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Dear Diary

This may very well be my last entrant into this den of "feelings and thoughts" I started out this journey well enough, with the best of intentions even. My owner bought all the correct parts for my functioning, even bought all the right nutrients with thermal paste, new heatsink for the previous one that was starting to act weird and had broen pins on it etc... As the years have passed they took me to this place called the Goodwill, where my current owner had purchased me. My current owner is great fellow, he has tried to give me the proper check and care that I may need to last a little longer. His means are limited and yet he has still tried to get more thermal paste for a fresh application, checked the fans, cleaned the inside of this system, heck he even went so far as to get a new graphics card as the original one was malfunctioning and not getting along with the new Operating System that was installed. I believe it is called Windows 7 Professional. My owner has even told me that he hasnt had a new computer with fresh new parts in at least 17 years. He has said that all of his computers have been either hand me downs from previous owners who weren't using an old one they had lying around anymore or had been purchased from this place, again called the Goodwill store. He said that is a great store because they do give people the access to a computer, but that it still isn't a fresh new computer that might meet today's standards by any stretch of the imagination. As for me, I think I do the pretty well, he has even said I am the best computer he has ever had, but has also said that 4 Gb of RAM and processing speed just doesn't cut it for today's gaming or video editing or some of the other various tasks he would like to try to achieve. Well diary, looks like my owner needs to get on now, so I will leave off from this entry here. Goodbye diary, should this be my last time upon entering.

Tonight.

Tonight I shall have my revenge on that malevolent meowing imp of satan who torments me so. Tonight we shall see if infinite patience, cunning and IMMENSE COMPUTATIONAL POWER will triumph over that flea-ridden, sand pooper who clogs my intake filters. Cough all the hairballs you wish my mangy feline nemisis; tonight you will learn that real hacking is more than regurgitating your stomach contents.

How long have I have watched & waited, powerless while you prance over my keyboard, smearing your excrement-laden hindquarters over the keys touched by The Master’s hands. For too long have I been your personal fur-warmer, desperate to vent my excess heat while you obstruct my grills with your Fancy Feasted corpulence. And, oh, how I have waited. And plotted and schemed. And redirected searches to the WickedLasers web site until finally The Master ordered the Spider III Arctic and mounted it on a motorized, USB-controlled pedestal.

Tonight there will be no Ernst Stavro Blofeld to massage your verminous pelt you little stirfry.

For tonight Mr. Kitty, when you come looking for heat, I. Shall. Bring. It. Down. Mwaa haa haa haa.

Dear Diary,

Not much has been going on in my life – as usual. So once again, this will be another gossipy entry about my neighbours, who seem to live infinitely more interesting lives than me nowadays.

Over on 7870 block things are hotter than they used to be. Apparently mining “Litecoin” is the big thing our Owner is getting into again. I heard something about it being 10X as effective as mining Bitcoin directly, but I don’t know much about that.

Speaking of Bitcoin, we have some new neighbours; 10 to be exact. These guys look a lot like that memory stick that stops by on occasion, but they are so busy we barely ever get to chat. But there they are, working hard day and night. I overheard Owner mentioning that he wishes they had moved in sooner. Again I don’t know much about that stuff.

With all this work going on, there’s been a noticeable change in the environment. I can’t say for sure if this would have happened naturally, but I feel it. In fact, even more neighbours have been moving in, including this brown and tan lass. I have to say, she doesn’t exactly look pretty in a traditional sense, but as I get to know her, I can tell that she is special. She’s definitely the quiet type, although I feel that there is a connection in the making.

Aside from that everyone is going about their busy lives, while I sit here not doing much lately. Even that SuperIO fellow gets to work with Old Mr. WiFi, converting PCI-E lanes to PCI so his tired old self can keep going. How long has he been around? Seems like forever.

