Computer Guru And Cupcake Godsend

In The Panhandle And In The Basement

Since the development of photography, a subsequent, disheartening phenomenon has followed: losing one’s photos.  I’d wager this frustration first began when David Bachrach barely managed to snap a blurry shot of the sixteenth President before he finished invoking his forefathers four score and seven years prior.  Perhaps we humans thought such irritation at our inability to capture and preserve moments for our family’s posterity when the modern era converted from film to digital images.  Wrong.  A mere handful of days into my vacation, when I had strategically and deliberately saved each day’s photos to my computer to preserve coveted space on my SD card, my device unexpectedly succumbed to the crashing catastrophe of digital proportions and failed to preserve the images of my experiences to date.  Curses!  I practically can hear the shock of the photographer at Gettysburg as Lincoln takes his seat.

Surprisingly, in the quaint town of Coeur d’Alene, after coping with my mildly horrific loss for twenty-four hours, I wander past the lower level of what used to be city hall.  To my joy and delight, I spy the timely establishment of the Computer Guru, and return to fetch my ailing laptop.  Hope springs anew, but the sad truth remains that my photos will not be salvageable.  I begin to accept the fate of the lost images, and I sadly contemplate how best to drown my sorrows.  Thankfully, the adorable hamlet into which I have stumbled provides an immediate cure.  Sharing office space in the basement of the Old City Hall, a cupcake shop beckons me to release my virtual defeat and accept the solace of the moment with a bit of Guinness and chocolate baked into a paper-lined, over-sized, sweetly-frosted remedy for what ails my computer.  I acquiesce.

Of, By, And For

I accept my defeat.  I move forward.  I will let me laptop be held in repose until my return from my vacation and then I will find a solution to breathe life into its monitor.  Now that I am home, I find myself starting from scratch, hoping to be struck by lightning and illuminated into finding a computer repair source that provides me with comfort that sometimes bad things happen to good machines.  I flounder unsuccessfully, wistfully wallowing in the loss of my digital accomplice (see “My Muse” from December 2012).  Were I to find a golden pot of surprises at the end of the computer-repair rainbow, a specialty shop that could restore my faith in electronics, as well as restore my hard drive, would it ever equal the sweet magic of a computer guru juxtaposed in a cozy corner with cupcakes?  Doubtful.

Why reinvent the wheel?  Why struggle in my search for netbook nirvana when I have already identified a cosmic corner where cupcakes and computers live harmoniously adjacent to one another?  I pack my lifeless electronics into bubble wrap, hoping it will arrive at its destination, forty-seven states away from me, with enough functioning bits and pieces to be restored to its previous glory.  I do not worry needlessly.   I know my computer, once safely at its destination, will be embraced in capable hands.  That Ray, as I affectionately dub my laptop, will arrive in a familiar setting, will begin to heal to its pre-vacation stature, and that if all else fails, it will rest in peace next to the sweet smell of cupcakes.  I solemnly believe that the Computer Guru of the Panhandle, by the cupcake shop, and for the sake of my laptop, shall not perish in its efforts.