A Comedy in Three Acts

Cast of Characters:

RM: Roommate
ME: Lori, fixer of computers
LT: Laptop of DOOM
BSOD: BLUE SCREEN OF DEEEEEATH
MS: Microsoft, purveyor of inadequate error messages

Act 1

Enter: BSOD!!!!!! MUHUHAHAHAHA! ::munches loudly::
RM: Oh no! My nice new laptop given to me by my whole nice family for my birthday! Woe! And I didn’t even save the game!
LT: eeeeeeEEEEEEE ::blink:: ::crash::
ME: Well, shoot. ::reboot, insert diagnostic cd::

– a year passes –

ME: ::reads another book as chkdsk ticks slowly through its verification of the hard drive::

– another year passes –

ME: ::watches memory test crawl through its sequence, reads another book::

– another year passes —

ME: Time to reboot.
BSOD: HAHAHAHAHAAAAA! NOT SO FAST! BEHOLD, CRYPTIC ERROR CODES THAT COULD MEAN ANYTHING FROM BAD HARDWARE TO BAD DRIVERS TO BAD SOFTWARE!
ME: Geeze. Where’s the little icon of Windows twirling its mustache?

Act 2

ME: ::inserts XP disk, reboots:: Let’s see if it can repair you.
LT: Oh, hey! watch me boot to the CD! No Problemo!
ME: I’ll go look up the BSOD codes while I wait. On my Powerbook. Well… yes. It could be anything. Still. Guess I need to work on it some more. Finished rebooting?
LT: I want to run chkdsk again!
RM: Oh no! the screen is blue!
ME: That doesn’t mean anything at this point, it’s running chkdsk again. It may be done sometime today.
RM: Guess I didn’t want to get that proposal done today either.
LT: ::thinks really really really hard, increases another percent toward done::
ME: ::takes shower, reads blogs, edits webpage for a while, watches hummingbird family feeding outside, drinks another cup of tea, writes fic for a while, edits another one, returns to check on progress::
LT: Look, another ten percent!
ME: Sigh.

Act 3

RM: AH! BLUE!
ME: That’s the sky. Relax.
LT: Hey, I finally finished and rebooted! I’m working again!
ALL: YAAAAY!
Error message: Boo! I don’t work!
ME: ::removes AOL:: No. You don’t.
RM: Hey, I was getting error messages from that before.
ME: I suspect we may have solved the issue. It would appear not to be hardware, and now that AOL is gone it should speed up the system in general and make the world a better place. Would you like a tombstone for your AOL?
RM: No thanks. Would you like a margarita?
ME: Does Windows crash?
::canned laughter::

THE END