I do not interject personal notes here, but I must make an exception just this once.

Today I bade farewell to my trusty MacBook 13.3, vintage 2007. His hard drive crashed catastrophically. The repairers at the shop I’ve used since 1993 informed me that, while they could install a replacement for not very much, all my data was recoverable only at ruinous cost.

I remember reading Ernie Pyle’s lament when his typewriter broke while he was covering the Italian campaign. While my writing isn’t within a mile of the finest reporter to come out of World War II (although Ernie didn’t; he was killed on Ie Shima in the Ryukyus, during the Okinawa campaign), I felt his pain.

What to do? I could have installed a “new” hard drive (which Apple Corp hasn’t made in years, but apparently my repairers have a few hidden beneath old pizza boxes) at a nominal cost, and recover my data on the “old” hard drive for the aforesaid ruinous cost, and have a rebuilt and restored, but still obsolete, device, for half the cost of the latest product of The House That Jobs Built, or spring for a new friend with the latest and greatest.

Helps to have a family member who works for The Real Big Apple. Looks like I’m going to acquire a new friend.

Rest in peace, old buddy: it’s been a great trip, lots of laughs. I hope when I go, I go as fast and with few regrets.

Oh yes, I’m writing this blogpost on a computer at work; it’s an HP tower, but it works.