A month ago, my computer broke, and I told you all about the backup laptop I bought to plug the gap while I got that computer (and another former backup) fixed. The backup I purchased was the cheapest Windows-enabled computer at the Target on my way into town from the Atlanta airport. It has been abundantly clear why it was priced that low.
I did, as I went to write this, get a call from the repair folks that my old backup is finally ready to be picked up. The primary computer is still worked on, but they found a screen for it, that screen is in Texas, we should have a full rotation again by the end of the week, and based on their performance against their own estimates so far that means sometime before Memorial Day. But I’m writing this already, so let’s have at it.
This thing sucks.
I can see why it is so cheap.
Bless its heart, it’s trying. It’s doing its best. I say “Jump,” it says, “How high?” I open up a page on basketball-reference to see what years Armoni Brooks was at Houston, it churns and churns and crawls to load the page and then, like an out-of-shape man atop a mountain, pauses for ten minutes while I assume it sees stars inside.
The thing crashes two or three times a day. I’m restarting it constantly. If I have five or six tabs open at once on Chrome it doesn’t start physically shaking but it might as well, because that is at least three or four tabs too many. I used to have eleven tabs open all the time. Every moment the laptop was on, those eleven tabs were open. Had my various inboxes, had the site dashboard, had the site stats, had the email dashboard, had a couple spreadsheets…now, we do not leave things open we are not actively using. We commit lists to memory or—yes, this is true—take a picture on our phone of them and close that document or tab or spreadsheet. We apologize to the computer when we ask it to send an email. We ask if it’s ready before taking a screenshot. We dare not ask it to video call, since it turns out that SonicMaster logo was not indicative of a bumping stereo system, let alone one that can be heard on the couch while the computer’s on the coffee table.
I will say, I’ve gotten much better at saving my work. My work is almost always saved now. It’s like minimalism for documents. This computer is not the equivalent of living out of a van (much more like living out of a bicycle with a crooked wheel), but it’s accomplishing a similar purpose. My digital life is less cluttered than ever before.
Man.
I can’t wait to pick up the old backup. That thing wasn’t great, but it was functional. I miss functional. I hope they actually fixed it. I’m a little suspicious.
