blue screen of death
photo credit: "bsod" by matias jaramillo (CC-BY-2.0) This week’s newsletter is dedicated to the memory of my computer, which died suddenly on Wednesday, July 2nd at 7:14 PM. It was five years old. It had suffered a modem failure last month, but had received a replacement and seemed to have recovered. Its unexpected passing came as a shock to all of us. The computer is survived by a monitor, a printer, a scanner, and various lesser peripherals.
Definition: (noun) An unfortunate situation in which a software error causes Microsoft Windows to freeze up, requiring the user to restart the computer, often losing unsaved data.
Example: The Microsoft representative was embarrassed by the blue screen of death while trying to demonstrate the “new, improved” Windows operating system to potential customers.
Quote:
“Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.”
Our example actually happened at COMDEX (a big, high-tech conference) but it wasn’t just any salesperson – it was Bill Gates who got the blue screen of death while pitching Windows 98. Fortunately for him, he had a backup computer and showed the system on that instead.
There are a lot more nice slang terms for this kind of situation, including crashed, dead, tanked, down, and hosed. However, these can all refer to a temporary difficulty. For my more permanent problem, I’d like to propose a new expression: The black screen of eternal rest. Here’s another haiku that expresses my feelings:
A crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
- James Lopez
A. C. Kemp | July 10 , 2003
