please say a prayer for my laptop

[fyi i am writing this post from the sexy grey/blue dell of my roommate. thanks, ns.]

on friday morning, march 3 i looked over and my laptop had shut herself down. so i plugged her in and booted her up again. she seemed to be fine. then i left her alone for a few minutes while i did a few things in the kitchen. when i came back, she was off again. a strange smoky smell was coming out of the vents in the back. i tried turning her on again. i tried hitting all the keys. nothing.

after many phone calls, many waits on hold to bad music, and the eventual trip down to the mac soho store, i put my laptop in the hands of a mac genius (i'm not making that title up) named peter. even though i have a backup at home (thanks mom and dad for the external hard drive, and thanks mobius for telling me to get one), i still don't trust myself to put it all back on my computer, so i told peter to, if possible, download the contents of my hard drive to a server at the store before sending it out to be repaired.

it was such a difficult day. as much as i keep feeling guilty to comparing the crashing of my computer to losing a person - that is ultimately what i am going through. the metaphor is somewhere between being dumped and losing someone to illness. thoughts in my head: "i should have treated my laptop with more respect. i should have deleted more unneeded files. i should have backed her up more regularly. i shouldn't have dragged her around so much. perhaps then she would be okay now."

another thought that came to my head is that of my being punished for stam overusing my computer. not literally overusing, as in a laptop cannot take that many hours per day (though that is possible), but me, as a person in the world - perhaps i spend too much of my waking hours on my laptop. now that she is gone (temporarily), i have some time to sit and think about her - what do i really need her for? why would i spend so many hours on her? what of that was worthwhile productive work and what was lounging on the couch and playing around, reading blogs, iming, diddling?

as much as this whole thing has been a disaster, i cannot help but view it as a blessing in disguise to remind me that this is a good time to chill out, take a break from dating my laptop, focus on my studies and just make the best of it.

but in the meantime, i ask all of you to learn from my situation...
1. back up your hard drive. a cd is not enough; spend the $100 to get an external hard drive so you can make a rebootable version of your computer. do it today!!!
2. take some time to think about what you really need your computer for. perhaps your daily calendar would be eaisier on paper? perhaps you don't need 5 email accounts? maybe it's time to get some of those photos printed out so you can share the hard copies with family and friends anytime.

...and please please please say a prayer my laptop comes back as good as new. (and that i will deserve to get her back having learned my lesson)

thank you.