TECHNOLOGY! a blessing and a pain the @#$

It's safe to say that almost all young adults in America, and even most adults over 40 are now reliant on technology whether it be their laptops, blackberry's or other smart phones, ipods, whatever... for basically everything from games, school work, paying bills,and shopping to working. I myself am heavily reliant on my laptop for all of these things with the exception of my job. Mostly, for school. All of my classes this semester are writing intensive and two of the four have all the assignments submitted (and in this class, assignments are posted online as well). Honestly, usually, I prefer this. Less papers to shuffle through and keep track of at home when I go to do these assignments, and less of a pain in the butt to print off papers before class because there's no need for that at all. All in all, a month ago, I was all set to go this semester.

Then, it happened.

One morning, going to turn my laptop on to check my e-mail, facebook, and to get caught up on celebrity gossip, I became increasingly irritated when my laptop screen wouldn't turn on with the rest of my computer. I must have ctrl-alt-delete'd 20 times. My damn laptop, 2 years old, wouldn't turn on. I never downloaded illegally, always paid for my music, etc, so could it have been a virus crippling my computer? Hell if I knew, all I knew was that I was ticked off that it wouldn't turn on when it had been working fine the night before. Long story short, my motherboard was completely fried. For the past month, I've been without a computer because my motherboard has to come from Japan. My step-dad's friend offered to fix it for free if we paid for the motherboard- about $125.00 coming from Japan, where it would have otherwise cost around $600.00 to go through a repair shop. My mom offered to pay for the motherboard, so I couldn't really object to that or the time it's STILL taking to get fixed. Since then, I've fallen terribly behind in the internet based classes I'm taking, I'm late on bills (my cellphone shut off last week, luckily I was on campus so I could get to a computer to pay my bill) and I straight-out feel disconnected from the world. I used my laptop for almost everything, and now without it I'm realizing how heavily I depended on my computer and the internet to live my life. Luckily, my mother lent me her work laptop for a few days to get things done. Here's to hoping that motherboard comes in soon.. God knows I'm suffering without it!!!