But then again, who does?

[sovay]

Bertie Owen aten't dead.

A can of compressed air is not a panacaea, but it does a power of good to a six-year-old laptop in a house with two cats. I had to rebuild my iTunes library; at the moment that seems to be the worst of it. There are decisions to be made, but not this second. We're fighting the good fight against planned obsolescence, he and I.

Comments

[yhlee]

\o/

[sovay]

\o/

This machine has the most amazing powers of recovery of any computer I have ever known.

Nice icon!

[umadoshi]

Huzzah!

[sovay]

Huzzah!

Thank you!

[movingfinger]

Probably "Blow Bertie Owen" should be a recurring calendar item to keep him in good health.

[sovay]

Probably "Blow Bertie Owen" should be a recurring calendar item to keep him in good health.

"Replace Bertie Owen's hard drive" is also on the docket.

[edit] I don't disagree about the more frequent blowouts, but since it requires partly dismantling the laptop (it's not possible to reach the fan otherwise), I'm also planning to limit the cats' access to my office when I'm not in it.

[movingfinger]

When my laptop (not that old) was recently disassembled for keyboard replacement, the air intake for the fans was clogged by a small line of felt made of cat hair. I intend to take the back off---that's easy enough if you mind the placement of the screws, which are of different sizes---and remove the felt a couple times a year now, as the fan was running a heck of a lot and after that cleanout it ran far less.

[sovay]

I intend to take the back off---that's easy enough if you mind the placement of the screws, which are of different sizes---and remove the felt a couple times a year now, as the fan was running a heck of a lot and after that cleanout it ran far less.

I appreciate the recommendation. I do feel as though you are giving me advice on something which I have just done, have in fact done many times before, and have just explained that I don't want to do very often. Among other reasons, Bertie Owen's case is slightly sprung, which eventually caused enough internal stress to kill the CD/DVD drive, and the fewer times I have to remove and replace the back, the better.

[movingfinger]

No, not advice, just thinking out loud. Yours having a similar problem hints at a trend.

But in further thought, I've realized that this is the laptop that the cat used to sleep beside (she lived on the desk into her old age, and had her final seizure there, poor little animal) and it probably is less likely to bulk up there now that I have less ambient cat hair in my life.

My big concern about anything with the newish MacBooks is stripping the screws...it is too easy to get a wrong screw in a socket!

Is yours a 13" aluminum?

[kore]

....man, I have two cats, who shed a lot. //glances nervously at laptop

[sovay]

....man, I have two cats, who shed a lot.

Compressed air is seriously your friend!

[kore]

YAAAAAAAAAAY Go Bertie! Perhaps the spirit of JARVIS is re-animating him.

[sovay]

Go Bertie! Perhaps the spirit of JARVIS is re-animating him.

Hee. I'll tell him. It may cheer him up.

[skygiants]

OH GOOD I AM GLAD. He lives, he dies, he lives again!

[sovay]

He lives, he dies, he lives again!

He's kind of scratched up now, but we can work with the eternal and chrome!

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

[sovay]

Hooray!

I'm very happy!

[rosefox]

I'm so glad to hear it!

[sovay]

I'm so glad to hear it!

I know eventually there will come a day when something happens to this computer that it cannot survive, but so far we've been through battery replacement, keyboard death, power cord swap, hard drive meltdown, and Bertie Owen is still here. This laptop is a survivor.

[rosefox]

Bravo, mighty little laptop. :)

[gwynnega]

Yay Bertie!

[sovay]

Yay Bertie!

I have never been this attached to a computer before. The stubbornness definitely has something to do with it.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

May he have more lives than Barleycorn.

Nine

[sovay]

May he have more lives than Barleycorn.

I almost said in this post that if he kept up this shuttling between the underworld and the upper, I was going to start calling him Namtar, but he is so very definitely a Bertie Owen, I couldn't go through with it.

[ethelmay.livejournal.com]

Is he named for someone? I keep feeling I should know.

[sovay]

Is he named for someone? I keep feeling I should know.

He's named for a combination of George VI (Albert Frederick Arthur George, "Bertie") and Owen Pugh, the latter being a character in Ursula K. Le Guin's "Nine Lives." He acquired the name in 2012, when it was discovered that, contrary to the specs of his make and model—and the expectations of the Apple Genius Bar—he had only one fan instead of the normal two. I had recently learned that George VI had a pneumonectomy late in life, while Owen started out with only one lung:

"Think a bit, Martin bach. What's this cloning for? To repair the human race. We're in a bad way. Look at me. My IIQ and GC are half this John Chow's. Yet they wanted me so badly for the Far Out Service that when I volunteered they took me and fitted me out with an artificial lung and corrected my myopia. Now if there were enough good sound lads about would they be taking one-lunged short-sighted Welshmen?"

"Didn't know you had an artificial lung."

"I do then. Not tin, you know. Human, grown in a tank from a bit somebody; cloned, if you like. That's how they make replacement organs, the same general idea as cloning, but bits of pieces instead of whole people. It's my own lung now, whatever."

So the laptop was promptly designated Bertie Owen and remains the only computer I've ever named and I suspect it contributes to the emotional attachment, but so does the fact that he has survived more near-death and arguably death experiences than any other machine of mine. I'm not at all sure what goes on, but I hope he keeps doing it.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's a prayer answered. So relieved to hear it.

[sovay]

That's a prayer answered. So relieved to hear it.

Me, too. Thank you.

[kenjari.livejournal.com]

Yay! What a relief.

[sovay]

Yay! What a relief.

It is!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yes! :)

[sovay]

Yes!

So much better than the alternative.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

I need to redo my library as well. Been holding off. I am glad Bertie Owen responded so well.

[sovay]

I am glad Bertie Owen responded so well.

Thank you. So am I!

If it helps, my entire library did come back.

[gaudior.livejournal.com]

Yay! He lives!

[sovay]

Yay! He lives!

He is an amazing computer.