Winner, winner...pants on fire?

I retired from my, a real job 10 years ago. I, then, decided that I would write novels and something I found interesting, at the time, taking surveys and entering contests, sweepstakes, so on and so forth. I can’t say that, in all that time, it has been lucrative, but I have won and received quite a lot of prizes.

During those years, I have received at least, if not close to $1000 in music, movie, and gasoline gift cards. Usually $10 at a time. Recently I saved enough $10 Amazon gift cards to purchase a backpack and a camping cook set. However, the two biggest things and most wanted things I have received were a 23in, all-in-one computer and a 55in TV, both in 2009. Nothing but Amazon and iTunes gift cards since. Of course, nothing in the lottery, or for that matter, all of those sweepstakes that offer million dollar homes and cars and stuff. Not a biggie though.

For the last year or so I have been watching a daytime TV show called Right This Minute, RTM. I got into it because they showed a ton of internet videos and I enjoyed most of them. Sometime last year they started offering iPad Mini’s and once a week a bonus prize, usually a LED TV, if you watched and sent, on the internet, your information and the “Word of the day” to their web site. That got me hooked.

I figured that if I play long enough I might win; then again, I might not win a thing. This sweepstakes usually lasted about 30 days, 3 times a year. This year I finally won that iPad Mini2. I always thought that if I won I would sell the iPad on EBay; I would rather have gotten the cash then the iPad, considering I already have a tablet and it does what I want rather well.

I received the iPad Mini2 this past Friday and, for all intent and purposes, it was a nice looking tablet. I, for whatever reason, decided to keep it. Then, I said to myself, WHY am I going to keep this tablet? I took all of the plastic off of the tablet fired it up and then started to add apps that I think I needed.

At that very moment I realized that having a second tablet was just a little bit much, overkill. I already have a laptop, a desktop, two smartphones and now two tablets. Both tablets doing much of the same thing. Moreover, an Apple device is a hard cookie to crack. There are a lot of little things my Nexus 7 does that the iPad doesn’t do and to me that it a distraction.

So now what do I do with it? Keep it in my bedroom and use it as an alarm clock? I can’t do that because my old and I mean old second smartphone does that. I don’t use it for anything else but wake me in the morning. It looks like I may end up selling it anyway, that is if I don’t find something for it to do.

Other than that, I guess I will just keep playing those online contests and sweepstakes. Now, if I can just win the lottery!