Sent from Houston to Moldova once, in Matt's original luggage, he fried in Singerei. The fan started making a racket, the body overheated, everything burned out. Matt sent it back to Houston with his family. Family diligently restored him to health even though they'd sent a spanking new replacement through the mail. We all forgot he existed. He remained cool and switched off among other electronics, until one day...
Nothing could sustain Kiddo's lately lamented Alice: the Netbook that had composed Kiddo's life for a year and a half in voltages high and low, through surge after post-soviet surge. Even with a patched together exoskeleton of new power cord and battery, Moldovan electricity was just too much for her.
She succumbed.
She was full of japanese movies, half edited poems, a dozen memoir-hopeful chapters, thousands of photos of smiling but grubby children... And she could sustain it no longer.
I tried evacuating files to my external hardrive. I tried reformatting. Nothing helped. Nothing alleviated the load. Various versions of the Blue Screen of Death appeared. Each time with more spelling errors.
In the end we vivisected her. We tried the hardrive externally with other computers (Matt's shiny knight of a dell). We checked for burnt solder. We shook her for tell tale signs of loose mother boards. Many people contributed to the last ditch attempts at resurrection, but no avail. Thank you Dad, Brett, Philip. Matt and I did what we could with each patient suggestion.
We did however manage to save said hardrive and convert it into an external (now I have two!), plus the two batteries and two power cords or varying age and capability. They are joining my electronics menagerie.
When it was clear Alice was good for nothin' but scrapin' Matt suggested matter-of-factly that this beast be sent out for my last three months. I was a bit gob-smacked but it seemed a better idea than trying to buy or have sent a whole new one. Noobs, you can gather, are beat hard by eastern European power. Also, it's crazy preferable to not having a computer for the whole summer.
His parents found and sent it. We spent the day yesterday putting important things like anti-virus and iTunes on him. I made the mistake of trying to register my iPod with this new complex and lost everything on it. File transfer was significantly slowed by external hardrive rebellions and other MIA hardrives. All we had was a 4 gig thumb drive. It worked like a little mule, but all we could transfer were word documents and Porco Rosso. Important stuff first... right?
Today, home for the first time, New Computer and I are getting acquainted with my Lexmark 5340, OpenOffice and Skype. Also, iTunes' radio channels. A lack of my own music (thanks weird iPod software design) means I have to listen to other people's choices. I may have to write a whole blog just on the thoughts and feelings that go with that. "Is there ever going to be a time I will be completely comfortable with not being in control of things I consider mine?" etc.
So far, he's a peach. Downloading and installing stuff takes the correct amount of time for me to do loads of laundry in between. Very convenient. Size... takes some getting used to. He's a chunk of plastic artillery, more than a foot wide and almost as wide. He has a dozen ports, not all of which I recognize, and a DVD drive/burner. I'm a tight kinda person, and such a big thing makes my fingers stretch and my shoulders hurt from lugging him halfway across this country thus far. However. He kicks ass. I have a separate numberpad. I don't know when I'll ever use it, but it makes me think I have utilities.
Le sigh.
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