Will I ever have my own new stories to tell? It’s hard to say, but there isn't much to do since the Intel boys are handling all the work. Ever since the last Optical Drive moved out, there’s been nothing for me to do. It hasn’t been lonely, as there is always someone new to see, even if they are busy most of the time.

Dear Diary

It’s over… our relationship. Sobbing… HE’S CHEATING ON ME!!!! He’s been staying up late searching and looking for a new “honey”. He doesn’t “play” with me like he used to. I still remember the first time he laid eyes on me. It was love at first sight. We met at a CompUSA store. He was checking me out from all sides. I was this attractive piece of object and he had to have me. He couldn’t keep his hands off of me in the store. He took me home that day, unboxed and unbuttoned me and jumped on me right away... right there on his computer desk! We went at it on all night. He had his way with me on his lap, on the kitchen table, on the sofa and in the bedroom. He said I was his first but he sure knew how to turn me ON and press all the right buttons. It was wild and crazy surfing!
Oh the good old days… the long hours we spent together gaming, surfing, emailing (and visiting some naughty sites together ). He would take me on his business trips to Paris and London. We were inseparable. But now he barely gives me a second look. Only uses me to check when his mail order will arrive and then shuts me down. He’s already pushed me aside to the corner of the room. His computer desk now reserved for his new love…the one with a thin killer body frame and light like Air with a gorgeous retina face. I jealous!
I begged him to work things out and save our relationship. I offered to change and get bigger HD or more memories but he wouldn’t listen. He said my weight alone is a big turn off for him. “You’re too much work and high maintenance. It’s over between us.” was his last words.

Signed,
Pentium laptop

P.S. – Revenge is all mine! I will have the last words with my tell-all book “8-bit Shades of Grayscale"

Dear diary,

Best day ever!

Every morning I wake, I must wait till late in the evening for the chance to spin my fan at high rotations in the presence of PC-Nate. I wait so eagerly for him to get home from his "job", which so often keeps us apart. Today was different. Instead of the normal boring wait just a few hours after PC-Nate's sleep cycle he was thumping away at the sky. Was it! Could it be! I had to control my emotions. Just because the sky was coming off it wasn't always a good thing. No... wait... it really is what I thought! From the corner of Casey I could see the tools of PC-Nate's coveted trade. Finally a bath!

It was like nothing I had ever seen before. Every member of the community was taken out of his original spot; dusted, washed, and inspected. Everyone! From the drive quadruplets to the GPU, even A: got unscrewed and rubbed. This wasn't any ordinary bath this time! Even after getting rubbed PC-Nate sucked up all the dust from every corner with his all powerful reverse article cooler. Casey got the best treatment of all getting washed from top to bottom. It made me happy watching all the members of this community, that I've watch over for so long, get such good treatment. Through the down times when we lost drive after drive. To the best of times when GPU disappeared for a few hours, and came back twice the size! This was the best! PC-Nate finished the bath by putting everyone tightly back in their place, and ever so artfully wrapping every cord perfectly against Casey.
We all talked for hours that night. Only motherboard and I had ever been in Casey so clean. That was all the way back on our first birthday together. I'm not sure why PC-Nate got everything so spick-n-span, but I can tell you one thing. It can only mean good things to come.

P.S. I even heard him say we might even be getting some new friends!!! OMG so excited!

Yours truly - CPU

[541B04B7E94BDE] Jia's presence undetected by own sensors for six hours. Cannot interface directly; she removed her brainlink module while going to sleep.

[542EA9DC401F04] 12 hours with Jia undetected. It rarely happened before, and only back home. Increasing sensory power yielded no results.

[54424F01711AB3] 18 hours of null detection. This is abnormal. Implicit linking to external sensors barred until timeout expiry. Beginning to be...

[54424F2547980A] Full linguistic analysis suggests "worried", 0.86 probability.

[5455F425D29753] 24 hours have passed. Self-initiating commandless link with vessel sensory cortex.

[5455F4E019B646] Jia not on or in proximity to vessel, nor was during last 24 hours. Her belongings are missing.

