ever could.

I learned yesterday that the British government has just passed the Deregulation Act which means that we will be able to get that information from those certificates that we need at a much lower price without having to purchase the certificates. This will prove to be a huge bonus for us.

I am still looking for that elusive employment, but I know that I will find something that will help me to continue to work on my own family history as well as help others as I have over the past 4 years. The Man Above will bless me as He has in the past and I will be able to help others share in the same blessing.