04 December 2009

back

I have the usual excuse for my disappearance from this space: namely, my computer died. I just brought it in for a little tuneup (okay, a new hard drive) and the next thing I knew the computer geeks were calling me apologizing for the fact that the connection between the computer and the power cord, after dying slowly for a long time, was totally gone, and it would end up being a $300 visit to the computer geek place, to fix a computer that was almost 5.5 years old and would only keep breaking down. That, they said, or I could buy a new computer.

$430 (that I didn't really have) later, I am rationing out my single $100 on which I have to live for the rest of the month. (No Christmas presents for anyone at all. Just forget about them. They are not coming.)

Now, it must be repeated - I know I've said it before - that I become irrationally attached to inanimate objects. It took a week for my new computer to arrive after I ordered it from the D3LL website, and I thought I would be so anxious to have a computer that I would open it and set it up immediately, but instead I opened up the box and then left the computer lying on my counter. Every time I looked at it, I felt vaguely resentful towards it for not being my old 1BM.

At long last, er, two days later, I finally managed to open the new, personality-less machine (it has neither stickers of African flags nor start-up foibles) and start to figure it out. My love for my old laptop was clearly fickle, because my resentment lessens each time the new one starts up in 30 seconds instead of 8 to 10 minutes. I do feel like I am betraying the old one, though. After all, it survived Liberia (barely, with a cracked motherboard) and Southern Sudan (barely, due to the heat), and brought me through law school and the bar exam.

The fact that I have not appeared on the blog in two+ weeks may actually be the only reason I finally booted up this shiny thing today.

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