O.k.  It’s official, I went to the Apple store and purchased my new shiny Macbook Pro 13″, 2.26, 4GB computer, with neoprene case, and Logic Express 9 (I am a budding musician, you see).  Yeehaw.  All I have to do is pay for it in 12 months or the whole world explodes.

And for all of you who did not know this, the education discounts that Apple offers (I think it’s 10%), it also applies to those families who homeschool their kids.  My wife and I are going the homeschool route, so I was jazzed about this (yes, I will let the senior junior use the computer as well, plus the kids will be able to use my somewhat outdated Mini for school stuff).

Another little trick I learned today: As I mentioned before in anther post, I signed up for the Barclaycard 12 month no payments, not interest deal-e-0.  Well, when you sign up for that and get your application approved on the Apple store, you get a notification that if you make your purchase now without navigating away from the website, or being inactive for more than 15 minutes or something, you’re good to go.  If you do happen to navigate away, or wait too long (like your’s truly) then you have to wait the 3 or so days for your card to come in the mail to make your purchase.

So, I’ve been waiting for like 5 days and still no card.  I went back to the Apple store and logged in.  I clicked on the link to see the status of your credit application with Barclaycard.  You then get a login screen for Barclaycard, which you enter the same Apple ID login you just did a moment ago to get into your Apple account.  From there you get the same warning that you can purchase your stuff on the Apple store now, or wait the 3 days for your card (they try to prevent fraud this way, and it involves the 4-digit security code on the back of the card and other really high-tech stuff).

I was happy.  I have been ready to buy buy buy, and now I can.  So, it’s important that you go right from the Barclaycard page via it’s links to shop and not try and open a different Apple store window to do your shopping.  If you do, when you get to the checkout you’ll see you can’t use your Barclaycard.  If you go right from the Barclaycard shop-link, when you checkout you’ll see they entered your card number (which you haven’t yet received in the mail) for you.

Then all that’s left to do is spend your heart out (of course, only spend what you can afford to pay off in the next 12 months, and better yet, have the cash already saved up so there is no doubt you can do this thing on time).

This is actually a huge purchase for my family, and though I am not thinking I will make any money selling whatever app I develop, I have a lot of ideas of how to make the new computer pay for itself.  So, after all of this consumin’, I called my pastor and asked him to be praying for me.