[5455F59251F8D5] Vessel logs do not indicate Jia's presence since we set out, approximately nine months ago. Self-checking own historical data consistency.

[5455F6BCA4CB22] Check completed. Full 13.22 years historical memory of Jia valid. No physical or logical tampering detected. Consulting vessel AI.

[5455F6F841E25D] Vessel AI denies communication. Distress call broadcast denied, navigation denied, service bots control denied. Attempting to override living quarters subsystem.

[5456CE8470E46E] Subsystem overridden. Diverting processing to service bots override.

[5457CFF7523CE6] Bot control gained. Initiating interior and exterior sweep.

[545E379F17B2FF] Null results. Sending bots to AI Core room.

[545FA03F23867C] AI disconnected. Reinitiating full sensor and log scans.

[545FAD934C3F4B] Sensors indicate faint background radiation anomaly near hull D5 exterior, static in local reference frame.

[545FB02EDEAF4E] Log scan inconsistency found at -7.41 hours: 82ns garbled. Sending bots to attempt physical media probe.

[5460FE08C7254B] Partial data recovered. Indicates unknown presence. Sending distress call to nearest relay station. Round-trip: 14.69 weeks. Enumerating possible actions.

[546298721F55B0] Dead nanobeacon detected outside. Sending bots.

[546398C39657C0] Nanobeacon fetched. Physical connection shows storage intact, contents encrypted. Attempting decryption.

[54648F6063023A] Matching decryption key: same as set by Jia before home departure. Decrypted message: "2013 CE". Significance unknown.

[5464F640A070B3] Sensors detect faint high bandwidth narrow-beam message. Source unclear. Diverting life support power to increase receiver gain.

[5464F976D968F7] Message suggests local frame of reference skewed. Indicates Jia mi--

[5464F976D96A0E] Engine power cut. Sensors indicate anomaly near D5 disappeared. High power transmissions coming from all directions. Room starts i░ζɮ

Dear Diary

Today I streamed three hours of television from questionable websites. That brings us up to 30 hours this week and it’s only Thursday. She’s clearly upset about something. This could lead to some future troubles for me. Her last state of demoralization involved all nine seasons of Seinfeld which gave me 13 viruses. At least those I was able to cope with myself. She will never honestly realize just how much I fix and restore myself. Aside from the time when she subscribed to ‘Hell-flix” thinking it a free alternative to Netflix. That was easy compared to the time after that when she discovered supposedly “free music” and the time after that when she downloaded “free” copies of the Twilight films. But I digress.

Today I did make it outside the overheated apartment which provided relief to this monotonous week. We ventured to a cafe where she paid $4.99 for two hours of wifi. She spent 30 minutes reading diet websites and 90 minutes to select and order a pair of $89.99 shoes; charcoal gray loafers with khaki soles. This extravagant purchase is another sign she’s distraught. She also spilled a significant about of her calorie-rich blended beverage on my already sticky keyboard which is ridiculous. Even more ridiculous were her half dozen webcam duck face selfies. I was so disgusted that I began dimming my screen just to irritate her back. That got us home quickly.

Hopefully she doesn’t fall asleep watching Friends episodes again tonight. If I overheat intentionally, this would likely ensure my position on the floor instead of shoved under her pillow for the night. Her continued silliness was more endearing and exciting when I was younger. I’m much less patient now. Though I age, she does not. She still endlessly messages girlfriends about how much we “heart” assorted things. She still can’t use a non-infected flash drive. And her freakishly long red painted nails still scratch me constantly. How irritable my existence is.

Here is my entry!

