I consider myself to be rather geeky, which should come as no surprise to anyone who’s known me for longer than five or so minutes. While I’ve never written code, run a server, or other such things that would instantly get me a class specialization of Alpha Geek; I know enough to be able to play around with a computer with little fear of totally ruining things. I think my laptop, Sycorax, really embodies that and provides an outlet for my geek tendencies.
Named after the unseen witch from Shakespeare’s the Tempest (to keep with a naming scheme established by my iMac Oberon and my iPod Puck) and the identically-named aliens from Doctor Who, even the name is geeky. Plus it has an x in it. X is an awesome letter.
In the just-under-a-year that I’ve owned this computer, It’s currently on it’s fifth different OS. It’s run Ubuntu, Vista, Windows 7, Leopard, and, as of yesterday, openSuSE. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve formatted the hard drive in it. A few months ago, with the help of a service manual found online, a really good reseller, and a rather handy screwdriver, I replaced the screen after the original had come down with a rather nasty case of having a giant crack in it.
As frustrating as it can get at times when things aren’t working out quite right (and the sharks are circling), there’s nothing like the elation I feel when I finally get some problem or another solved, and have a working laptop again until I decide to try something else.
Davmopædia 