the laptop situation

All credit to Tim (the Friendly Humanist) for the post you’re now reading.

Since the demise of my laptop at the end of last week, I’ve been as helpless as that catastrophe tends to render you. Unable to email, write, read, or indeed blog from home, I’ve had to resort to frequenting the department at all sorts of odd hours and often after having been working off-campus all day on other things.*

Into this scene of devastation Tim has kindly stepped with the offer of a machine he doesn’t currently need. This generosity was in the midst of his viva preparation, when he could easily have been forgiven for having too many other things on his mind than laptop sharing.

So the immediate effects of the catastrophe have been massively mitigated – and not only so, but I can proudly announce that this post is brought to you from a machine running Linux. I understand that it’s the most user-friendly version available, and that the cognitive leap from Windows isn’t particularly huge, but it still feels a wee bit special. Thanks Tim!

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* There are some obvious silver linings though – not least that my thesis was safely written and revised, and that I had enough time to make a last backup before everything went completely dead. And that being forced to be away from home to use a computer effectively stopped me from burning too much midnight oil for a few days. In the grand scheme of things, I can’t really complain. Remind me to revisit the Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment the next time things get too crotchety here.

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