At 8:01 PM Last Night, A War Was Waged on the Current Version of Prisca
Published: December 1, 2025 • 4 min read
It was just past 6pm, and I had just gotten back from hanging out with a friend yesterday.
I always plan my days and my plan for this evening was to publish my next blog post. This was going to be another Claude God tip and I was excited about it.
So I sat at my desk and pressed the power button on my laptop. The lights flickered and then it went off. I thought, oh well, that's normal, my laptop has been misbehaving these past few days anyways. So I pressed it again, and again, and again.
Long story short, over an hour later and multiple Reddit recommendations tested, my laptop still did not come on. This was it. I thought I was being dramatic when I mentioned in this blog post that my laptop does not like me anymore, well I wasn't. It literally just gave up on me last night.
At 7:15pm, my Dell XPS 13 took its last breath. It was only 3 years and 4 months old. (a moment of silence for this loss)
The Backstory
Now here's the thing. After creating that blog post, I started to think, I might need a new laptop as this one really affects my speed...and speed is of utmost priority for me right now in my SDR Era and the volume of work I am committing to doing.
Then I looked up possible laptop options to get. However, everything good and perfect seemed out of my budget. I dismissed it. I have been managing with this all this while, I can continue to do so for a bit longer, I told myself.
I didn't stop there though as I have been going back and forth in my head, really wondering if it's worth it to continue to stall my progress because I didn't want to get a better laptop.
Then just last night, this happened. Perfect timing don't you think? Right after I had signed a lease that would drastically increase my cost of living starting January, my laptop decides to take its last breath?
Oh well. At exactly 8:01pm last night, I ordered a new, better laptop. I'll save you the specifications of this one but I'm glad I got a little bit of discount on it due to Black Friday sales.
4 Revelations After Making This Purchase
1. My bank account wailed loudly, crying, 'Prisca, why are you doing this to me?'
I had to turn my ears away from its wailing. It was too painful to hear.
2. A post I had seen recently on Substack came to mind...
The post said something like 'Overthinking is really just underthinking. You know the final result you want yet you keep going round and round in circles even when you know the decision you have to make for the output you want.'
I didn't simply press the purchase option. I kept going back and forth on this decision even while the laptop sat in my cart. But what was I going to do? Not get a laptop? Spend more money fixing the one that was slowing me down knowing fully well that this would be its fifth or sixth time being shipped to Dell Engineers in just 3 years? I say I believe the work I am doing on this site is important. Any action but purchasing a laptop that would help me continue that work even more efficiently was only going to act as a contradiction to what I claim to believe in. I eventually pressed purchase though, and then a third thing happened.
3. I just waged war on the current version of Prisca.
Making that purchase did something to my brain and now, I think I'm going to be more intense than ever as I count down 13 days till the end of my SDR Era.
If I am going to make crazy purchases like this and decisions like moving to Montreal only being aware of step one, I had better become the person that this entire process is meant to make me into, and FAST!
4. I am never buying a Dell product ever again.
I've had this laptop for 3 years and every single year, I've had to ship it to Dell's engineers once or twice to fix issues with it. Before purchasing this laptop, I thought warranties were an optional thing but with Dell, its mandatory because sooner or later, something bad is going to happen and you'll need to get it fixed without paying a ridiculous amount of extra money.
How I'm Writing This Post
How am I writing this blog post you may wonder?
Well luckily I had a used Google Chromebook that I got 2 years ago sitting on my shelf. I was ready to donate this Chromebook as I had started clearing out my stuff in preparation for moving but I am glad its useful now.
Now, I am going to spend the next few minutes or hours learning to use Claude Code on the web. That is where Allen Kendrick lives now and he'll need to refine this post.
You see, I learned about Claude Code on the web a while back and played with it for a bit but nothing serious. My plan was to look into it more after my SDR Era but oh well, plans changed... I'll learn to use it today and ensure that this blog post, as well as the other one I should have written yesterday gets uploaded today on the first of December.
No excuses are allowed in the SDR Era! None!
I'll also make some updates to Nancy, my personal assistant. I know its bad to compare people but when I was looking up details for the new laptop I was going to purchase, I came across a website with a chatbot, similar to Nancy. But this chatbot did something better than Nancy - it let me know that data about the questions I asked was going to be collected and asked me to confirm that I was okay with it. Nancy doesn't inform users of that right now, which is okay for now since no one knows about this site yet but I am going to implement that today with Claude on the web.
Once again, no excuses in the SDR Era!
As always, thanks for reading!