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Error reports
Apr. 26th, 2013 06:23 pmI can never quite decide what to envisage when my computer asks me if I want to send an error message to Microsoft. If most people click "send," then Microsoft must have endless caverns full of gnomes and teeny non-Tolkienish elves, slaving away everlastingly. It will be one of those things in which you see one hardworking gnome, and the camera pans out to show you that there's actually a cave full of them, then pans out again to show that the cave is just one of a hundred identical ones cut into a vast cavern wall, and then pans out yet again to show that even that cavern is just one of a million caverns, in an enormous infinity of raspberries caverns that stretches to the very sky itself.
But if most people click "don't send," then I like to imagine a high tech shiny room in which a highly trained special forces team hangs around doing whatever highly trained special forces guys do when waiting for an alert. (Knitting?) Then, finally, on the other side of the world, someone clicks "send," and red lights start flashing, and the alarm goes Wyah! Wyah! Wyah! and they leap to their feet, dark glasses in place. "A retired shepherd needs us in Chew Magna!" shouts their commander. "Go! Go! GO!" And they slide down the pole, or abseil out of the plane, and head off, chanting "hut! hut! hut!"
Because these are the only alternatives. I refuse to accept that error messages might just disappear into oblivion somewhere, roundly ignored by everyone involved. I think I prefer the SWAT team. The elf solution feels quite cruel, but at least the SWAT team gets to knit lots of socks.
But if most people click "don't send," then I like to imagine a high tech shiny room in which a highly trained special forces team hangs around doing whatever highly trained special forces guys do when waiting for an alert. (Knitting?) Then, finally, on the other side of the world, someone clicks "send," and red lights start flashing, and the alarm goes Wyah! Wyah! Wyah! and they leap to their feet, dark glasses in place. "A retired shepherd needs us in Chew Magna!" shouts their commander. "Go! Go! GO!" And they slide down the pole, or abseil out of the plane, and head off, chanting "hut! hut! hut!"
Because these are the only alternatives. I refuse to accept that error messages might just disappear into oblivion somewhere, roundly ignored by everyone involved. I think I prefer the SWAT team. The elf solution feels quite cruel, but at least the SWAT team gets to knit lots of socks.
