It's been several months, but Katie thinks Bernard is finally making a return "appearance" in our house. And we think he's become a bit of a tech snob. In a good way, of course.
For the last month or so, I've had a laptop at home from work. I have it because I need Windows to run some programs and we don't yet have a Mac with an Intel processor so I can get Boot Camp and a copy of XP. So the Dell laptop has been my Band-Aid approach to remedying the situation.
On Sunday, I fired up the laptop to get some stuff done. Before I even reached the login screen, I received the dreaded BSoD (Blue Screen of Death) with what had to be the longest error message in the history of computing. Most BSoDs are just a couple lines of text that mean nothing to the average human other than "Oh crap, my computer's FUBARd!" All I remember from this message was something about a physical memory dump and I needed a restart. So I did.
The second go-round, it started and I logged in fine. Did a couple things, saved them, and then the whole system just spontaneously died. No BSoD, no warning, no nothing. Just died.
So I rebooted again. Right after I logged in, the viewable area of the screen collapsed to the upper 40% of the monitor and started racing back and forth sideways. It was like watching speedlines in anime.
Third time was the charm for me, so I shut it down and took it to the IT department yesterday morning. My tech guy checked it out for several hours, ran what he called "the most thorough diagnostic check I've ever performed in my life," and found nothing. No notes in the log files at all. Not one indication that the system had crashed or that there had been a BSoD or anything.
Katie is now convinced that we have created a monster; that Bernard has become a Mac freak because we leave our iMac on for him to play with when we're gone. And now he doesn't want anything else in our place. PCs not allowed, so he kills them. Hey, my Mac has spontaneously awoken from sleep in the middle of the night. I've seen it happen. Just wakes up for no reason whatsoever.
I guess we can add another bullet to the list... Mac owners are more likely to be found in the spirit world than PC users.
Hey, can't fault Bernard for having good taste.
Totally Unrelated Aside (TUA): Kristy Yamaguchi, Adam Carolla, Priscilla Presley, Shannon Elizabeth, Steve Guttenberg, Marlee Matlin, Monica Seles, Penn Jillette, Jason Taylor, and a couple others. Hey, you had me at Yamaguchi. I'm tuning in!
