The day before I was to leave for ConnectiCon my cat barfed on my laptop.
I discovered it moments before I was to log on to play my weekly TTRPG with my friends. The top was shut so most of the barf remained on the outside of the machine, but just enough seeped down the back and into the vents and over the power button. It would not turn on.
My wife attempted to clean it that night and while I was away at ConnectiCon. She unscrewed most of what she could to get to the barf that had slipped inside, but we couldn’t get everything taken apart because he lacked the proper tools. So we waited until I came home to try again. Still nothing.
I took the eight year old machine to get cleaned and fixed, but it was no use. Not only were there some other unfixable hardware problems that arose but my wife had inadvertently snapped a few pieces that kept the machine together properly. It was time to say goodbye to the old workhorse.
That old laptop served me quite faithfully over these eight years. I helped Garth color several pages of Star Power, laid out all the books for Snout’s adventures, played some memorable games when I stilled gamed on PC, and generally kept me connected to the world at large.
In its later years it was running low on memory, crashed a few times during heavy tasks, and occasionally made strange noises when I booted it up. I knew it was on its last legs and I didn’t use it as much as I used to (I do most of my work on my iPad these days), and it seemed the last straw was being barfed on. Still, it was a faithful machine to the very end, and I’d grown accustomed to its many quirks.
RIP to my laptop. You were a good old workhorse.