I am a Connoisseur, I am not a geek

My laptop at work has been on its last legs for entirely too long. Over the last three years, I've had memory cards replaced (twice), the hard drive replaced (twice) and just recently, the keyboard has started to go for the third time.

I've mentioned to my boss over the years that a new laptop would be a 'nice' thing to have. Not 'necessary', just...'nice'. Nice as in "It'd sure be nice to have a laptop that had a battery with more than 3 minutes of life in it!" or "It'd sure be nice to work on a laptop that I could have TWO big files open at once!" or even "Good god! YOU try to lift it up. Can YOU imagine hauling that rock through security at the airport? When the nice security person asks me to turn it on, what do you suggest I do, explain that 'I'd like to, but I have no battery power...' or should I just get used to being suspected as a possible terrorist with C4 packed in his laptop instead of electronics?" (Should you find yourself in a similar plight, I wouldn't suggest using that last one.)

I didn't realize it, but all that frustration was Small Time trying. I wasn't serious yet. I hadn't done my due diligence. I was just pissed that I had to work on a laptop that was the musical equivalent of disco.

In January, I finally started to pay attention to my laptop. It was hard not to pay attention to it with its fan making a growling noise that sounded like it hadn't been fed in a while. It was time to enter the Big Time.

I sat down and wrote my boss a professional e-mail requesting a new laptop. I included the date of all the repairs and what had already been repaired. I included the charge for all those repairs as well as the repairs that I was going to need, again. My laptop wasn't pretty, it was in fact, expensive and it didn't want to play anymore. After talking to him about my professionally worded laptop e-mail, I found that I now had a laptop champion. Someone who would say to the big boss "Yeah, it's a piece of shit, he needs a new one." But he'd say it professionally. I was on my way to Laptop Nirvana. Yay Boss! Go, go, go!

It took four months. Four months of more professional e-mails, a technical inspection where the lab-tech took one look at it in my hands and said "You need a new one" and re-entered the guts of some other unfortunate's P.O.S.* computer. During this time my laptop continued to growl, reminding me that I too could be a food source, both of my shift keys continued to not work at all (the CAPS button makes a working but poor substitute), and several keys worked too well (repeating three times when tapped once) or not at all.

BUT

I got my new laptop yesterday. It's gorgeous. It's sleek. It weighs less than a feather. When I look at it, I see Cindy Crawford, Jennifer Alba and Teri Hatcher. It makes me want to go away with it to a tropical island that has free booze and a good wireless internet connection.

OK, fine. I may be a geek. But at least I know what I like.
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* P.O.S. = Piece of shit