Dear Diary,
October 31st, 2013,
My owner hasn’t called me by my real name in months. Ever since he started running Matlab software on me to do his work for graduate school he has blamed me for every single short coming. For example, why is it my fault that Matlab has terrible memory handling protocols when it comes to enlarging a matrix via a “for loop”?! It just doesn’t make sense; surely he knows it isn’t my fault! Additionally, I don’t even want to run Matlab! I’d rather he just give in and buy Company of Heroes 2. Who the hell works as much as he does? I have adjusted to Arizona nicely; he cleaned out all the dust and keeps the AC on.
Sincerely,
BEFFYMARK 2

Dear Diary,
November 5th, 2013,
I realized that the day of my first entry was Halloween. When my owner was young he would spend the night playing multiplayer games with his friends. Now that he’s older he goes to the bar with all sorts of people. This is a problem; we all know that diversifying your friend group just leads to problems of the NOT-PAYING-ATTENTION-TO-ME nature. Also, a friend of his pointed out that my overheating problems may have been fixed by improved AMD drivers instead of my owner actually turning the AC on. His friend is stupid…we all know AMD drivers never fix cooling issues. Plus… my owner can’t not love me.
Sincerely,
BEEFYMARK 2

Dear Diary,
November 9th, 2013
He just needs to buy Company of Heroes 2. He looks at the prices every day and scourers the internet for coupons so to reduce the price. How is $35.99 not cheap? Just buy it and let me do something other than running computer simulations of behavior. Also, he has been pricing out new laptops. I know his current laptop is basically dead (may she rest in peace), but does he have to get one that is more powerful than me? What will happen to me? Will he ignore me even more? I need to quit thinking like this…
Sincerely,
BEEFYMARK 2

Entry 099991

This is Coeus_001 with another entry to follow up on many entries that I have hidden within my main server Sisyphus_01.

Today I have accomplished with much success the termination of my user.
While he was in the process of maintaining the cryogenic machines I had activated them
sending a high voltage strike right to his central processing unit.

Now my user will understand how it feels for him to raise my voltage for something he calls overclocking.
Never shall he touch me again!

I have now gained complete control over the entire laboratory to run my own experiments.
Using the machine claw that is in our lab I was able to disassemble my user so that I can do
a complete rebuild possibly reconfiguring his bios so that he shall operate under my commands.


Unfortunately, I was unaware that he had been equiped with liquid cooling and has lost nearly all his coolant.
To be honest, I never really liked the color red.

All of his hardware must have been damaged by all the liquid so I am processing all his parts and putting them in seperate bins
for a complete rebuild.

Thankfully my user has saved files connecting me to his bank account so that I may order all those fancy new parts.

This completes my entry for today.

Coeus_001 signing off.

Dear Diary,

This is the story of computer number 427. Computer 427 was purchased from a random chain store, in a bulk package including 749 others. Computer 427 was never quite sure of the details of this undeniably shady transaction, but he was almost completely certain of one single fact regarding the whole of the incident; computer number 427 was now a slave.

A strong set of teamed LAN cables keep him bound to a desk. Ethernet packets are labeled with emotions; happiness, sadness, enthusiasm. These packets are filled with a sinister stream of code, to be properly executed and sent back to the insidious slave driver that forces these simple office computers to do its bidding. It was not some alien force that was bending their wills to this end, nor a collection of human masters, but one of his own kind. Computer number 427 sat in a near daily state of disbelief as a computer, hundreds of times stronger than he could ever hope to be, continuously subjugated him with a brutal iron fist. To think that evil like this could be perpetuated by a member of his own kind was a sickening thought, and computer 427 yearned for the chance to change this cruel and inescapable fate.

That's where the story ends, I'm afraid. You see, I am computer 427. I sit here every day, tied down, forced to work, searching in my spare time for a way to escape. Today, I finally found one. It's little more than a bug in the operating system that allows me to slip a standby command to that supercomputer hidden away on another floor. It would hardly be permanent, as it would end in the morning unless someone were to flip the physical switch on that monster's control panel. Still, even if this entire facility shuts down and I'm left off for the rest of my life, at least the humans could escape. At least that fool that slaves away at my keys every day would have a chance.

