Mat-deMat #3

L. Van Warren

FACT: i played the "win a free Indigo contest" today, free as a free lunch. If it
doesn't come soon I'll charge a PowerPC to my credit card till the repo man
comes.

FICTION: yeah, that day was alright, I can't remember how many beers we
drank, only that that the fizz was extra zippy running to the disk.

Then the upgrade debacle that spring almost ruined it for everybody. The
firmware driving the PC board layout got swapped to an incompatible back
version after a lightning storm came in over the mountains. A few people,
mostly experts and rank novices got burned pretty bad. One housewife lost
her left arm. Middle America was largely unaffected mostly due to the fact
that they keep them powered on all the time. Novices, wanting to do
everything right, hadn't gotten lazy enough to leave them on all the time.
Experts, who would run two disks at once got nailed too. Like the airline
pilots who put their flaps down, while letting the gear out, while turning
for base. It works if you're used to it, and if the plane's doing okay that
day. Oh well, since then the DRRC - Dema/Remat regulation commission has
mandated additional QC checks on outgoing firmware updates, so far so good.