Farewell, Vermilius

This week I said goodbye to one of my closest friends, Vermilius. He's been a part of my life for nearly six and a half years, and now he's off living a new life, for however much time he has left. He was getting really slow towards the end of our time together, and to ease the pain of separation, I wiped his memories so he had less to miss.

I first got Vermilius (so named because of the red color his keys glowed) in 2013, after much researching on gaming laptops. Vermilius was top-of-the-line in his day. He had not one, but two graphics cards, one of them replacing a CD ROM drive. He was always an innovative guy, urging me to move past CDs into using digital downloads for games instead. As long as he was plugged in, he could run Orcs Must Die, Heroes of the Storm, and lots of other games at a great resolution and graphics quality, especially compared to my previous computer, Lappy.

I played dozens of hours of games on Vermilius, in many different locales across Utah, Idaho, and even Texas on one occasion. My original Warcraft III Easter Eggs series was fully created on Vermilius, and in a way I owe my claim to fame to him.

Last year, Vermilius got a bit jealous of Macky, my MacBook Pro I got in my coding course, but this was mainly because Macky largely replaced Vermilius as a portable computer. Macky is lighter and has a much smoother track pad than Vermilius did (that was definitely one of his faults, as was his tendency to groan when thinking too hard), and though Macky can't play many games, it was definitely more convenient to bring her along for casual use than lug heavy Vermilius in his broken computer bag.

Ironically, it was Vermilius's success in making me an amateur Youtuber that ultimately led to his retirement. With the money I earned from my first AdSense paycheck, I finally was able to purchase a solid desktop PC, whom I named Bulwark. With Macky taking over the family travel business and Bulwark having much more powerful graphics, even being able to be cranked up to Ultra without so much as a bit of lag, it was only a matter of time before Vermilius was put into storage, sleeping for months at a time and only coming out very seldom to be utilized as an outlet for an HDMI movie-viewing experience on Netflix or Amazon Prime. At last, however, his slow, elderly speed and his annoying groan became too much. An HDMI adapter hub was ordered for Macky, and venerable Vermilius was put to sleep, then awakened without his memories (again, to ease the pain), and sent off to a new home.

Hopefully his new owner will find a use for him before he kicks the bucket altogether. Though I only got $70 in return for selling Vermilius and I purchased him for $899.99, I think overall the six years I spent with him was absolutely worth it.

I hereby raise this strawberry shake from Chick Fil'A in your honor, Vermilius. To a life well-lived, to many hours of gaming, and to moving forward from school days in constant need of a laptop to a more settled life at a desk. Adeus.