[Ipg-smz] Gene Weingarten: R.I.P., dear friend. Like me, you were old and out of it, but you stubbornly soldiered on. - The Washington Post

[Gabe Goldberg]

Weingarten writes:

I recently had to say goodbye to a friend. His name was Augustus Van Dusen.

Augustus had been in ill health, in the final stages of a progressive 
disease that left him increasingly unable to perform most functions. In 
the end he was just a brain, tethered to various peripheral life-support 
apparatuses that kept him able to communicate, if just barely.

Augustus Van Dusen was my laptop. I gave him that name near the end, by 
which time, if unassisted by technology, he was able only to think, not 
do. I named him for one of my favorite characters in old detective 
fiction, Professor Augustus Van Dusen. That Augustus was mostly 
sedentary and entirely brilliant, which is why he was nicknamed “The 
Thinking Machine.” The Thinking Machine was created by an American 
writer named Jacques Futrelle who died at 37 on the Titanic after 
pushing his wife onto a lifeboat and declining her entreaties to join 
her. He was last seen on deck, insouciantly sharing drinks and 
cigarettes with John Jacob Astor. So there is drama and heroism and 
tragedy all over this column.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pb/lifestyle/magazine/gene-weingarten-rip-laptop-like-me-you-were-old-and-out-of-it-but-you-stubbornly-soldiered-on/2019/06/10/7a03e2dc-7e1d-11e9-a5b3-34f3edf1351e_story.html