We Regret to Inform...
Battle Scars
from the Coffee Table Wars.
Spike, my iBook, a machine that has
served me well and faithfully for lo these three years, is getting old. His
case is webbed with a thousand tiny scratches. His battery runs down in about
two hours now. He has a scant gigabyte and a half of remaining memory. I seem
to wait longer and longer for him to figure things out as his G3 processor
struggles with ever more data. But for all of that, he is a reliable beast. We
have gotten on very well for these three years, and despite his age he still has
the ability to attract lustful glances from the iBook-deprived. We have
traveled the world together (yes, Spike is an international computer. He
accompanied me to England in 2002).
I dropped him last night. He
clattered against the edge of the coffee table and tumbled to the floor,
shutting the case and leaving me wide-eyed and horrified for a long moment. He
still works, but now has a checkmark-shaped scar on the lower right portion of
the screen. It almost looks like someone has drawn a representation of a small
mortar attack in black pixels. It is whimsical, yet ugly. It doesn't make
Spike unusable, but it does underscore his age and decrepitude.
Now is not exactly the best
time for me to go out and buy a new computer. It's not the worst either: I do
have some freelance work for now and the foreseeable future. And I feel a
strange unease typing about Spike's potential retirement on his own keyboard: it
feels like a betrayal of this machine I have such foolish affection for.
Spike and I will muddle along
for a while yet. But this black mark is a harbinger. The day I bring home
Spike's successor, I will be thrilled with my new toy. But I will also
undoubtedly harbor these sentimental soppy feelings for dear old Spike.
Posted: Monday - March 14, 2005 at 06:40 AM
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