Steve Jobs – Looking to God

The other day I took to my closet, put on a pair of old, tattered jeans, a t-shirt, and hit my home office. I’ve been planning to paint it for a couple of years now. Only recently did I decide the time was right to do something about it.

For this Freedom Friday post, I’d like to take you on a spring cleaning adventure. Believe me when I say it’s not as adventurous as I’m making it out to be.

Over the past couple of years, my home office had gone into disrepair. I had boxes of utter junk I had kept around for those “just in case” moments when I needed that half-bent, used straw I had saved from that frosty I had months ago. Bags and bags of paperwork I hadn’t tackled for a long time rested dormant waiting for my sorting hands. I’m still not done yet. The shredder’s going to have a lot work to do soon.

The biggest problem was all the computer parts I had accumulated. I’m talking about desktop boxes, monitors, network cards, hard drives, sound cards, motherboards, memory chips, graphics cards, printer cables, network cables, fans, desktop speakers, subwoofers, mice, keyboards, mice pads, and on and on. I can’t believe how much money I burned through the years on old desktop computers that today I can easily replace with a laptop, a tablet or phone. Sad, really.

All these parts belonged to computers I had set up throughout the house when the iPad was a glint in Steve Jobs’ eye. As they became obsolete, I’d retire them into my home office to one day sell them for parts. Well, we all know how that turned out. You may ask, how many were there, Jack? Seven desktop computers with monitors. Yeah, crazy, eh? There was a time that each room had a computer. Maintenance choked every ounce of goodness from me.

Anyway, I took them all apart. I reformatted the hard drives, and poured water and sugar in its assembly chambers. I then took my trusty screwdriver and poked holes through the platters. It’ll take the expertise of the FBI to piece them all together. Even then, no way could anyone rescue any of the data on those suckers. Too late, though. They’re already at the dump.

Now, if you didn’t know better, I could be working for the CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service). Then again, I wouldn’t admit it, would I? Nor would I post that information on a blog. A mischievous smile penetrates Jack’s face.

Nevertheless, I pulled together all that old equipment and hauled it to the curb. And this is the truth: at the very moment I had placed the last computer on the curb, a black van of no distinct marking pulled into the drive, swung open its back doors and two men slipped the equipment into its belly. It was quick. Not even thirty seconds they were gone. I thought, guys, the hard drives are not with the boxes. I guess they’ll find out once they take them apart in their secret lab.

I now have a clean room. At least the bulk of the mess is under control. I still have a long way to go. I think in the next few days I’ll get rid of the old posters of The Godfather: Part III and Terminator 2: Judgment Day. They’ve been on the walls forever.