Funeral for a Friend

A computer is like life itself; you tend to take it for granted until it’s snuffed out. The old Dell desktop finally gave up the ghost. Imagine what life would be like if you suddenly and unexpectedly had your computer snatched away from you. The horror. I saw the blue screen of death and the next thing I knew I was in Best Buy being cradled and consoled by a chubby member of the Geek Squad. It could have been repaired, but the cost was approaching that of a new computer and the thing was already six years old. And so it goes. It’s the circle of life! That chubby bastard is charging me $160 to have the data transferred from the dead Dell to the newly-born HP. There's nothing sadder than losing an old friend forever.

The biggest heartache is not the fact that we’ll have to waste untold hours acclimating ourselves to the power-sucking horror show that is Windows Vista, it’s the fact that I can no longer attend a critically important rare book auction taking place on Thursday at Bloomsbury. The assets that were earmarked for the auction have been deferred to Best Buy. I already have a paddle in hand and had my eye on a snappy first edition of Wait Until Spring, Bandini, by John Fante and The Man Within by Graham Greene but that dream, like the old Dell, is dead, dead, dead.