If you’ve read this blog with any frequency you’ll be aware that I like technology. No, I’m not the guy with every new device in hand the day it comes out. I’m not the guy that stands outside of computer stores the night before with strangers in the rain waiting to get my hands on the next product someone spoke about from above a turtleneck. I don’t even have a smartphone. So, you’re wondering, how can I be a technology lover? Well, I really enjoy computers. I learned an entirely new OS and starting teaching myself programming languages when I needed to. I read so many technology blogs that I’m always aware of new software and I install so much software that I either break my system every week tweaking it or I do a fresh install every six months or so on my main machine. Also, I install a new operating system on my other (much older) machines every week. My interest in technology is mostly in software (what it does) not in hardware (pretty boxes in different sizes and colors with buttons or touch screens).
At any rate, we’ve been using my wife’s laptop as a sort of entertainment system for a while now. Because we’ve been baby-proofing our home as our son progressed (when he can walk things needed to be moved away from him, when he could reach they needed to be moved higher, etc.) we haven’t been able to make all of the necessary changes in time. This past week my wife’s computer died. We think our son poured water on it or pounded it with some object. He’s done those things in front of us before but he’s sneaky. It wasn’t a hard drive failure (something we would have been prepared for because we back up) but it was something more damaging to the device — the motherboard. It’s kind of like losing the transmission in your car: you might as well just get a new car. As we’d been planning on getting a computer for this purpose sometime in the next year we just moved up the date and purchased something that can do what we need it to do, fit on a bookshelf, and be more easily (and cost-effectively) upgraded and repaired (a desktop) in the future. Just try and get this one, son. (Forget I said that, I take that back — please don’t break it).