Sailing Tarka: The Legend of Bsodius

Juliet and I were going to turn over a new leaf with the blog- we were determined to be more disciplined and consistent in our efforts to update it. It was last Friday that we made the decision to update it every Sunday so that it would be ready to read come Monday. This would give us a goal and add a little bit of routine to our lives.

Saturday was spent writing a new blog. We were on schedule to meet the first of our new deadlines.

On Sunday, I booted up the computer, ready to add some of those finishing touches that make our blog just so special. Instead of booting through Windows though, our computer would only displayed the widely feared “Blue Screen of Death” (hereafter referred to as BSODius).

Bsodius is like the Voldemort of computers. It sits silently somewhere in your system, cloaked in a veil of self-emanating evil. It is an intangible dark energy looking to manifest itself into the physical world. And like Voldemort sucking the blood from Unicorns in the Dark Forest for energy, Bsodius maintains its vitality by sucking the hemoglobnic (your welcome Webster) 1's and 0's from the fibrous bits that make up the lifeblood of your computer. Neither picture nor document has immunity from its deadly embrace.

“Windows has failed to boot, there's nothing you can do about it.” Troubling times call for a hero who possesses the ultimate telltales of courageousness and strength. Like Harry Potter before me, I knew destiny was calling. At first, I desperately tried to ignore the call- who was I to face Bsodius? Surely there was someone more capable than I. But destiny proved more persistent than a Salvation Army bell ringer. You can avoid eye contact, but the guilt will eventually cut through you like a katana through warm pumpkin pie (yes, I do use a samurai sword to cut my holiday desserts and it's even more awesome than it sounds).

I was plunged into the deepest darkest realm of the known universe. A place so damning that no mortal has ever went and returned with their sanity in tact. A place where the very ideas of logic and rationality are incapable of being manifested either as an idea nor as process of efficiency. I am referring to, of course, the land of Outsourceus Techsupportium.

Nothing could have prepared me for the eternity that I spent there, and my memory is fuzzy on recalling the exact order of events or details of the characters that I came across. I was cast down the rabbit hole only to find myself in some strangely enchanted land that my human sense could not make coherent. When I tried to ask for help, the only response I could get from the residents here were incoherent ramblings that, when finally decrypted, seemingly had nothing to do with the predicament that I found myself in. I can only imagine that it was a bit how Alice felt when she tried to navigate her way through Wonderland, only to stumble across the drunken rantings of that sociopathic Cheshire Cat, the pure nonsensical idiocy of the Tweedle brothers, or the psychosis of the mad hatter who's brain had long since been turned into Swiss cheese by mercury exposure.

I taxed the mental and physical strength of my body's every cell to the point of depletion, then demanded more, in a fashion that mimicked the US budget. But I needed to keep focused on the task at hand. I needed to find Bsodius and release my operating system from his evil influence. But every time I turned the corner I seemed to see a duplicate image of what I had just been through. Every time I tried asking someone for help, they began unintelligibly regurgitating what those before them had told me. What do they call it when you try the same thing over and over expecting a different result?

There was nothing I could do but be persistent. I finally reached a castle and met a fellow wearing what resembled a cap made of tin foil. He seemed to be unaffected by the strange ambiance that made everyone in Outsourceus Techsupportium so hopelessly unhelpful. He explained to me that he was a “case manager” and that Outsourceus Techsupportium is an illusionary world, created by Bsodius to throw off his opponents- to make them go insane and to give up trying to rid their computer of him. He told me that Bsodius was hiding in one of my sticks of RAM, so that if I removed the mystical stick I would have Bsodius contained, for now. I trustingly sent him the stick of RAM but wasn't convinced that this “case manager” wouldn't inflict its malice upon some other unsuspecting computer.

We no longer have the Blue Screen of Death, but you never know when it will rear its ugly head. The only way to protect yourself from its destruction is to back up your personal files and to do so often. Head the warnings of the legend of Bsodius or face dire and irreparable consequences.

And now for some unrelated photos: