I get out of a meeting at work, and on the way back to my office one of my colleagues mentions that he's having a problem with one of the keyboard keys seeming to stick on his VNC connection--the connection is still there, but the keyboard doesn't respond at all.
I mention that it's probably the long-standing Windows bug where Windows seems to "lose" a key-up message on one of the modifier keys (shift, alt, etc.), and he can probably fix it by hitting each of the modifier keys once in succession (happens to me all the time).
He agrees, and I follow him back to his office just to see if that's the case. We proceed down the stairs, out the door, past the cul-de-sac where three of my friends are getting off the school bus. We walk into his house, where his mom is starting supper. I say "Hi, Mrs..." then trail off in embarrassment as I don't want to assume that his mom's last name is the same as his... we continue up to his room, where he starts up his machine.
He apologizes for having to hold the CD-ROM in place by hand as his machine starts up ("I gotta get some more screws," he mumbles, and I nod and smile in understanding). We wait through about three minutes of DOS TSRs, and I'm suddenly feeling very guilty that his machine is more ancient than the one I'm currently using as a throwaway firewall. The machine continues to creak along, and emacs starts up ("Emacs as a DOS shell... points for geekery," I think.) Another few moments of waiting for elisp files to start, and he's still holding on to the CD-ROM drive... I'm waiting... still waiting...
I look around--he's not moving; emacs is wedged. All sound from the rest of the house is stopped.
My dream has hung.
Maybe it's not just a Windows bug after all.
I wake, and the only sound is the whine of my wheezing Pentium firewall.
- FIN -
Mythology March 20 2005 5:48 AM EST
That was excellent to read :) gj for sharing.
