Ding Dong, The Brick is Dead.

It's true. After years of long and faithful service, The Brick is beyond resuscitation. And I do mean years. For a laptop, The Brick was like that old dude in the Guinness book of world records who lived off yogurt and goats' milk his whole life. Seriously, The Brick is like 114 in laptop years. I think he's 9 or even 10 in people years. He was given to me in 2000 or 2001, and even then, he was a hand-me-down from my boss.

He was practically state of the art at the time. He had a docking station, so I used him at home and at work, toting him hither and yon in a stylish, if clunky, Dell laptop case. This was quite convenient for my boss, what with all those extra hours. Overtime? What is this, the States?

The Brick went about his duties, sitting proudly in his docking station, drawing oohs and ahhs from my buddies working for other subcontractors, still chained to their desktop towers. But that was another era. A time of floppy drives, hard-wired Ethernet connections, and 256MB of RAM. A time when Windows 98 was still kicking ass and taking names, and a GB was just a twinkle in some techie's eye.

In recent days, The Brick plodded along, with his old version of Explorer and his chunky plug-in wireless card, fans blowing hell bent for metal. Plugging in a flash drive caused him to warn me that I was about to use a USB 2.0 device with a USB-Methuselah port. Photos eventually had to be stored on an external hard drive. Also USB 2.0. iTunes was out of the question. But he bravely chugged along even as new computers took up residence for the Offspring, each more advanced than the last.

My frequent outbursts of frustration and yes, even rage, at his sluggish ways, his tiffs with the wireless router, his short memory, and the death of his battery didn't phase him. He just kept plodding along. Well, unless he shut down or refused to connect, but hey, he tried.

He outlasted The Bohemian's laptop, new to her in 2005. And I'd still put him up against that Vista crap on Male Offspring's flashy machine, any day. (Yes, even dead, I'd put him up against Vista.)

So, no, I haven't been blogging, checking emails, or twittering. The Brick has finally given up the ghost, and I am without technology. Reduced to watching bad TV and (gasp) reading books. Call it a mourning period. Or call it being cash-strapped after the damn Roof Debaucle of 2008. Whatever. I am working on procuring a new computer - not that any new machine, with its megabytes and glossy widescreen could ever truly replace The Brick, but my blogging career is suffering, and I feel cut off from the information highway. I never realized how many questions I pose to the Oracle of the Googles every day until The Brick's untimely death. Well, I guess it wasn't really untimely, but you get my meaning.

Please keep The Brick in your thoughts, as he journeys to the next phase of the cyber realm. May he have Explorer 8, many gigs of RAM, and USB 2.0 in the afterworld. Rest in peace, my boxy, recalcitrant friend ... your work here is done.

As for me, never fear, I'm sure I'll have much to bitch about. One word: Vista.