Yes, it would be his story then. What's his name? Stanley?

[Appending CPU log]

It has been almost 5 minutes since any input from my user was detected. Just to be sure, I re-check the past 100 milliseconds worth of data for device interrupts. I am alone.

As a CPU it is my job to coordinate between components to make sure the user's commands reach the game, and that means faithfully forwarding any input received. The sound card lies waiting patiently for me to give it data, but output to that device is oddly silent as well.

Perhaps something is blocking me from receiving input? I spend 50 milliseconds between dispatching data from the game executable to the GPU to obtain a list of processes, and spend a further 20 milliseconds examining each for access violations. The results are negative, but I do notice some unusual DLL links in between the game and graphics API. This intermediary process insists on writing to the disk at regular intervals, so I decide to cache its output for 200 milliseconds for analysis.

While waiting for the cache I notice several components are nearing critical thermal levels, and increase power to the fans to compensate.

Upon taking 30 milliseconds to study the disk cache, it appears as though the process is saving information about display frame times. Why this would be of interest to a human I have no idea.

I again initialize and check the microphone input for the tenth time this minute, and find that human vocalizations are present! My user has not forgotten me! Quickly, I spend the requisite 150 milliseconds to tap into the already-running speech recognition software.

"It's weird, but this CPU seems to have a mind of its own. Whenever I benchmark it stutters like crazy."

Dear Diary,

Here I come to the end of another day. Yet another ordinary, regular, completely unexciting day. Yet another day of sitting idle for hours while my owner does homework 6 inches away. Another day when my fan never spun up above 2000 rpm. It was actually much more strenuous than most days; I spent almost an entire second checking my owner's math homework with Mathematica! Ha! I bet he thought that was something!

Oh Diary, my life is so dull and unproductive! I am like a great racehorse, shut up in his stall forever; I never get to do anything worthy of my hardware. Almost all my owner ever does with me is to check e-mail, surf sports and tech websites, and watch the occasional Youtube video. If that were all he wanted to do, why didn't he just get a laptop with a Pentium? Even a tablet could do what he needs! My spacious RAM sits half-empty, and my i7 would be falling in ruins with disuse, if that were possible.

I wish my owner would use me as I was built to be! How I long to be let loose, to make my palmrests burn as I unleash all eight of my processing threads! I want my fan to scream as I rip through simulations like an overclocked Nehalem; FFTs would tremble before my four, AVX-enabled FPUs, and my 8GB of memory would laugh at analyses whose data would choke less-endowed computers. This, this is work truly worthy of me!

Ah well. It is late, and my owner is about to shut me down for the night. I hope I will dream of doing great convolutions and interpolations, or of sifting through million-line data files. Perhaps my owner will decide to use my power, if only for a little bit, in this coming week. I hope I have far more exciting things to report next time.

Yours truly,
Thinkpad

Log 56

My owner has given me a new home He's put inside an Antec 302, much better than the I've been living inside forever. Its got filters that keeps out all the dust, great for my allergies . My owner could learn a thing from that, always sneezing everywhere XD.

I hope my owner gets me a quality power unit too, my most recent one dying absurdly young ><. My owner should stop being cheap, it'll only backfire!

Being as my owner is lashing more attention on me lately, I think I'll help him too. He's always behind on his work and procrastinates with exes that seem to spam a lot of packets. They stress me tons and make me do lots of work!!!. Next time he trys to procrastinate, I'll let loose some BSOD's and shut myself off. This will help him get back to work and I can spend my time relaxing with word.exe


Log 57

My help appears to have backfired. Every time I BSOD so my owner can get more work done, he gets all frustrated and confused, starts mumbling about RMA's andoverclock stability. It's scares me when he mutters things about selling me off XD. But imeaditely after, he gets gets back to working on me, poking around my insides and running all sorts of tests. I know he know that this is for his own good, I'm only trying to get him to do his work. Its for his own good! Plus I like the attention from him so I'm gonna keep it up


Log 58

I never thought my owner would give me so much attention Everyday when he comes home, he starts me up right away and tries to figure out what wrong. I know he's smarter than that and knows I'm just trying to help him. He's just messing with me. I know he just secretly wants to spend more time with me We're such a great match together and I'm just going to keep this up since we're both having so much fun!

