I remember vividly the first time I encountered the “blue screen of death”. I had set up a new PC with the equally new operating system Windows NT and was working in Powerpoint, creating a presentation with lots of photos (that was back in the days when we made 35mm slides from the electronic files and projected them with - can you believe it - a slide projector), when the computer monitor went blue and lots of hexadecimal numbers started flashing across the screen. It’s the sort of trauma that could have sent a lesser mortal to therapy for a few months.

A similar thing happened to me this past weekend. It’s almost 15 years later and the offender is a Macintosh (the one I prepare my web pages on), but the end result is almost the same; trauma, blue screen, non-functioning computer. What was different about this week’s event is that it happens every time I try to boot the machine.

“Hard drive” say the experts.

So, I begin the saga of examining startup files, reducing peripherals, booting from disk, booting into safe mode and booting from external hard drives. None of these exercises cure the problem. The original hard drive boots an older Macintosh just fine and all my data is there waiting patiently for me (Where have you been, Edward?!?). It’s only my silver tower that won’t boot (I’m tempted to give it the boot).

If you have noticed, dear reader, glitches, errors, and mysterious inconsistencies over the course of the past few days, you will now have some idea of why. The work that I have previously been performing on Gwen, the toned, slender, and silvery Macintosh computer, must now be spread out over Jill, George and Miss Liz, the other denizens of my stable of electronic computing devices. Needless to say (but I’m a gonna say it anyway), this changes the flow of my work quite a bit.

But, none of this stopped me from getting away to Forest Park (home of the owls) on what is probably the most incredible August day ever and (are you ready for this?) getting MORE GREAT PHOTOS!!!