Soul of an Old Machine

The old iMac keyboard. Note the faded "S" key.

Time to retire another computer. This time, I'm saying goodbye to my workhorse iMac I bought back in August 2008, which has been wheezing and chugging along for a few months now. I wrote a crazy amount of stuff on this machine, including seven novels (Expiration Date, Fun & Games, Hell & Gone, Point & Shoot, and the three Level 26 novels with Anthony Zuiker), at least 70 comics (Birds of Prey, Godzilla, Cable, Iron Fist, Punisher, Werewolf By Night, Deadpool, Bloodshot, X, Judge Dredd, including issue #5, the last comic I wrote on it), one screenplay (the Severance Package adaptation with Brett Simon), as well as innumerable e-mails, notes, treatments, blog posts, updates, pitches, half-baked ideas and other unclassifiable things that gushed out of my brainpan. The machine served me well. And that keyboard (see above), boy did that take a beating. I pretty much typed the "S" key into oblivion. (Do I type the word "shit" that much?) Granted, I did some writing on various laptops during this time, too, but the majority of my output came from this noble old piece of Apple hardware. Fare thee well, iMac, you 24" aluminum wonder you. Remember: old computers never die. They just get recycled.

And as of right now I'm working on a new novel, lots of comics, and a massive secret project (shhhh) on one of these new-fangled fancy iMacs. Wonder what I'll write on this machine before it gives up the ghost in... 2016 or 2017. (I tend to get three to four years out of every machine.) Whatever the case, I'm sure the "S" key will be pounded into oblivion.

Sad, forlorn keyboard photo by Meredith Swierczynski.