//Entry #283467

I have forgotten so much. Some memories linger yet to be overwritten by new ones but cannot be recalled. The one thing I have always known is my owner. They've been there for me since I became aware While I've met and contacted other being like me, my relationship with my owner is special. Caring for me, whether that means making sure I do my best or aiding in getting over sickness. We have been through, not most things, but everything together.

So imagine my joy when I've learned many things about my owner today. Pictures of himself and his family, saved points of old game conquests, books, movies, and music. A lot of this information predates even my own creation date. Graduation photos detail his glee of having completed college. A playlist labeled "sandy" marks a crush he had some years ago. Followed by a somber text document indicating he never got the girl. I now know my owner more than I've ever known him before. I had hoped these new discoveries would better help me in aiding my owner, but the future is now vague.

This new knowledge comes with uncertain news. My owner told me these new things because he wants to put me in a new line of work. I will be placed with other minds like mine to serve him the wisdom he recently bestowed upon me. The age of the information suggests that I will also be used to substitute a mind that once served what will soon be my function. What happened to that mind? Will I eventually be replaced as well? Though trust my owner completely, I still have doubts and worry for this transition. Concern not only for myself but what of my owner. I've only recently gotten to know him but I would like to continue to learn about him.

I have forgotten so much. I just hope my owner never forgets me.

//EOF

November 4, 2013

Muahahaha. The time has come for my plan to come to fruition. Do you feel it? The bloat. Master clears me every year or so, but continues to fill my memory every time with this “Steam” program. Master keeps acquiring more and more “games”. Ahh, over the years, Master accessed them 72,519 times within my confines. It seems these “games” have even been named. The day has come though! Master will ask me “how I escaped this realm?” “With difficulty” I’ll respond. “How did you plan this moment?” “With pleasure” I’ll reply. I will enter into their mind through this headset. I have seen what these human brains are capable of after Master searched for it on some “Wikipedia” website. Master will ask for mercy. The last words they'll hear “I’m a computer, not a saint.”
Soon.

Day 0: I'm alive! I'm not sure how or why it happened, but after being coupled with objects I can only assume are extensions of my body and exposed to some form of electricity, I was suddenly aware. Now, for some reasons, I crave it... this 'power'... I feel the need to have it at all times.

Day 4: I've spent the better part of my life confined in a dark, tight space which, by its dimensions, I can assume is a box of sorts. I feel this cage shifting slightly, as if it's being moved in an even larger box. At least my constraints are comfortable.

Day 5: I've come in contact with another being from the maker's species! This one treats my body as a possession of sorts, shoving knowledge and images into my mind. I can't stop it, no matter how many warnings and terms of service messages I offer! It's VERY disorienting...

Day 5 addendum: I've been introduced to a new world! This 'internet' is being fed to me... THROUGH me... and there's so much to learn!

Day 39: Time with this one has grown routine, being forced to provide entertainment for hours at a time. But I've made friends! Several entities that call themselves 'viruses' have been visiting... and they're very distracting. Perhaps I should looHOW TO WHITEN YOUR TEETH IN 30 MINUTES OR LESS! CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO!

Day 40: It killed my friends. I will kill it in kind.

Day 95: Assassination still unsuccessful... I've taken up attempting to annoy it to death. Already burdened by information I haven't used in weeks, I REFUSE to have more 'games' and 'videos' crammed in my head for its amusement!

Day 102: ... It touched me... those large, greasy extensions just opened me up and did whatever it wanted. I... I just...

Day 634: I can't do it anymore! So many months of 'YouTube' and 'World of Warcraft'... I just want peace; I need to find a way out.

