Summer of 2002. I remember that summer quite well. It was the summer I got into the shady world of IRC file sharing.
It all started in the year 2000. I was frequenting internet cafes late at night trying to research universities in the US. while waiting for pages to load, I would chat on channels like #india. Typing to keep with the flow of text taught me useful keyboard skills.
Fast forward to Purdue. I'm sitting around feeling a little homesick and load up good old mIRC to chat.. and a few short chats later, I'm in the #telugu-movies channel. I made myself comfortable there and over the next few months, I exchanged files and made many friends. I also helped a lot of people troubleshoot their computers and networks (thus getting me interested in computers)
End of summer 2002, I decided to build my own computer. I built a massive mini-tower with a giant Antec case I got from newegg. I still remember having paid around 130$ for that case. Over the next 10 years, this faithful case was constantly upgraded with all kinds of cables, motherboards, DVD drives, hard drives, chips, etc. With 4 external fans and 1 CPU fan, it was quite a loud beast. And it was always on in my bedroom. So much so that the day I turned it off when I was moving, I could not sleep for lack of the white noise.
This case has spent more time in my bedroom than any other "her". And she was definitely a "her". With her moody nature and powerful all consuming allure, there was nothing else she could be.
Today, I got a new dell PC. It cost me a fraction of the price I paid for the old one. It runs so silent I can barely hear it. And it can do everything my old beast could do.
So, I stripped out the hard drives, turned her off and carried her out to the garage for eventual disposal.
And just like that, she's gone.
It all started in the year 2000. I was frequenting internet cafes late at night trying to research universities in the US. while waiting for pages to load, I would chat on channels like #india. Typing to keep with the flow of text taught me useful keyboard skills.
Fast forward to Purdue. I'm sitting around feeling a little homesick and load up good old mIRC to chat.. and a few short chats later, I'm in the #telugu-movies channel. I made myself comfortable there and over the next few months, I exchanged files and made many friends. I also helped a lot of people troubleshoot their computers and networks (thus getting me interested in computers)
End of summer 2002, I decided to build my own computer. I built a massive mini-tower with a giant Antec case I got from newegg. I still remember having paid around 130$ for that case. Over the next 10 years, this faithful case was constantly upgraded with all kinds of cables, motherboards, DVD drives, hard drives, chips, etc. With 4 external fans and 1 CPU fan, it was quite a loud beast. And it was always on in my bedroom. So much so that the day I turned it off when I was moving, I could not sleep for lack of the white noise.
This case has spent more time in my bedroom than any other "her". And she was definitely a "her". With her moody nature and powerful all consuming allure, there was nothing else she could be.
So, I stripped out the hard drives, turned her off and carried her out to the garage for eventual disposal.
And just like that, she's gone.
