Saying goodbye to an old companion

My computer died last week. She revved up, beeped twice and, after a few moments of blue skies, went black. The words I will appeared at upper left. Will what, I don't know. She has done nothing since.

The loss left a hole on my desktop, fringed by a series of cords and cables. Of course, someone is coming to take the desk next week. Shortly thereafter, someone else is coming to take me.

I will go home without her and it will seem strange. Most places I went, so did she. Having her along gave dignity to homeward travel and a sense of continuity between home and school at a time when little else did.

Mostly, of course, she lived on my desktop, trilling when e-mail arrived, broadcasting Red Sox games from far-off Fenway Park and glowing at all hours because I never saw much reason to turn her off.

She was hot, heavy and short on battery life, easily the most expensive thing I owned and worth every penny.

Freshman year was our high point. She was new then, and fast. Everything about her was exciting. By the spring, however, I was spending most of my time at The Daily Pennsylvanian. My room became my crash pad; I saw her only late at night.

I was a man of many computers and of none. Telnet replaced Eudora, contact information moved to my Palm Pilot and document storage moved to the Web. In time, I began writing my papers elsewhere.

Other things were changing as well. High school friendships faded, and so did my need for ICQ. As I found more people to care about, soliloquies gave way to conversations and diary entries grew less frequent. So did my need for Internet porn.

Oh, we still had fun together. There was the time I plugged her modem into the wall of an Atlanta hotel room and ran up several hundred dollars in phone bills because you can't take Penn's Ethernet with you.

And then there was the year I brought her to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's house. Nearly everyone gave her a dirty look, but she stuck with me as I wrote my most important letter -- 14 pages about why I wanted to be the DP's executive editor.

A week later, at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning, the outgoing board called to offer me the job and I shouted so loud that my roommates woke up because I had a bottle of whiskey that I was going to drink, win or lose, and they had promised to help.

That was the beginning of the end for her. I got my own office and the finest Macintosh that money could buy. But the worst was yet to come.

I moved off campus at the beginning of my senior year and was forced to dial in to the Penn modem pool. The change proved a bit much for her. She froze frequently during the 15-minute redial, and her Scandisc side became more pronounced.

I began to cheat on her, running around with a shiny blue-and-white Powerbook clamshell that had everything she no longer did. I don't think she ever did recover once I brought the clamshell home.

I retired from the DP in January, and came home to give her my full attention. She perked up a bit and tried to accept several upgrades, but the effort took everything she had.

And so this, my last column, is the only one not saved on her in a folder called Final Drafts in a section called Words that contained everything I wrote during my four years at Penn.

I close with my thanks to her and to all of you who have walked alongside.

Michelangelo once said, "I saw the angel in the marble, and I set out to carve it free." I think I would add only that the marble was often me.

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