Berkeley and Galactica

In the past, I’ve talked about different relationships in this blog. I’ve discussed friendships and beyond. One area that I haven’t really covered are the relationships that we have with inanimate objects, the same inanimate objects that we deal with everyday. Now I’ve been meaning for some time to write a post on machines and technology, and the growing sense of beauty that I find in them. And I will do this at some point. But for now, I want to talk about two different objects in my life, that I have depended on for so long, and that have been quite loyal, if loyal can be applied to an inanimate object. They are Berkeley and Galactica.

Berkeley is my school bag. It is made by a company called Jack Wolfskin, which used to be in Canada, but has, since my purchase, left North America and isolated itself in Europe and Asia. I’m not sure why they did, and it’s a pain that you can’t get their stuff shipped to Canada. But that’s not really relevant. Berkeley is a black school bag that has two large back pockets, and two small front pockets. It has a paw print on the front of the bag, along with the name Berkeley (as is the custom for Jack Wolfskin, to name their bags). I’ve had Berkeley since I was in grade 7 or 8. It has been with me through four separate levels of education (Elementary school, High school, Undergraduate, Masters), and I hope it will be there for many years to come. I love this bag. With the exception of a broken zipper, that I just got fixed at a tailor’s shop, this bag has been perfect. It has met every need that could possibly be expected from a bag, and has stood up to some many different forms of punishment. It was, at one point, run over by a car. Sure, it has a few tears, and one of the pockets has a hole in it, so that stuff put in one will sometime flow to the other. It’s traveled with me all over the world, and has seen me through the good times and the bad. Now you may question the value of a bag in a person’s life but, let me tell you, when the shit is hitting the fan and life generally sucks, it’s nice to have a reliable bag that you can put your stuff in to. I was faced with a dilemma with the broken zipper: do I fix it or get a new bag? I thought it over for a while and looked at different methods to get a new Berkeley shipped from Europe. In the end though, I decided to see if it was possible to get fixed. I brought it in to the tailor and asked if they could fix the zipper. She looked the bag over, and said that she could but that it might be a better idea to just get a new bag, as Berkeley had some tears and was getting on in years. I decided to stick with Berkeley though, because at the end of the day, you have to reward quality and loyalty in kind. I intend to keep using Berkeley until he’s nothing but a pile of fabric.

Galactica is my 7 year old HP Pavilion a220n computer. I got her when I first started school out at SFU. She was the first thing I picked up in BC. She was identical to the computer my dad had bought a few months prior, and I knew that she would be a good machine. What I didn’t realize when I got Galactica, was what I would learn from her. Now before I continue, I have to quickly discuss the name. I named her Galactica shortly after I first started watching the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica series. My roommate at the time got a new computer, and I was running a much older and slower model, so I named mine Galactica and he named his Pegasus (after the last two remaining battlestars in the fleet). The names became more appropriate in time, as my roommates computer eventually broke and had a series of problems, while Galactica, the ever faithful machine that she is, kept on running. Galactica has been a fairly faithful machine, in that she usually doesn’t break too much, and when she does, she gives me signs on how to fix her. For example, the other day, she wouldn’t start up properly. She was turning on, and fans were running, but the display wouldn’t work and she wouldn’t boot up. So I sat there and fiddled around with it, and after a while, I noticed a slight beeping sound. It was very faint, and took some quiet and patient sitting to pick up. Looking it up online, I found that the cause was a loose stick of ram, which I checked and fixed, and she started up like new. With Galactica, I’ve learned essentially all the computer repair and mechanical skills that I know. I’ve taker her apart so many times, and fiddled with everything from graphics cards and ram to replacing the power supply and adding in a new hard drive. I’ve fiddled with software, hardware, viruses, etc. From Galactica, I’ve gained the beginnings of an appreciation and understanding for machines and what they do, as well as a desire to learn more about them. I’ve also developed that overprotectiveness that comes to mechanics when dealing with their machines. I don’t intend on ever bringing Galactica into a repair shop again (once there was a corrupt file when I was much younger and naive, so I took her to staples where they fixed her ... not doing that again). I don’t intend on letting anyone else try and fix her either. She’s mine. And she’s unique. I know that sounds a little weird perhaps but she is. Like I said before, my dad has the same computer, and I use whenever I go home, and it’s different. True, I’ve upgraded Galactica and added new stuff in. But it was never the same as Galactica. It’s hard to explain but it always seemed slightly cold and foreign. I always knew, when I used it, that it wasn’t my computer. It’s kind of a hard feeling to capture, but Galactica has her own personality, that I am in sync with. I can tell when she’s changing, getting slower or louder. I can tell when something isn’t right. I’m also more content to use her than any other computer. The best comparison I can make is that me and Galactica are like Kaylee and Serenity from the show Firefly. I just feel a connection with her. It’s strange I know. But it’s been a fruitful and agreeable relationship .

This is probably the first post I’ve ever written using Galactica. As I’ve written, I’ve been sitting two feet away from a freshly repaired Berkeley. And it makes me happy, to have this newly found and growing gratitude for these objects. In a time when it’s so easy to just toss out a bag or computer and get a newer sleeker one, it’s nice to have ones that last, at least for a while. Ones that can stand with you through the ever changing world, providing some small amount of stability, comfort and dependability.