Tagebuch: November, 2009

Viennese Flower Shop, an original watercolor by Judann Weichselbraun - judann.w@chello.at

Dear Diary,

“4.”

If computers have last words – or last digits – mine had only this to say as it finally succumbed to a death that was both slow and painful. For both of us.

This was my laptop’s final message to life on Earth: white, bit-mapped text over an otherwise unmarred sea of noble blue, expressing two simple characters at the top-right:

A four, and a dot.

No amount of user input, tech support or keyboard-pounding would reach it. Quite simply, my HP-4200 had come to a determination – the sum total of all the data it had recorded over the course of my 3-year custodianship. Having arrived at this conclusion, it would not waiver from articulating this unadorned, macabre Arabic numeral.

I ponder the existential meaning of this message. What dying wisdom was this machine trying to impart to me?

Actually, I should hesitate to wax poetic on the death of a computer. But, aside from the detriment to my overall working productivity and the substantial financial inconvenience, I still can’t shake the feeling that a friend, even a part of myself, is gone.

Perhaps it’s something akin to the death of a beloved pet – only this pet operated a dual-core processor and assisted me in basically every aspect of my life.

Certainly I asked a lot of my laptop, spending countless hours parked in front of its cool, familiar glow. Its functionality in my life was extensive: Papers, e-mail, gigabytes of music, movies and TV shows, social networking, mindless gaming, YouTube clips, using Wikipedia to feign expertise on every conceivable subject. I could go on.

It occurs to me now; there is probably no inanimate object in this world that could tell you more about the person I am. At least in this sense, my computer knew me – probably better than most people do.

I begin to question my dedication to its well-being over the years. I could have performed more frequent virus checks, defragmented more often, downloaded fewer illegal torrents – many, many fewer illegal torrents.

But I resolve to remember the good times. My parents split the price with me for Christmas ‘06, when it was shiny, new and top of the line. It served me without protest or error for the better part of two years.

Only in the past twelve months did its decline truly manifest. First the onboard speakers gave out, then the web cam, followed by a host of battery and power-adapter issues. Even on such crutches, I carried it from my home in St. Louis overseas, willing the 4200 to survive just one more semester in my care.

In the end, there wasn’t life enough in it. What can you do? To extend the pet metaphor, perhaps what I need is adorable new puppy to take my mind off things. A puppy operating at about 4GB of random access memory.

Actually, I’m sure that’s the solution. Life goes on. But hey, HP laptop, wherever you are, I want to bid you a fond farewell: You lived a full life, you served me well, and you will be missed.