Year One
Wednesday, June 18th, 2008It was the motherboard. Again. This time it wasn’t retired as a Schiavo, though. This time, all the software was still there, in original form, and I could work with it; it was just tedious and complicated and mostly impossible to get at. Not a Schiavo. A Hawking. So hello, again, American Express Gold Card Extended Warranty hotline. The Toshiba Hawking, which replaced the Gateway Schiavo, which replaced the Dell Schiavo, has been replaced by a new Toshiba. One hopes this one is someday consigned to a less unkindly-named fate.
By the way, two big thumbs up, once again, to the AmEx Gold Card Electronics Warranty Extension program.
When it initially blew, it was freezing on boot, two-thirds of the way through the very first screen. I consulted Nate Dogg and the Mongoose, both of whom were helpful but not hopeful. Acting on an offhand suggestion from one of them, and after I called the warranty people — who told me I needed a repair diagnostic and estimate from someone reputable who takes American Express, the first of which ruled out the Mongoose while the second ruled out Nate Dogg — I made my way to Best Buy, where I bought a delightful little machine. I removed the hard drive from the Hawking, plugged it into the machine, and plugged the machine into Luna’s laptop, which treated it like an external hard drive, allowing me to grab four or five things that had been updated since the last backup, plus delete a bunch of personal information and pornographic unsuitables before I and the laptop went off to find a reputable repair shop that accepted American Express. (Money-saving tip: A slightly unscrupulous person could conceivably return the hard-drive-reader to Best Buy after using it, citing the thing’s failure to perform as hoped. They will not require you to specify what you had hoped it would do that it did not.)
Saturday, prior to going to Fry in search of my fourth laptop since 2005, we joined Burlap Condoms, among others, at the home of Nate Dogg and P-Funk for grilled meats and merriment. I was armed with a question: How big an outlier is three laptops with bad motherboards? Nate Dogg’s Dad merrily suggests that perhaps I am electrocuting them with my fingers, and I should wear a ground wire or something. Nate asks a few questions, and we determine that my case is unusual, and move on. Then one of the neighbors arrives, and I am told to direct my question to her, as she is a computer engineer. So I repeat my question: Is three dead laptops, deceased at fourteen month intervals, all of bad motherboards, lottery-ticket unlikely, merely weird, or is it just me.
She replies, “Actually, it probably is you. It’s electrostatic discharge. We have some people with that at work. They have to wear a groundwire while they work or they screw everything up.”
Nate Dogg Senior looks staggered.
I say, “Seriously? This is a thing?”
And she says, “Oh, yeah. Some people carry a charge or something. Causes long-term damage to sensitive electronics. It can be a real problem.”
I am stunned to the core.
And here we come to the extraordinary news I promised you. Because as she is saying this, it dawns on everyone what we have just learned. If you get right down to what she is saying, there can be no debate as to the life-changing magnitude of her words. I can shoot small amounts of electricity from my fingertips. The electricity that shoots from my fingertips can, with regular use over a long period of time, render complicated consumer electronics frustratingly useless.
As Luna put it, “Hee hee hee! You have a power!”
I have a power.
I am a person of super.
to be continued…
