A fellow slicer posted how he was informed by the maker of her computer that it was no longer covered. He knew nothing was wrong with his computer and it was a marketing ploy, something to get him to buy something bigger! Shinier! Newer! He wisely and humorously ignored it knowing his ” outdated (sorry, I meant to say seasoned friend” was just fine for now.

I wish I could say the same of mine.

I found the receipt, she became mine in 2013. I wasn’t a poor black child but I was, and still am, a far cry from affluent and I never was a tech snob. She was not the newest thing on the market. As a Win7 when the world was fawning over the less than a year old Windows 8, she wasn’t the newest thing on the previous year’s market, but she was more than ready to do what I needed her to do and was new to me. The first time I turned her on and she zoomed to life I knew we were a good match.

But that was in 2013 and with apologies to Barbara Walter – this is 2020.

She was a little for a bit clunky when I finally fed her Windows 8 in 2014, but we worked it out. All the while I was adding new programs and apps and streaming services. I upped her memory, we had our moments of defragg and we checked-disked. Got her a bigger hard drive to move files around. Still, she nearly choked when Microsoft insisted on adding Windows 10 a couple of years ago. I saw the blue screen of death for a moment and my computer life flashed before my eyes, but again, she came through it. She wasn’t champion level anymore, I knew this, but she she still worked out like a contender.

She had been showing more signs of reaching that point since the fall of 2019. But the beginning of the year was the first time she hiccuped in the middle of a file and I lost work. Luckily, I had saved the file recently to an external drive, so it was not a huge loss, about twenty minutes worth of work photoshop work, but it was my first loss. She had begun to loose speed long before then. Having Chrome ask do I want to wait for an application or exit the page had become a regular thing. A few weeks ago I heard the first serious overclocking. The zooming sound a system makes when it’s trying far too hard to do far too much at once. I used to work with computers, I know the difference in sound between a computer that’s I’m hustling, but I got you rush from the I’m getting there, but uh, you gotta give me a min zoom that is too loud and too long.

I am working remotely from home for who knows how long. She does not like the latest apps I installed to to make this happen.And I mean does not like.

Then this past weekend I heard a zoom, a click and a squeak. That is a mechanical failure waiting to happen on the brink of the highest degree. I have no choice. Girl wasn’t getting old, she is old.

“Who you calling old?!” she seemed to say as she glitched, unintentionally giving vercity to the situation.

I was supposed to take two separate trips over the next couple of weeks. Coronavirus put the kibosh on those plans, but it left me with funds to do what I have to.

“You, darling” I sadly said to my beloved system as I pressed Place Order for a new customized new system I configured. “Just hang in there for me a little will ya?”

I’ved duct taped, downloaded, upgraded and “given her all I can, Captain” and she has given me all she can. It long past time I let Della go soft into that dark pixelated night.

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Day 24, of the Slice of Life Writing challenge for 2020 – let’s see how others are slicing it: