Travelogue 1236 – 7 February
Machine RIP

February had a rough start. My trusty old computer died. Picture a cartoon jalopy and the sound it makes as it collapses, like the sigh of an abandoned squeezebox. The poor machine had been pushed pretty far. So far that I had already begun to worry. I had begun with some expediencies in the fall, opening the laptop up, replacing the battery, adding RAM. I was just figuring out how I would replace the hard drive when the thing seized up.

It was a February when I bought the little monster, back in 2019! Suddenly I had to buy a new one. There was no other way. Now an alien machine sits in its place on my desk. We are getting to know each other, the new one and I. She is thinner than the old one, but longer. Her dimensions throw me off. The keyboard doesn’t match the one I’m used to, so I make mistakes. She makes more noise when I touch her, and that is exciting, as though we might go farther.

Years of notes are gone. The desktop is blank. Even my photo of old Rotterdam has vanished, to be replaced by a generic AI image of sand dunes. Apps need to be reloaded. Old files need to be reloaded. Some are just lost. It’s uncertain territory, something like the AI wasteland in the picture, lacking real features. One finds he hasn’t been aware of all the character that was accumulating inside the flat little box on the desk, the box that has a lid that lights up when you open it.