My Shiny New Laptop by David N. Walker

Today is LLC Friday and our guest is fellow Life List Club Member, David Walker. David is going to share with us his adventures in securing the latest in computing technology. Meanwhile, I'll be over at Lara Schiffbauer's Motivation for Creation Blog. Lara motivated me to write How to Structure the Plot of a Novel as a guest post. Be sure to stop by.

David is running the show today, so please join me in extending a warm welcome.

WANA: We may not have it all together, but together we have it all.

My Dell laptop is about 100 years old in computer years. It’s slow and cantankerous, working when it feels like it and not when it doesn’t. Kristen Lamb harps all the time about my need for a new computer, and when I look around the room at WWBC meetings, mine is at least a grandfather to the others.

Don’t laugh, but changing computers is always a stressful event for me. First of all, I’m about the least tech-savvy person on the internet, and secondly, old farts people my age don’t like change. Of course, I’ve been saying that ever since I was 35, but that’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

Most of the people in my group have Macs, which I’ve always avoided like the plague, but I’ve begun wondering if I’m missing something and should really look into taking a bite of the Apple. After looking online and going over to an Apple Store to talk to a peddler sales associate, then talking with the man I’ve used for technical problems with my computers for several years, I decided there wasn’t really a compelling reason for me to make that switch.

Okay, that left me back at considering a new PC. I spent some time online in total confusion studying a number of different models. Then I went to Best Buy to look at some first hand and talk to a sales associate there. A little later I walked out with a new Lenovo laptop. 6GB of memory and some ungodly number of 500 gigabytes on the hard drive. That’s more than my trusty desktop has.


After only about four hours of cursing working at it, I think I have it all set up with everything I need on it. Well, at least until I discover I don’t. Anyhow, when I walk into our Warrior Writers’ meeting Saturday, I’ll have a bright, shiny new computer to show off. I know Kristen will approve, because she loves anything shiny.


David N. Walker is a Christian father and grandfather, a grounded pilot and a near-scratch golfer who had to give up the game because of shoulder problems. A graduate of Duke University, he spent 42 years as a health insurance agent. Most of that career was spent in Texas, but for a few years he traveled many other states. He started writing about 20 years ago, and has six unpublished novels to use as primers on how NOT to write fiction. Since his retirement from insurance a few years ago, he has devoted his time to helping Kristen Lamb start Warrior Writers’ Boot Camp and trying to learn to write a successful novel himself.