# Bill Gates' Birthday



## atmospheric (Oct 29, 2005)

Blast, I missed Bills birthday. I was thinking of getting him a Mac. Any other suggestions?


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## nbrcrunch (Oct 29, 2005)

nonsense. get him a big mac.


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## Andrew Fergus (Oct 30, 2005)

What do you give a man who has everything?





Try penicillin.....


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## Zack Barresse (Oct 30, 2005)

Well happy belated birthday Mr. Gates.  Hope it was a good one.


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## tactps (Oct 31, 2005)

I was thinking "contact lenses" or maybe lasics eye surgery.

But he didn't get me anything last year!


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## TrippyTom (Oct 31, 2005)

are you kidding?

I got several Blue Screens of Death last year, and he didn't even pay for them... but I sure did!


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## tactps (Nov 1, 2005)

OK Tom, I stand corrected - I'll never say I never got anything from him.

lol


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## NateO (Nov 1, 2005)

TrippyTom said:
			
		

> I got several Blue Screens of Death last year, and he didn't even pay for them... but I sure did!


Argh! The last round of these that I had afforded me the opportunity to clean up my hard-drive; completely!!   

Still, I'm happy to not be using Apple-Mac products...


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## Tazguy37 (Nov 1, 2005)

I was gonna say something about my Blue Screens of Death, but if I say it out loud, it will happen.


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## NateO (Nov 1, 2005)

Unfortunately, they are aptly named... I had a colleague who was getting them on her machine last year; here's how that conversation went:

Her: "Hey Nate, what does this mean?"

Me: "Hmm... It appears that your computer wants you to [externally] back-up all of your data."


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## Von Pookie (Nov 1, 2005)

The best error message I have *personally* seen in the time I've been using computers (PCs, that is)?

That would have to be the time I started up my computer and was greeted with "Cannot read drive C:"

And then it was never heard from again.


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## Tazguy37 (Nov 2, 2005)

Or:

"Keyboard error or keyboard not found.  Press F1 to continue."


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## al_b_cnu (Nov 2, 2005)

Von Pookie said:
			
		

> The best error message I have *personally* seen in the time I've been using computers (PCs, that is)?
> 
> That would have to be the time I started up my computer and was greeted with "Cannot read drive C:"
> 
> And then it was never heard from again.



how about a mainframe error message I once saw:

'Hardware or Software error'


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## caringsharingbristolbilly (Nov 3, 2005)

Getting off topic here, but my favourite was when my computer was being it's usual buggy irritating self, crashing every five minutes, freezing, blue screening, randomly forgetting it had a keyboard, then it suddenly came up with the following error message:

"   Error: Catastrophic Failure". 


    :x   

Needless to say, my computer took quite a beating that day.  :wink:


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## Mark O'Brien (Nov 3, 2005)

Tazguy37 said:
			
		

> I was gonna say something about my Blue Screens of Death, but if I say it out loud, it will happen.



I haven't had a BSOD since I stopped using NT4.  All is well in the world and I fear no loss of data.  Microsoft is great.


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## Von Pookie (Nov 3, 2005)

Who are you, and what have you done with Mark?


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## NateO (Nov 3, 2005)

I think the trick is to use Windows XP; which has been a lot more stable for me (or dare I suggest Windows ME?   )…


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## Mark O'Brien (Nov 3, 2005)

Or Win2k.  Which is what I was on until earlier this year.


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## Cbrine (Nov 3, 2005)

I'm with Nate on the windows platform now.  I'm using XP Pro, and the only time I've seen BSOD involved following an IM link, and downloading a viirus(ie.  USER STUPIDITY).  Nasty rebuild after that.

Cal

PS-I haven't lost a spreadsheet since I upgraded from XL97 to XL2003.  The recovery services are awesome.


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## Joe4 (Nov 3, 2005)

Here's a good Catch-22 I experienced a few weeks back.

I had a problem with my computer where it would not boot-up at all (not even in Safe Mode).  As I am sitting on Dell's support line, sitting on hold for what seemed an eternity, a helpful recorded voice tells me to try to go to Dell's web site for support.  Gee, thanks!


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## Greg Truby (Nov 3, 2005)

I've had really good stability with WinXP.  But with really complex applications I can still crash Excel.  Moreso during development, not so much once I've got it up and running.  I've had Excel apologize for needing to shut down and go into recovery mode a dozen times a day sometimes (and no, I never do seem to pinpoint just exactly what it is that I am doing to tick it off; you'd think MS would write back once in a while after all of the "error reporting" I've done).


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## Mark O'Brien (Nov 3, 2005)

Greg Truby said:
			
		

> ...you'd think MS would write back once in a while after all of the "error reporting" I've done).



Something like this?

Dear Greg, 

Please stop breaking our products.

Thanks

B.G.


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## Greg Truby (Nov 3, 2005)

"funny" thing -- about fifteen minutes ago I managed to crash Excel twice in two minutes -- I'm sure it's coincidence and BG didn't see this and hunt me down!


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## tactps (Nov 3, 2005)

This conversation is getting far too serious.

Let's go back to square one and buy Bill Gates a Mac (or is his birthday over now?)!


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## Greg Truby (Nov 3, 2005)

Mark says "I fear no loss of data" and "Microsoft is great" in the same breath and you take him seriously???


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## whiteghost (Nov 5, 2005)

Recently, on a trip back to the UK, my sister in law told me she kept getting these blue screens, warning her she had fatal exception at blah blah blah
and a virus had infected her computer. After trying everything I could to find this virus( norton and several types of spyware couldn't find it.) I dawned on me that this screen only appeared when her screensaver started. By deduction I reckoned that if I turned the screensaver off, this would cure the problem. It didn't, but now the bsod only showed at start-up and shut-down. By my own twisted logic, i guessed that something was changing the background, and after checking the wallpapers.... sure enough there was the message. delete wallpaper and problem fixed.

has anyone ever come across this sort of thing before. 
 Oh and by the way I thought of Bill's birthday present, for someone who has so much money he'll never be able to spend it all, I was going to give him the suggestion to give half of it to me


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## tactps (Nov 5, 2005)

Very charitable of you, ghost. Always thinking of others (lol).


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## whiteghost (Nov 5, 2005)

problem shared is a problem halved


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