Tag: laptop

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Dream Journal

Coma Girl, Classroom Laptop, Brand New Train

I explore a tiered arena in an alternate world, where my crush has been in a coma since April 2019. This is a common occurrence and there’s a name for such class of person — basically never coming back, but not technically dead. Alive simply with the momentum of life, in an uncontactable reality. I wish I could remember the term used for it…

I sit in a high school classroom (Mrs. Fitz’s) engaging in a friendly discussion while on a laptop, another classmate next to me on theirs. The teacher mentions that my older hipster friend Marc Roper helped work on a music video, which we check out. I note that I feel more comfortable behind the laptop — I have something to do while in class.

On a brand new red train. The gimmick is that you can store stuff top-to-bottom in your personal traincar compartment “infinitely deep”. Train is renewably powered and spits out water from a hose that runs its entire length. A young man squats leaning out a door at the very rear waving the hose end back and forth to ensure the water diffuses, looking glum and underappreciated. We exchange a glance, hoping this job can be made obsolete once the train is fully tested.

Riding on the train with me are my elementary school friends Robby & Christy T. We make idle conversation while watching the landscape pass by. The train rounds a corner, following tracks parallel to the ocean, traveling on a street bordering a beach. Under the shade of a tree I recognize a particularly nice parking spot somewhere I’d parked my pickup truck many times — logically it should’ve hardly ever been free, but I always got lucky somehow. Robbie makes a sarcastic comment about how hard it is to get a baby, and I counter with a Big Lebowski joke, saying “You want a baby? I could get you a [random] baby today.”

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Dream Journal

Scorpion Fright

Landlord showing apartment next door to one little black kid, representing his family. Landlord elected not to finish the bathroom in the middle, which is huge, and has at least two working toilets for every person who could live there. One in particular sits in the middle of the room near the courtyard window and has had it’s stall walls removed. You could use it as a chair now.

At beginning of night, I’m watching a video while sitting back straight upright in a chair. The video is of two rust-colored puppies playing amongst matching red rocks, while it rains. Val lies on couch. I’m half-lucid and think I’m actually asleep on the living room couch (I’m in bed).

I get up to go to the kitchen. At the bottom corner of the kitchen table a tiny cute spider emerges — followed by a tiny scorpion. As soon as I notice it, thinking I should warn others, it incredibly quickly scrambles across the floor, up my body, and to the left side of my neck.

I wake up, my heart pounding, and remember to set my sleep tracker.

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Dream Journal

Spelling Class Spells Obscenity

In my 7th grade Language Arts classroom, I’m watching an informative video on my laptop instead of following along with the rest of the class (dream persona is maybe a little older than the rest of the students). Eventually the teacher draws me back into our group activity. Jumping from student to student, we each activate a letter (calling it out, punching it in, I can’t remember). The first word we’re supposed to spell out is A-S-S-H-O-L-E. No one reacts as if this is inappropriate.

Someone booked me a flight to New Zealand, but I didn’t find out in time to board the plane. This makes me very sad and frustrated at myself and the whole situation.

As it turns out, my wife told me at breakfast that modern airlines will allow you to fly standby on the next flight, which I guess is great news if I ever dream this again!

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Glot

Laptop Challenge ’08!

Quite unexpectedly, there is a laptop in lap. First, a short story; after that, a short mission.

Unintentional DecorationMy girlfriend’s laptop sucks. For many months, a sticker that reads UR STUPID has presided just above the little embossed HP logo on the front. It has performed to expectations admirably. It’s noisy, it runs too hot and then freezes up, and it’s got some unidentified white material melded in places (no, not the Nik’l Nips you see pictured to the right, a different odd white material). All this until a few weeks ago, when I disassembled the dern thing and managed to clean out the hairball of dust-clog lodged in the gills of the heatsink. If that made no sense to you, don’t worry—suffice to say that I fixed the noise and overheating. Of course, I hadn’t counted on somehow creating a worrisome problem whereby the computer runs normally for minutes or hours or days, but then without warning shuts off entirely. No warning. Entirely. Needless to say this was distressing for the female involved and she decided that she’d spent enough years trying to get it to run properly. That’s why she’s got a brand-new Lenovo. Yup, brand-new. That’s why that particular “girlfriend’s laptop” I was just talking about—it no longer exists.

Instead, it is now boyfriend’s laptop. Yes, after a thorough disassembly, and soldering some suspicious components, including an motherboard battery knocked loose from its moorings, the computing P.O.S. seems to be much less “S.” So yeah. Laptop. I have it. Wow, what an interesting story. Mainly I just wanted to tell it so that everyone understands that this was totally not my plan, I take no responsibility for my good fortune, and I am an oft-resourceful compu-person.

Part two, fun part: the challenge for you. The laptop has doodles all over it, girly colored sharpie squares that have worn away and make it look like the laptop of an indulgent Lisa Frank fan. This is unacceptable. I’ve decided to use my my own means to cover the thing in words. I’ve always liked words. I would like some things to say. Inspired by #2, “crowdsource the name of your new unicycle” on this list of 5ives…

Guidelines:

  • the stickers will be ALLCAPS, hand-typed on an ancient “hobbyist” Dymo labelmaker
  • keep phrases short; there’s only room on one “line” for 56 characters (including spaces)
  • speaking of characters, I got 0-9, A-Z, period (.) and slash (/) and that is it
  • don’ try an’ make me put anything that I wouldn’t want my mother to see, yokay?
  • they’ll be printed in any color you want, as long as it’s black (mayyybe blue)
  • Twitter responses ok, GLOT comments ok
  • 56 * 29 lines = 1624 characters, average English word length is 5.1, +1 space per word, that’s only 266 words, people! Not a lot!

Orin’s new computer: now accepting submissions.