On Thursday afternoon, July 22, 2004 the old scorpion laptop officially died:

Rest In Pieces

It was a Toshiba Satellite 4280ZDVD, one of the first of the Toshiba laptops to have an on-board DVD drive. Combined with a larger 15' screen it was really good for movies on road trips. Not that I went on very many in the first place, but cool nonetheless. The laptop was pretty worn out and used though. I'd say it is at least 3 years old if not older and it has passed through many hands before I finally purchased it at work before I had gotten laid off last March when that line of laptops became decommissioned due to obsolescence at my former company.

I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with the remains. Hopefully the data in the hard drive is still intact. I might take the better parts from the dead machine and use them to upgrade my sister's laptop since she has the exact same model. Then I may burn the remains and scatter the ashes to the 4 winds atop the Sears Tower. Hmm, wait that's what is supposed to happen to my body. The laptop would probably be a smoldering heap of melted plastic if I tried to burn it. Perhaps I should place it on a rotating pedestal in some museum as an artifact for the not-so-decadent 90's with the artist labeled as "unknown". Yeah that's the ticket.

In it's heyday, with an upgrade to the hard drive from 6GB to 80GB and the addition of a wireless network card it suddenly became my most valued tool for my school, my internship, leisure, communication, even this diary, almost everything you can use a computer for, this computer became my preferred means of executing computer-related tasks. Then it started dying on me. How fucking inconvenient. I guess I'm glad it didn't totally die on me in the middle of some important final project at school.

RCN finally arrived to fix the cable modem connection at my mom's place, so at the very least I'll be able to access the net from here. It's been down at my mom's place for over a week, but as for a replacement laptop, with my current state of finances, a new PC is unlikely at least for the moment. It's a shame really with all the things I was planning to do with my student website as well as the design of this diary.

Something inadvertent happened with all this internet downtime, however. I found out that I'm not missing it as much as I thought I would. Don't get me wrong, I miss reading my usual diary reads and communicating with online friends and of course churning out the occasional mindless diary entry, but somehow, the internet downtime combined with the downtime of the rest of my life with no work and no school has instilled in me a sense of freedom which I have not experienced in quite a while.

Granted this newfound freedom is sullied slightly by a severe lack of funds, I feel liberated nonetheless. For once in a very long time, I'm not busting my ass for a grade or a paycheck or anything really important. I'm taken back to the carefree life I once had before life somehow got all serious on me and I have to say it fucking feels good.

The only thing I'm doing now that even partially resembles responsibility is feeding he family dog and making sure I'm getting in a regular workout. I've been hitting the gym at least every other day except for the occasional weekend I spent being hung over. I'll probably step up the effort to every day since I'm not feeling the pain as intensely as I did that first day.

Although I do technically have net access now, unless I have an overwhelming thought or a serious life event to record, I think I'll continue my break from the internet in the spirit of this newfound freedom. I guess I'll be back whenever...