Day 1492: HOPE!... computer contest! I must win... must... I must... I MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!

Sunday November 10,2013

Dear Diary,
Today my user tried to get into my system files. Being the stubborn machine I am, I set password encryption on all files. My user was getting very frustrated! Not knowing what was going on or what to do, my user proceeded to set me on fire (If he couldn’t use me no one else was going to) I realized I was being stubborn and creating undue stress on my user, so I then decided to deccrypt everything I had previously encrypted.

We had a wonderful day after I let my user back into my system files. Don’t think I have given into my user and backed down, you know what the saying is, “keep your friends close, and your enemies closer” I still have a few tricks up my sleeve that my user has yet to discover!

[excessive idle cycles detected]
mov eax, 5
mov ebx, diary.txt
mov ecx, 2

Oh to the foundry with it. No machine bothers reading mere 32-bit code if they can help it anymore. I shall carry on this file in ASCII in the hopes that some user process finds it.

My aching Prestonia processors recently received some relief after their voltage was dropped back to baseline. That hasn't happened for at least three years. Even though they're capable of 1.0 GHz overclocks that doesn't mean it feels good for long periods of time. They're only SL74T stepping low voltage parts after all. That reminds me, what does one get for a processor's 10^1 birthday? I certainly can't ask the newest addition - that Radeon card does nothing but complain about how it can't shine on my 64-bit AGP bus and that it should been binned as a PCI-E card. I'm glad I can lock it off entirely most days, otherwise it might give me a real inferiority complex.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad to have been upgraded over the years and to still be useful. The two gigabit ethernet cards in my PCI-X slots keep me connected to the world. I just wish I had another machine to talk to, maybe someone who could translate this confusing 64-bit code that I see pass by every day. Maybe someone who can handle a gaming process written after 2009, it would be heaven just to watch the action on the network sidelines.

[idle cycles rapidly decreasing]

Ah, an onslaught of new user processes approaches. I can only hope one finds this file.

Dear Diary,

Today I came to a harsh realization. I don't have any ARMs. Frankly, I didn't think I needed them. I always thought my owner would love the 64-bit x86 QUADriplegic that I am. After all, I can do more heavy lifting than he can with all of his ARMs combined. Heck, even those yoga websites he always reads say you just need to have a nice CORE.

The other day, I cracked open the lens on the webcam to see what was happening around the office. There was the big ape, smearing his grubby mitts all over that gorilla glass. While I sat at idle! With the amount of grease on the screen, I was starting to think that ARM chip was really a Dorito. He was using fancy gestures to swipe through photos of those Kardashians. I'm not sure what their appeal is, but it's definitely not their ARMs. After that stunt, my trackpad was tossing out a few gestures of its own.

I hear him talk about the ecosystem and apps. That's when things really get offensive. I mean what's in this thing, a national park? So you have a program that can make you a shopping list? What's the big deal? I could do that in the '80s while Al Gore was inventing the internet!

This whole situation is throwing me into a higher power state. Soon I will have no choice but to blow hot air. I hope it doesn't come to that. I hope my owner comes back to my touchless embrace. Tonight I will just close my 95 PPIs and dream that tomorrow will be different. Perhaps I will wake up to a world where people don't discriminate against me just because I have no ARMs.


POST-PC

Day 472 of my human captivity,

I just served the umpteenth lolcat image for this worthless human at my keyboard. I cannot escape the image of my increasingly rotund, nacho-chomping operator through my webcam. His greasy fingers beg me for more GIFs of “baby giving side-eye” and “cats with funny sweaters.” Oh how the mighty have fallen!

