Reminiscing

Posted on 12th March, 2005 at 10:42pm by joel

So I did a little surgery on my iMac today. It wasn’t anything major. In fact, it was a procedure that I’d successfully completed at least half a dozen times over the years and involved a process that I’d accomplished far more times than that. Yet there was something about this particular time that felt a little different, or at least conjured up thoughts and memories that normally aren’t conjured up when working inside a computer.

See, all I did was replace the hard drive with a new one���which I guess would qualify as major surgery if one were to categorize hardware updates as “major” or “minor” or whathaveyou. And yes, the process of taking that little machine apart and pulling the hard drive is the something I’ve done at least half a dozen times for various reasons. And yes (again), the mere act of digging into the guts of an original iMac is nothing new for me. But I digress…

The reason I had to replace the hard drive is very good one. Disk Utility was telling me that the S.M.A.R.T. status was “failing.” You may be far more adventurous a soul than I, but when I see that my hard drive is “failing,” I consider that a problem and find a solution as soon as possible. (Confession time: I discovered that it was failing about four months ago. Shhh…)

So what’s the big deal about replacing the hard drive and when am I going to talk about all these special thoughts and memories? I’m glad you asked.

I installed a 40GB Maxtor hard drive in my iMac waaaaay back in 2001 during spring semester my sophomore year at St. John’s. Up until that point, I’d been living with the stock 6GB drive and moving up to a 40GB drive was total geek porn (don’t pretend like you don’t understand). Now, nearly 4 years later, the Maxtor had finally given up the ghost, which in reality wasn’t all bad. I’d stuffed the thing to the gills and had less than 3GB free between the two partitions. The drive still functioned just fine, despite the failing grade and one small bout with data corruption that I encountered last fall (a dead giveaway to a failing drive, if I’ve ever completely ignored one). Despite that, as part of a never-ending quest for more geek porn and in an effort to keep from losing almost 6 years’ of data, I procured a nice 80GB drive [three weeks ago] and [finally] did the swap today.

As I was tinkering around, I couldn’t help but think back to that semester of college: the dorm room on Pat 4 with the view over the lake, the absolute insanity of the weekends, the trip to Virginia, the new friendships, the failed relationship… And as I was digging around in the guts of that computer, all those memories flooded back and I smiled a great smile. Then I thought of all the other times I had taken apart that iMac: three times freshman year to upgrade and swap RAM, once more sophomore year for RAM and once for that hard drive, once junior year for the HARMONi processor upgrade, multiple times this past summer when trying to get my other iMac working by exchanging parts and sharing pieces. I thought of all the people I’ve met and the things I’ve done and experienced. I thought about taking the iMac back and forth between college and home. I tried to count up the number of operating systems that have been installed and lost count. I was geeking out and loving every moment.

Should I be reminiscing like this over���and because of���a silly computer? While I fully acknowledge the fact that it is nothing more than an inanimate object and tool, it really is more than that. It is the first computer I ever purchased on my own. Of all the crap I’ve accumulated over the years, it is one of the few things that has been with me since I arrived at St. John’s in the fall of ’99 and began that “next big stage” of my life. It is “just” an iMac, but it has a life-story of it’s own. To start, it’s nearly a six-year-old computer���a dinosaur in the world of technology, yet it is running the newest version of Mac OS X and will be blessed with subsequent versions for as long as I can get them installed. It has survived the demotion from being my primary computer, but it happily does a great job serving music to the stereo and essential files to my iBook.

However, most importantly, it reminds me of the best days, weeks, months, years of my life and that’s worth far more than the cost of the hardware. If it takes digging into the guts of a Strawberry rev. D iMac to conjure up those memories, than so be it. I’ll schedule it for a cleaning in a few months or so. After all, it was awfully dusty inside…

Filed under: Apple, ramblings

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