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| Don't look directly into the light! |
There had been a whirring, grinding noise from the left side
of the board under the “AZX” keys for two weeks. I was in denial, hoping that I
could cure the affliction after running fixit programs: many, many fixit
programs.
I got a bare minimum of work accomplished by using it for 20
– 30 minutes at a time, and then shutting it down before it blacked out. Is 170f high for a computer fever?
I was delaying the inevitable repair bill as long as
possible – I always do.
At the point where the situation escalated to “emergency”, I
drove it to the ‘Mac Hospital’ in South Burlington (Small Dog
Electronics).
I held my cold, dead computer tight to my chest and queued
up in an optimistically short line of similarly quiet, desperate, hopeful
people, only to be told that it would be 15 days before evaluation, plus the
time it would take to repair.
Sixty ailing computers lay under lock and key in the back
room, well and fairly ahead of me.
I can’t wait twenty days!
I have a business to run.
No invoices, no marketing, no e-mail orders. I slid fast in a downward spiral, riding a
nightmarish Alpine Slide, slick with poo, sans brakes.
I took a deep breath – and sighed while looking down at my
lifeless laptop - that trusty silvery workhorse with little dimples where
someone had dropped a glass on it, and the barely visible dots of spray where
the cat had ‘chooed a sneeze.
Would it be possible to garner a little
‘old-lady-sympathy’?
After all, most of the workers in the store were of the age
to be my college kid.
(A bigger sigh, a sniffle, a little welling up in the eyes.)
“Look”, said the technician in a low whisper, “if you just
want to replace the fan, the computer goes directly to the repair bench, and it
could be fixed in 24 hours”.
Score one for this old lady!
In two days, the computer was comfortably resting back at
home – but I’d spent far too much time
marveling at the super-fast sharp-screened laptops that still had that new car
smell in spite of hundreds of people touching the keys.
I violated my rule about germs and touched the shiny black
magic that is a 17-inch MacBook Pro. It
cost as much as a roof shingling, and was as impressively fast with the
clicking keystrokes as it was unapologetic about the massive amount of space it
commanded.
(Had I seen a notice about in-store financing? I might have enough value left in the car to
scrounge up a downpayment.)
Best not to even entertain the thought. The air conditioner has started randomly
flashing sixes, refuses to heed the “off” command, and smells like burning
water. This could be a very repairy
summer.
