The triumphant return of Siddhartha

When I arrived at Smith College in late August of 2002, one of the most exciting things for me was (in addition to the queer community, feminist activism and academics) the new computer I was getting; my mother had gotten a loan so that I could get my very first laptop, a low-end Dell Lattitude. When I got it back to my temporary lodging - we weren’t allowed to move into our official houses yet - I powered it on and started installing software, and was prompted after a short time to enter a name for my laptop. A name? What a strange idea, I remember thinking. I’d read Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha that summer, and for some reason it seemed an appropriate name. My first laptop was Siddhartha, Sid for short.

He (and his extended warranty) served me amazingly well over my four years at Smith. My first year, Big C stepped on the screen and within a day or two I had it replaced, courtesy a super wonderful warranty. Early in the next year, Big C was playing with Sid while I was in training for my new job, and when I got out… I discovered she’d spilled a whole glass of water over the keyboard. We zipped over to tech services and within a week, I had an essentially new keyboard - granted, the memory was wiped clean, but it was still like having a new computer. Sometime in my junior year, I think, Colleen again stepped on the screen - and within a day or two, it was replaced with a new screen.

Last year I finally started to have problems - unfortunately just a month or two after my warranty expired. The screen was - and still is - fine, but Sid’s gotten a little slower in his (old?) age, and the mouse isn’t always so reliable, and by the end of this past summer start-up took about twenty minutes.

But now, my brand new Toshiba (Albert, in case you were wondering) is at the repair shop after only four months of use, for a busted screen, and when I finally started to itch for the internet after about a week, Big C and I eyed Sid warily. Should we even bother? Can we live without the internet for three more days? The answer - obviously - was a resounding no; there are people to be emailed, directions to be gotten, but most importantly, we wondered if our roommates cat was be pregnant and wanted to find “the signs” of feline pregnancy. True to form, Sid’s as reliable - albeit pokey - as ever, causing me to ask myself why I ever thought I should stray from Dell; for all the bad press they’ve been getting, mine served me wonderfully for the past four years, and still work (in a fashion) today.

And yes, the cat is pregnant.