Prepare For Retirement

The ol' laptop is running on its last legs. The monitor contacts are flickering. The battery lasts about ten minutes without being plugged in. The boot-up cycle is about five minutes long, and shutting down takes almost as much time – I literally have to get a book to read while restarting the computer. I can’t watch streaming TV shows. And the power converter shocked my foot last night, making me scream like a little girl.

A talk with the office’s computer consultant this morning confirmed by fear that that the thing is just plain getting old; no laptop is really intended to last more than five years on the outside. Four years of useful life is pretty good, he says. It makes more sense to simply replace it than to keep on trying to fix it, even if he could get the parts.

But I’ll tough it out for a little while longer yet. Christmas is coming. My paycheck for my class is coming. So for now, my share of the discretionary money needs to go to buying tickets to the Packers-Cowboys game next month and otherwise ensuring a good visit with our families in September. That’s more important to me than an LCD display that flickers in and out once in a while.