Yep, that's the noise that Marla heard last night when my head exploded. Damn, it left a mess too... brains and blood and bits of bone scattered all over the office. Yuck. Those stains are never going to come out.
Let's back up a few minutes in time.
There I am, happily (or tiredly, if you want true accuracy) wrapping up Chapter 8. I've saved the text and now I'm inserting the figures into the document so I can create an illustrated PDF form my reviewers. Easy task, no problems.
Figure 8 doesn't draw after I insert it. Neither does 9. Hmmm. Looking at the TIF in a different program, they are fine!
Okay, be that way. Windows has gotten tired and maybe needs a swift boot the head to wake it up again. I'm happy to oblige.
After initiating the restart sequence, I wander off to see if I can find my signal generator. I find it and discover it has a 2MHz max frequency, not quite what I wanted for my test at work.
Wandering back to the computer, it's stuck at the "Applying security policy" step. Is that on shutdown or startup? Beats me!
So I poke it... Ctrl-Alt-Del. Nothing. I poke the power button. Nope, not awake.
I lean on the button. Blip! Down.
Reboot.
Blue screen of death! Aaaa! Something wrong with the boot device!
Reboot! BSOD.
Boom! My head explodes.
My disembodied spirit is writing this from programmer hell, that place you go when your computer is broken and you can't finish your job.