You never know what you have until it's gone

By Chuck Kajer

I lost an old friend a few weeks ago. We were very close, and I feel the loss most every day.

The thing is, I didn't always appreciate my friend. There was a familiarity we had developed during our more than seven years of working together. When I'd get frozen out, I'd yell at my friend. When I asked my friend to do things that, deep inside, I knew was asking too much, I wouldn't hide my disappointment when my friend failed. More than once I'd say bad things about my friend to my co-workers.

But when it came down to it, my friend and I worked pretty well together. I knew just which buttons to push to make sure things would go smoothly. We had our own way of communicating with each other.

My friend was an iMac Blueberry computer. The one that sat on my desk ever since I came back to work at The New Prague Times in 2002. I arrived at work one Thursday morning, hit the on button and nothing happened. I checked all my connections, made sure it was plugged in to a live outlet, even changed power cords, but still nothing. So I went to the computer guru at our office, Dennis Lambrecht. I told him that I had checked all the connections, made sure it was plugged into a live outlet and even changed the power cords. Dennis, being the skeptic that most computer gurus are, went on to check all my connections, made sure it was plugged into a live outlet and even changed the power cord.

Still nothing.

After another half-hour of checking switches and circuits, my computer was pronounced dead. Within a few hours, I had another computer at my desk. I'm told it's a temporary fix, that sometime, maybe this summer, plans are to replace this computer with another one that is being prepared for me, so I'm trying not to get too attached to this one. Still, after a month, I'm beginning to learn its quirks. I've begun to learn which buttons I can push, and which ones I shouldn't.

When my computer crashed, it took a lot of photos, emails, notes and some nearly-completed stories with it. Over the past few weeks, I've remembered some of them, and I've gotten calls about others, asking why a certain story didn't get in. So if you had sent me some information before late May and you haven't seen it in the paper, give me a call at 952-758-4435 and I'll see what we can do to put it in.

Me and my new friend will be glad to oblige.