My Tobisha kicked the bucket (almost)

I got Tobisha because I had to. I didn’t really need it. The Asus I owned was more than enough for uni work and then some, but then that Imagine Cup 2013 happened.

Of all the competitions out there, I, together with my bro, got hooked on that Imagine Cup. MS’s competition, for which you need slightly more serious hardware. For Windows Phone specifically, because, again, out of all the categories, that’s exactly the one we latched onto. There’s a story behind why we picked exactly that one too, but that’s a tale for another post. For that IC13 I borrowed a computer. Ground away for those 2-3 months and did the best I knew how. The conditions weren’t really there - I made them.

A couple of months went by, the next year was slowly starting, and we were supposed to maintain that app we’d built, even though after the fiasco at the competition we’d practically dropped it. There were ideas for some other projects too, which the old lappy couldn’t handle, there was no point borrowing a computer anymore, and so I decided to buy a new one - Tobisha.

I had some cash saved up that I hadn’t set aside for anything in particular (maybe that was the mistake too), and so I blew it on the computer. I wasn’t exactly keen on spending money on a new computer, I’d rather have drunk/eaten it or travelled it away, but I knew it made sense to spend it on a tool I use a lot. Maybe even too much. When I bought it, unboxed it and turned it on, I told it: “You’ll pay for yourself”. It was a kind of promise meant to make up for the fact that I hadn’t wanted to spend money on it.

The very next month I started working on a project for the next IC. Edisco had paved the way, so Sonochrome had a good foundation to be more successful. We won first place at the national round in Serbia, got through the semifinal and headed off to the world finals in Seattle. Tobisha paid for itself at the very first step: I won a tablet that cost more than my Tobisha, then I also won a trip to the USA, a phone (again pricier than Tobisha) and a whole pile of other stuff on top. To say that Tobisha paid for itself is an understatement.

On Friday I spilled beer all over it. I do have a habit of fooling around like that, thinking nothing will happen, so I put glasses/ashtrays/plates on/next to/under my laptop/phone/tablet, and so far nothing had ever spilled. Maybe it had something to do with it not being my first beer, and maybe also with me giving Tobisha a personality, so I wanted to share a bit of beer with it. Anyway, no use crying over spilled beer, because it’s beer after all and not milk. The damage was done. Standard procedure for these situations carried out. Tobisha was switched off, dried, left to spend the night and sober up.

On the first boot, it showed signs of life. The keyboard doesn’t work, but that’s ok, I have to expect at least some unwanted consequence. On the second boot, the motherboard shows no signs of life. I sink into heartache. Once again I have some saved-up cash I wanted to drink/eat/travel away, and now I’ll have to spend it to replace my dear Tobisha. And we went through so much together. When they lost our suitcases on the way to Seattle, it was all I had left. That’s when we really bonded. We all bond with the devices we use. You can’t lie about that.

I’ve already found a replacement for it. An unworthy one, of course, considering that hardware-wise it’s only one processor generation better and only a couple of GB of RAM bigger. Resigned to the fact that I’d (almost) ended up in the same situation as 2 years ago. I’m thinking about how I should set money aside for some ventures, or start drinking/eating/travelling it away earlier. I look at Tobisha on the desk and decide to give it one more chance. To try to bring it back to life one more time. I’ll ignore that at that moment there was some icon on it. I’ll put it all down to my wish for it to actually work. Press the button. The motherboard shrieks beeeeep. The screen lights up. Tobisha came back to me from the dead.

The keyboard still doesn’t do a thing, but I guess that’s the price I have to pay. AliExpress works fine, so that’ll get fixed too. What matters is that it came back to life. That it sobered up and now we can keep hanging out. It’ll get a new tattoo too. In keeping with what it’s been through.