buying Microsoft Office at retail with my own money

My parents bought me my first IBM PC in 1984. It came with DOS 2.2. In 1985, I installed a hard drive in place of a one of the two 5.25" floppy drives. DOS 2.2 did not support hard drives, so I had to upgrade to DOS 3.3. Since that time, I have never paid retail prices with my money for Microsoft software until tonight.

I bought PCs and software with other people's money or MS employees would give me software they bought the MS employee store at a large discount. Office 2007 was installed on my PC, but I was having problems creating a multiple page booklet with landscape orientation. The directions I had were for Office 2010 and seemed like they should have worked for 2007. The booklet didn't look like it would print correctly while viewing with print preview.

Having decided change primary PCs, it seemed like a good reason to buy Office 2010. Costco was $60 cheaper than online at Microsoft.com, so off I went. I had a great time shopping based on the $500+ worth of food & software purchased when I went to Costco to buy kitty litter, toilet paper, and $220 worth of software. Shopping just before closing at Costco was a mixed blessing. It was not very crowded, but everything all looked so good! At least I got everything on my shopping list—plus a lot more.

Three years ago, I bought a new PC to replace one that was dying. It was my fastest PC, but slightly louder than my other PC, so I used the quieter PC as my primary PC for the last three years. The slower PC has now become the louder PC so it was time to setup the new PC as my primary. Thanks to the miracle of online shopping at Amazon.com, a solid state hard drive and a 1 TB HD will be delivered tomorrow.

It has been two years since I last installed Windows. I still got it. I installed Windows 7 and Office 2010 on my faster PC tonight. It turns out that Word 2007 likely created the booklet the way I wanted it to be. Word print preview is too smart for my own good. On the screen, it was displayed in a way that scrolled. On paper, it printed as needed to fold several sheets of paper together to make a booklet.

Tomorrow I will install new hard drives, Windows and Office along with a score of other applications and applets to get my PC setup the way I like it.

Things are looking good. I have a bale of paper towels, a bunch of food in the fridge and a project for tomorrow.

I am grateful that I have the resources to upgrade my PC, drive to Costco, buy food and bring it all inside to be put away. I was so efficient I was dumping the trash on the way out to the car to bring in more groceries.

.......................

Here is a bit of a post-script reinforcing the benefits of writing about the good things in my life. (Oh yeah, I bought flowers while at Costco—I love their bouquets—they are the best value around for flowers.)

From http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_trick_your_brain_for_happiness/

Rick Hanson, Ph.D.

Taking in the good

This brings me to one of my favorite methods for deliberately using the mind to change the brain over time for the better: taking in the good.

Just having positive experiences is not enough to promote last well-being. If a person feels grateful for a few seconds, that’s nice. That’s better than feeling resentful or bitter for a few seconds. But in order to really suck that experience into the brain, we need to stay with those experiences for a longer duration of time—we need to take steps, consciously, to keep that spotlight of attention on the positive.

So, how do we actually do this? These are the three steps I recommend for taking in the good. I should note that I did not invent these steps. They are embedded in many good therapies and life practices. But I’ve tried to tease them apart and embed them in an evolutionary understanding of how the brain works.

1. Let a good fact become a good experience. Often we go through life and some good thing happens—a little thing, like we checked off an item on our To Do list, we survived another day at work, the flowers are blooming, and so forth. Hey, this is an opportunity to feel good. Don’t leave money lying on the table: Recognize that this is an opportunity to let yourself truly feel good.

2. Really savor this positive experience. Practice what any school teacher knows: If you want to help people learn something, make it as intense as possible—in this case, as felt in the body as possible—for as long as possible.

3. Finally, as you sink into this experience, sense your intent that this experience is sinking into you. Sometimes people do this through visualization, like by perceiving a golden light coming into themselves or a soothing balm inside themselves. You might imagine a jewel going into the treasure chest in your heart—or just know that this experience is sinking into you, becoming a resource you can take with you wherever you go.