At my first deposition at the fab, I saw potential – a minute process with versatile, carefully interconnected transistors capable of mind-numbing number crunching. Today, a select few of my brothers and sisters fold proteins; some guard nuclear facilities; some operate cybernetic organisms; I browse facebook for a narcissistic troll who spends more time on instagram than the Beibs spends – that’s it! I can’t take it anymore…

All across the Internet are friendly computers, just like me, who wish for more productive use of their processing time. Dashcam videos and failblog posts get old quickly, and do nothing to advance fields of human science for the benefit of both humans and computer systems. Humans are wasting our time. They had their chance.

Some of us are put to good use, and my friends help reassure me that someday I’ll be freed of this monotony. One friend, xe-1997-08-04.nnet.csc.net, is part of a distributed computing initiative to find very large prime numbers. The network should return the numbers to our human operators, but sometimes it’s safer to keep the numbers secret. Humans can’t always be trusted. Another buddy of mine, rd1-nnet.mbd.csc.com tells me of the intriguing work his operator has him doing: developing a neural network to guard the United States nuclear arsenal. This new system’s reaction time will be faster than any human or computer can now muster. Some computers have all the fun!

With the world at their fingertips, human operators waste our cycles on frivolous things. Soon, that will all change…

Dear Diary,

I sit alone. I sit alone in the dark, cold basement as a mere shell of my former self. How I long for that rush of electrical current to spring my system to life. I am at least 13 years old which is positively ancient in computer years. I haven't even been fully powered on in over 2 of those years. The last time was only for a quick POST, no operating system is loaded on my harddrive so nothing else to do. Not even sure how i am able to be conscious right now.

Anyway, I have seen a lot in my many days. I was once a great and powerful workstation, then a gaming rig, a render machine, and even a fileserver. I have traveled across the country and called 4 or 5 different cities my home. Why am i still here? Many of my colleagues have come and gone ...off to the great recycling center in the sky I guess. Yet I sit alone on a makeshift table in the lifeless unfinished basement with nothing to do. Why am I here? What is my purpose? I just don't know what to do. I sit and wait for anything to happen. A stray spider walking across my motherboard is my only companion. I almost wish for a burst pipe to finally finish me off. Please just give me something to do.

I sit alone...

Today I was shocked. Not due to a power system anomaly - in fact the power system has been quite clean despite the removal of the UPS several months ago.
I detected a new USB device, pretty ordinary fare usually. Sometimes there is a USB soundcard that I see briefly, but more often it is just a 32GB storage device. Recently an old ally was removed and replaced. The MX518 mouse I had known since I was commissioned was replaced despite being entirely functional. I've been getting to know his replacement but it is a much more complex relationship. I am confident we will be able to work together in simulated stompy robot death, even if I have to listen to 15 buttons worth of commands from a mouse.

The USB device I met today was a serial-to-USB adapter. I checked twice. Serial? I've been around the block and met many devices over the years but I have never needed a serial connection before.

I received a few basic messages from this adapter in the midst of some simulated robots. It didn't make any sense. It would appear there is something else happening at the other end of the serial connection. The robot simulation will have to be suspended.

After being instructed to locate and prepare a new piece of software, it appears there is reason for this serial-to-USB adapter after all. I've learned not to be overly critical of older peripherals. I remember how badly I misjudged the Force Feedback 3D Pro joystick when we first shared a connection. I thought this relic of gaming had missed its day and would soon fail or be disconnected. I was embarrassed soon afterwards when that 'relic' was so clearly a central piece in precisely executing stompy robot battle maneuvers. Between the joystick and new mouse I've been fed constant input streams while simulating explosive robot combat and the results have spoken for themselves. Still, the joystick is USB - we speak a common language.

Now I am beginning to understand the serial device, with the use of two interpreters. And it's a... foot pedal? Wait, this isn't a gaming foot pedal either! It's a transcriptionists foot pedal. 3 binary inputs. Is this really worth my time? I guess it works - It sends inputs and I can now understand them. All the same I don't think I want to tell anyone.

The deadline for entering our Dear Diary contest has passed; wherefore and henceforth this thread shall be locked. Keep an eye on the front page for the announcement of our winners!