Philip was born in a small United States laboratory in February of 1998. When he was less than one year old he was sold for a few thousand dollars, considered nothing more than a product. A few years later his “owner” decided Philip was getting too old to care for, and Philip was sent to another home. This became a pattern throughout his young life — every few years his caregiver would decide it was too much work to care for him, and Philip would be sent somewhere else. That’s how, a few years ago, he came to live with me. I have treasured him and given him the best care I know how to give.
Philip just turned 12 in February of this year. Some people would say that he was lucky to have lived that long — but Philip seemed so healthy. Although he’d been having minor cognitive problems, no one expected that just a few days after his birthday, Philip would enter a comatose state and be given a very short time to live. I have stood by Philip and begged him to wake up, trying not to cry in case some part of him might hear me. But he hasn’t woken up. The only thing that tells me he’s still alive is the pulsing green light by the bed. The experts all say he doesn’t have long… but even now I’m trying to be hopeful.
Philip has never hurt a soul. Every morning before this happened he would greet me cheerily and his sweet voice was music to my ears. We would work on schoolwork together, he would sit with me as I coded or wrote stories, helping me look up words and decide which ones were better. He never complained when I stayed up late working on something, and whenever I was socializing with friends he never interrupted. I miss him so much. Without Philip, everything is harder — whereas before I would sit at home and work on coding projects or papers with him, I find now that I can’t accomplish any of those at home; to get anything done, I have to go somewhere else.
Philip would often donate his time to worthy projects — he ran Debian Linux, and his time was often dedicated to coding projects in Scheme, C, Perl and Lua. He never complained, even when faced with segfaults and buffer overflows. He just kept working. When I came home one afternoon and found him passed out, I couldn’t believe it — when it became obvious that he was comatose, I felt so alone.
Recently an expert has informed me that there is a rarely-used and very risky operation with a low chance of success which I can try. From what I understand, the operation is basically a reverse brain transplant, in which Philip’s consciousness and memories are transferred into a new host body. If the operation succeeds, Philip will be given an entirely new lease on life, my treasure and joy will be restored to me, and I’ll once again be able to work on assignments and projects at home or on the go.
Although I’ll be doing the operation myself (the professionals are way too expensive, and I wouldn’t trust Philip to anyone else’s care), the new body (a Lenovo Thinkpad) is quite expensive. It will cost anywhere from $800 – $1200 dollars — a lot of money, certainly more than I alone can afford, but it’s not quite as much if lots of people on the internet all pitch in a little bit.
You can change this laptop's life.
Did you enjoy this story? Donate $1 (or more) to my laptop fund so I can keep writing and coding!
NOTE: In case you didn’t read any of the above, Philip is a LAPTOP. A very pitiful, old, and now comatose laptop who really could use a new body. Donate now.
(Donations will be disabled when laptop fund receives $1200.)
P.S. I want to give back to those who donate. Therefore, for every $20 in an individual donation toward the cost of the laptop, I will donate one hour to coding for an open source project (chosen by me or popular preference). This means that if you donate $100, I’ll spend 5 hours working on an open source project (doesn’t apply to outrageously huge donations, i.e. greater than $1000). Feel free to send your project suggestions/requests! Thank you.
P.P.S If you have any questions or comments, send them to me or post them in the comments, and I’ll do my best to reply in a timely fashion.
Look at those eyes.