Keep Those Cards and Letters

I spend a lot of time working with personal computers, often to no avail. Like so much else of all the machinery that comprises my scenery, the personal computers in my life have a tendency to do what I tell them instead of what I want. I suppose I should be grateful I don't have voice activated software for them because in my case, I'd need to replace the Idiot's Guide with the most recent update to Masters and Johnson, since many of my voice commands would be anatomically and electronically nonexecutable.

I stare into the depths of the blue screen of death a half dozen or more times a day-O death where is thy sting, I sing; well, actually it doesn't sound very much like singing when I do it but you get my drift. I've endured countless admonitions that I've attempted an "illegal operation" as the PC shuts down and goes dark to teach one of us a lesson (all of which is wasted on me).

My favorite PC fantasy in recent weeks (okay perv, let's try that again) my favorite PC operating fantasy has become the one where whatever I'm doing has stopped doing it-perhaps frustrated by me or just exhausted by my persistent insistence. There's a finite number of times you can hit Control-Alt-Delete (I haven't reached it yet, seemingly, but it's upwards of a hundred because I have done it that often in a single bound) and up pops a variation of this screen:

There's little in life less worth living than being judged to be nonresponsive. Empires have been overthrown for less and voyages of exploration have been undertaken to avoid its curse. I used to always click "Send Error Report" no matter what had happened or when it occurred because somehow, I just knew the boys and girls of Microsoft were sitting in their operator cubicles on pins and needles in downtown Redmond, Washington, waiting to read about the background of my latest computational catastrophe. Together, we would become better people and programs.

Not exactly as it turns out. Slowly, as time went by and the same stupid nonresponsive program messages kept popping up, it crossed my mind that The Gates Gang wasn't especially quick on the uptake or why else would the same program error keep happening. It wasn't like I was getting any smarter at screwing things up. Nope, not me. I had pretty much flat-lined on the learning curve.

And while even in the most recent of times I'm still generating computer error messages by the bushelful, I'm no longer providing hours of amusement to those whose pockets are protected from all manner or matter great and small. I alwys opt now for "Don't Send." It's as close as I can get to going commando in a spam-filled virus infested phishing pool. I need a unit to sample and hold, but not an angry one. A new design, a new design. And Kanye, turns out you weren't first or even close, so how about shutting up.

-bill kenny