This has been in the hopper for a long time and I haven’t really had a chance to get around to it until now. Especially because this was actually relevant about 3 months ago. It’s about the loss of a dear friend of mine. Before you go off the deep end, it’s not a human friend, nor an animal friend, but a friend of the computer persuasion. Her name was Michelle and she was a Lenovo Thinkpad T61p. This might seem a little over-sentimental for something as replaceable and as frequently changing as a computer, but just as the stuffed animal that you can’t seem to give away, it’s the memories that give it its inherent sentimentality. Let me give you a little background as to why it meant so much to me.
When I started college my parents were ardent in their conviction of not getting me a computer. To this day I am not exactly sure why. The cost of a computer is not something to be scoffed at, but seeing as my major was/is computer engineering, one would think that this might be something worth the investment. I really wanted a laptop so I would be able to bring it around campus and take notes and study in the library, you know college stuff. The only thing I had at the time was an aging desktop and that wasn’t going to cut it. I was working as a tech support goon for a local publishing company at the time and they had this dilapidated, stripped, broken, and all together homely looking “laptop” in the back of the shop and I asked if I could adopt this shelter computer. They obliged and I spent the next months getting it in working order. It was old though, to put it into context, it was old for then, no built-in wifi, IDE HDD, 1 GHz Pentium III proc, it was a dog. At least I had a laptop though, but it was glaringly apparent that this was not going to be able to slake my computing thirst for long though.
My parents struck me a deal, if I got into the engineering program (I didn’t start in it due to high school GPA) they would fork over the cash for a new computer. After two years of busting my hump I was accepted and I immediately began to look at shiny, new laptops. I ended up finding a great deal on a beast of a laptop (at the time of course) through my dad’s AMEX reward program.
This was over Christmas break I ordered it and I remember refreshing the tracking number roughly a quadjabamillion times. I’m pretty sure the IT people at FedEx were about ready to block my IP. It was a little torturous waiting day in and day out in hot anticipation of my new best friend. I was comping back from doing some errand I had to run and I saw, sitting on my doorstep, a relatively large cardboard box, be-speckled with the Lenovo logo. I sprinted to the door and tore into that box, you know in a totally civil and organized manner as to not break my new god.
It was love at first boot. I had so many good times with Michelle. (I have a penchant for naming all my important things girls names that start with M) She helped me get through some really tough classes. She is where I learned Linux really well. She is where I learned the anatomy of a modern laptop. She was where I wrote some heart to hearts and where I blogged some really fun moments. Sadly, in December of 2010 she died, it sounded like an overheating issue with the GPU, but she wouldn’t boot. I replaced her motherboard and got her working, but she was showing her age, and it was time to move on. I sold her to a nice Indian family who needed her right way. I want to thank her for he many years of service and just how many great memories I shared with her. Bye Michelle!
Who writes a love letter to a computer? This guy. This. Guy.