It is my sad duty to inform you of the unfortunate but not unexpected passing of one of my closest associates and longime silent, creative collaborator, the Compaq Presario, known to those closest to him as “my computer.”
Compaq was a trusted companion who would only occasionally flake out and cause me grief. But he has been a part of PopCult since day one and performed the amazing task of helping me to edit over two hundred episodes of the Radio Free Charleston video show, over seventy episodes of the RFC MINI SHOW, over a hundred audio episodes of Radio Free Charleston, and all of the other video and audio projects that I’ve worked on for the past fourteen years. Almost every PopCult post and piece of art in this blog was created with his help.
He did this all with a mere dual core CPU and Windows XP operating system. Compaq lived a good life, one that I hope was made richer by our creative collaborations. It was a full life, much longer than the average desktop computer. Compaq soldiered on in the face of later, more exotic operating systems like VISTA, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10. He was more than a mere tool. He was a magical box into which I poured my heart and soul so that I could watch art and music and video come out.
I will endeavor to keep my memories of the good times we had together and not these last few months as a degenerative CPU disorder afflicted him and turned him into a mere shadow of his former self. This computer was an underdog. a diminutive powerhouse who created more with a dual core and 2 GB of RAM than a hundred MAC Air Pro Platinum models.
I have to admit, I am taking the loss pretty hard. I’m doing my best to soldier on, editing programs for The AIR on my wife’s laptop and posting to PopCult from my laptop, but it does get overwhelming at times. I miss my reliable little buddy.
Life does go on and I will be spending the next week or two teaching a new computer, hopefully, to be as reliable and give me as many creative options as my beloved Compaq did.
Compaq Presario was preceded in death by my 1998 Hewlett Packard. He is survived by two Toshiba laptops, a Sanyo netbook and a brand new Samsung Galaxy J7, upon which he doted. At Compaq’s request, there will be no formal memorial service, as he has donated his body to computer science. The family asks that donations be made to the Old Computers Home, or Digital Hospice.
One of the best memorials I’ve ever read.