Me, J, and M

Who is J and M you may ask? I started college during the fall of 2003. The summer before I started my freshman year, my uncle who raised me had saved enough money to try to get me a car for college. I wanted a dodge neon or something small to get me from place to place but the dealer had pissed my uncle off so then we ended up at a Chrysler dealership and there I ended up with a Sebring (aka Seabiscuit). Now at first, I was not entirely too big of fan of the car, I thought it was a bit big for me and my needs and the car was an automatic. When I got my license, I used my uncle’s pickup truck with a crutch. And I loved driving that truck and just relishing driving a stick. I figured not too many people; especially females knew how to drive with a clutch. Anyways, so you know with car in hand, I started driving it. I don’t think I really appreciated the car too much early on because I was still relatively closed to home but yet stayed on campus. I really didn’t drive it much and when I did, it seemed I ended up taking my homegirls and hitting the clubs on every other weekends or something to that effect. It wasn’t until my uncle had died during the second semester of my freshman year and just going through turmoil that the car literally became all I had ( I know that is a weird concept to think about it is). My car was at my uncle’s house the day he died. So even if my uncle had called for help, I couldn’t get there to save him because I didn’t have a way back home just right away. So anyways, needless to say, after some wrangling with the car company, I managed to somehow to find a way to make the car payments to keep the car. And I tell you that were not always easy to do, and yet I chose to undertake this challenge and keep the car since my uncle really wanted me to have the car. So over time, my car became my moving house on wheels. I practically used my car to move around Houston a lot, go on long road trips to sometimes get away from Texas, to get to work at the jobs I was trying to work at to just scrape by and just all kinds of stories. My car and I ended up in car accidents, pulled over by cops, (I had a very high tendency to speed, a lot, and I mean a lot) and even to be broken into and wheel jacked. (so at this apartment complex that I had been staying at that was not necessarily the best apartment complex to stay at but the rent was cheap, the day I was leaving for a NSBE conference, my friend and I come out of the complex to get ready to pack my car to head towards the school when I came out and said calmly to my friend, I don’t think we are going anywhere today, and I pointed to my car, and someone (or some persons) stole all 4 tires and the factory rims (factory yall, nothing special at all, simply hubcaps) and left my car entirely on cement blocks. Needless to say that was not a good day for me at all nor did I had a good time at the NSBE conference when I finally got out there to it. But I certainly did not stay at that apartment complex very long afterwards, got out of the lease early without being penalized and have never looked back). At this point, me and car have been through so much, and during the summer when I was in Indiana doing this research project, I decided to name my car J upon my lone drive back to Texas. Simply J is the middle initial of my late uncle. Because I have felt that he has somehow this whole watched over me and my car. This will be the 6th year in July since I have had my car, and I hope to get another great 5 to 10 years out of it. I will be really sad when I am forced to have to actually go get another car or truck because it just won’t be the same. Last summer I was able to fully pay the car loan off and after some time and changing the title to my name, was able to get the official title to my seabiscuit showing that I was the rightful owner of it.
M:
Being raised my uncle and grandmother as I was growing up, we were really poor. We barely got by, only living month to month, always 1 bad event away from being in the shithole for a really really long time. So I never really had a home computer. One of my uncle’s brothers told me that I was really going to need a laptop when I started college. Of course we didn’t really have the money for some top of the line stuff so he managed to get me laptop from one of his friend’s who had an extra laptop and sold it to me for about $900 or so. This included getting all of the software, spyware, adware and a bunch other programs installed. Now I am no computer expert, but I presume that the lifespan of a laptop is not really long. But somehow my Dell latitude did not get the memo, because this is going on 6 of me owning this laptop. And at this point, it is really on its last leg. One of the hinges that closes the laptop has completely broken off from the rest of the computer, several keys are missing, the mouse doesn’t work too well, its super duper slower than molasses (it’s a Pentium 3 and I am guessing that is old), I had to buy a 7 port multi USB in order for me to hook up my USB stick, my printer, my wireless internet adapter and camera adapter too. Because the laptop bottom would get hot super easy, I bought this computer fan in which I would sit the laptop on to keep it from getting as hot. I had that fan until it finally wore out this past summer. It takes it about a good 20 minutes to turn on and get started and the CPU usage of it when I open the windows task manager is nearly at 100% all the time. I have to be patient and not open too many programs at once or click on too many things at once or the laptop will freeze. During my first semester of grad school, I was frustrated with my laptop because I couldn’t do my homework on it, so I had to learn how to bus or hoof it to the multiple computer labs here on campus so I could finish my homework. I would a lot of my late nights at the 24 hour undergraduate library using their computers just to get work done and take care of everything else. But despite all of this, and getting some helpful advice when I do get ready to buy my next laptop, I just couldn’t bring myself to buy one right away. I love M (or Methuselah) because its just as part of me as I am apart of it. And I truly do believe me that unless its broke and totally unsalvageable, that I am going to continue to use things until I have to get something new. Call me stubborn, extremely cheap or lazy, but I really appreciate the things that I have or had to fight to get or to keep because stuff that I have, it’s the first I have ever have or owned, and I know how to appreciate stuff. I never had money to just spend on questionable and wasteful things as other college kids I have met along the way have done (i.e. rims, jewelry, and expensive clothes). I truly believe in saving, paying off all debts, and only spending money on things you really do need (i.e. groceries, insurance, bills and so on). And even when I do start making money, (hey I am an engineer and after I decide I am finally through with school), I don’t think I am going to start spending lavishly just because I can. Right now in grad school, even with the limited funds and financial setbacks, I am only focusing on my credit card (and only credit card) completely off, and then to turn my focus onto paying off my student loans in the next 5 years (~$25000) so I can be completely debt free. And at the rate things are going in the global economy, I really want to be as debt free as possible.