I may as well outsource

Late last week I was all psyched to settle in and produce more content so that there would be more of me to judge or love unconditionally, whichever. I figured a little more on style, a soupçon on midlife crises, and a smidge on my strategies for world peace would provide the proverbial something for everyone.

But then my 4,200-in-computer-years setup, the one with lots of cough bootleg cough ancient and expensive-to-replace design software, decided to go all Desktop in a Coma on me. I briefly wondered if I should see this as a non-spam message from the universe [SHUT IT PLS THX] before determining of course I should see it that way.

Intergalactic communication aside, I do in fact need a computer to work and do whatever the online equivalent of hobnobbing about potential work may be (ok yes “e-networking”…my bleeding eyeballs and I aren’t total Luddites). So one might think I was a little unsettled by hitting the power button over and over and OVER to no avail.

But as someone who lives and dies by all those great articles about backing things up methodically (storing alphabetically by subject matter) and how to prioritize and maintain emergency slush funds

O WAIT

Right: despite being a Gemini I can’t get any aspect of my personalities to act in ways even remotely in-case-of-Armaggedon-y. However, I am not entirely unprepared for this crisis, having read—and if crumbling memory serves written—many Before Your Unsettling Doctor Visit brochures. I figure radiologist, computer surgeon, same difference, right? So enter Mr Vix, stage left, to serve as my Designated Listener. And my Chief Chloroformer.

Much talk of what technical disasters they might find when they open her up ensued; risks were detailed; a tummy tuck and brain augmentation offered. Unfortunately turning my G4 into a cougar would, in addition to robbing her of her old-school charm, render me unable to do what I need to do with her.

[And now that I’ve gone down the anthropomorphic road that last sentence reads really pervy but given what people ACTUALLY do with their computers I’m not going to sweat it.]

So now, since this is not an episode of ER, I wait for FREAKING EVER to find out if her circuits have enough juice in her to keep slowly whirring or if she goes off to be cannibalized and turned into some earth-saving or -destroying thing by the BabyGenius with whom I was interfacing.

And instead of renting a computer for the next two weeks of limbo and thus pissing away $200, I decided it made intellectual and logistical sense to throw a laptop on my credit card and go all CABLE FREE ME for the first time ever.

As my comfort zone is broke but debt-free, I admit I had to think about whether I could rationalize my (tax-deductible!) purchase. Luckily I’m a champion rationalizer, so I was doing pretty well with my decision until I sashayed by Mr Vix,  balancing my new computer on the tip of one finger, and he implied I was a spendthrift.

Since I didn’t blow him off like any sane-but-loving partner would, I guess I do feel a bit guilty about getting a new computer when technically my old one MAY still work. But that emotion is like, such a downer? And unproductive since hell no I’m not repentant. I’m thinking it makes perfect guns-vs-butter sense to pay someone to feel guilty for me. Maybe I’ll try to remember where I stuck my neatly-labelled Use in Case of Enabling Emergency envelope and see if there’s anything left in it…or better yet, maybe I’ll try to find someone who’ll take plastic.