The Demise of Fred II

A terrible thing happened yesterday. My good friend Fred II died a most horrible death. I am devastated.

Let me explain further. You know when you get a computer there’s an option to give it a name? Well for some reason my Dad called the family desktop computer George. I was the first one in the household to get a laptop back in the day and as a sort of brother to George I called the new laptop Fred. Five years later I replaced the laptop with Fred II. So that’s who Fred II is. Don’t worry, I haven’t quite lost a close friend. But it’s still very frustrating.

Fred II was not very well towards the last of his days. A little message continuously popped up telling me the drive was about to drive. I didn’t entirely trust it but I did my best to avert catastrophe by attempting to back up all my files. Except that the program I had to back-up my files was set up with an ancient family e-mail address which nobody nobody has used for some time now. Neither myself or anyone else in the family could suggest what the password was. I tried everything anyone could think of but no password would work. Of course I went to turn the laptop on yesterday and it promptly told me the drive had now failed. Basically it had died in its sleep. I’d not been able to back-up a single thing, which was really annoying. All my past assignments are gone, though at least I have them in hard copy. All my photos have gone- I can get most of them off Facebook but there’s some I will never get back. All my music is gone. That means I have to re-download all my purchases, which at least iTunes lets you do now, and put all the CDs back on, which will take forever cos there’s loads. Perhaps the worst thing is that everything I’ve written of my novel so far, ten thousand words odd, has been lost. This really upset me and I’m not sure what I will do. I could perhaps re-write the whole thing but that would take a lot of time and effort and I doubt I could make it as good again. Maybe it was meant to be a failure…

With no hope for Fred II and no chance of getting it fixed or replaced under warranty, I soon realised the only option was to replace it. I mean, I can’t live without a laptop! Well OK I could, but don’t want to and I have to write an assignment. So I headed to the only electronics shop in the area and bought a new one. How spontaneous is that! Choosing one was actually really easy. There was no trouble selecting a new one. I fairly down with the technological stuff and I knew what a good price would be. I ended up selecting a funky HP laptop which is almost exactly the same colour as Fred II.

Actually buying the laptop was much more complicated. It involved selecting what extra stuff I needed and a man working out how much that would all cost and then patronisingly telling me how to work things. In the end I got a ridiculously good deal. Mainly because the salesperson said he’d pretend to be a manager and give me extra money off. I’m not sure it was entirely legit but it’s the company’s problem, not mine. Though I got a bargain, it was still a huge amount of money to spend in one go. I learnt for the first time my credit card has a limit on it. I’m not sure what that limit is but it’s less than the amount my new laptop cost. Still, I paid for it and am now sat here typing on Fred III. Fred III is super fast and is generally pretty brilliant. Apart from the fact that my files aren’t stored on it!

^{Fred III looks like this. Except there’s something different on the screen right now: these words that I’m typing!}

So, what other exciting things have I been up to? Well I accompanied my housemates (well most of them) on a lovely night down the pub. We had dinner out, which wasn’t exactly the best quality food. You can tell this when the food nearly arrives at your table before you get back from ordering it. Still, it was edible enough. We had a laugh about all manner of things, although we were a little overwhelmed by people crowding round the table next to us. As time went by the pub filled up and we gradually were consumed by a sea of people. There was one particularly large and loud guy on the table next to us who was quite annoying. Eventually we moved on to a quieter pub, although there was a loud and quite drunk middle-aged woman there to destroy the atmosphere. Still, we had a lovely time which ended a lovely week. This has been the bets week I have had in a long, long time. It reminds me of last year at uni when every week was like this and also gives me hope that my third year at uni will be considerably better than my 2nd year has been. Unfortunately my BFF housemate Josh has now left for the summer, leaving behind a potato for me. As you do. I shall miss Josh. But I’m so busy over the next week I don’t think I’ll have too much time to think about it!

There’s all sorts of fantastic posts coming up over the next few days so stay tuned for lots of fun!