So lately my laptop has been annoying me.
Not the laptop itself. My machine is a nice little Toshiba I bought a few years ago with a chunk of first quarter money; it runs Red Hat Linux, has all the upgrades and customizations I need and is pretty well tied in to the rest of the house network. Even when I’m working in the office – sitting at my desk, in front of the two big flatscreen monitors that serve as my office workstation display – the laptop is still folded open in front of them. The laptop is a trusty friend. It’s the thing hanging off the laptop that’s been annoying me: my portable hard drive that contains all the business files, connected to the laptop via USB cable. Wherever the laptop goes, there’s the hard drive, hanging off the end and looking for a place to comfortably rest while I’m working.
So anyway, I got tired of messing with it and tucking it out of the way. We got down to Office Depot to pick up some early year tax deductions and I bought some heavy duty velcro tape. Some tape on the laptop, some tape on the underside of the hard drive, a little extra tape for a cable restraint.. and TADA! The hard drive and USB cable are now mounted securely and snugly to the lid of my laptop! And the best part is, if and when I want to unmount it, it’s velcro!
It appeals to the geek in me, velcro’ing things to my laptop. Now I’m looking at the digital recorder and the office phone. Contemplating what I can velcro to the office monitors. To the office white board.
I could probably velcro something to the cat. It’d be an easy way to keep his meds handy, and we still have plenty of this stuff left.
Sunday morning we decided to take a short road trip to nearby Knight’s Ferry, a local Gold Rush town that is now a charming little historical side spot along the Stanislaus River. We’d gone out to do some site research for some upcoming writing projects. Brought the dog, the digital recorder, a handful of things.. and of course we brought along the GPS, suctioned to the windshield and cabled to the car’s lighter. The cable runs down the dash and over and around.
I looked at the cable, thinking. “You know hon – I know the perfect way to keep that cable out of the way.”
“SHUT. UP. IF. YOU. WANT. TO. LIVE.”
“We can strap it right to the side like this..”
“I’m serious.”
“We’ve got plenty left.”
“God give me strength.”