Anonymous Professor Hates Fatal Errors (Especially When They're His)

                            Fatal Errors

I tried to sign onto my account a moment ago and I got a screen telling me that there has been a fatal error.

Erm... What does that mean? Has there been an accident at Google? If so, how many people are affected, afflicted, electrocuted, or whatever the method the digital world uses to execute people for making mistakes? Who committed the fatal error? Where can I send flowers?

Wait. I'm assuming that the fatality is on Google's end. Maybe I'M the fatality! What killed me? Are my survivors entitled to compensation? I think I’ll unlock my office door so my body can be found in the event that someone wonders where I am and comes looking for me. (It isn’t likely but you never know).

Later...

I checked my blood pressure, pulse, and temperature. All are normal. I seem not to be dead or dying.

Here's the problem: technology has appropriated the English language. When the website tells me that there has been a "fatal error”, it's really telling me that there has been a technical problem somewhere in its system that cannot be fixed, and I should start over. Its failure to communicate clearly is an attempt to put some of the blame on me.

Maybe that's better than telling me that “the website is messed up at the moment. Try your luck later when the technician at Mission Control is sober enough to adjust the frammazamma."

It's sort of like when I call the university's I.T. department and I'm told that the problem with my email is due to a temporary glitch in the system and that service will be restored momentarily.

Momentarily? In the world of I.T., the measure of a moment isn’t standardized. Yesterday, a moment was about an hour after I called. Last week, a moment was the next day. With that sort of annoying uncertainty is it any wonder that I don’t check my email anymore?

Sometimes the I.T. department says that the system is undergoing an update. That sounds a lot better than telling me the truth: that the system has been shut down because one of the I.T. technicians' cats fell into the machinery, and they're trying to clear the gears, wheels, and pulleys of cat guts and hair.

Fatal Error indeed.