h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

BSOD made an encore appearance this morning. The other branch's cashier called me. After a few tries, the computer restarted as normal. A few minutes later, I got a call from the Asst. Mgr. there. She asked if they could use the old manual register. I said 'Do what you have to.'. I called the owner to ask if I could call the usual tech. Called the tech service to arrange a service call. Not sure what happened there, yet. We dug out the old registers at our store. By old I mean circa 2004, pick up off the shelf at Office Depot registers. The first wouldn't even light up. The next lit up, but the 1, 2 and 3 keys were not working. The other had working keys. However, its printer was broken.

Still with me? The Store Mgr. at our store is also an electrician who does a lot of other types of repairs, including car and house things. He took the working printer off the one register and put it on the other identical register. Dr. Frankenstein would be proud. Couldn't remember how to program tax codes. Found the manual online, printed relevant pages. Thirty minutes later, register (now named Frankie) was in a box waiting to go to the other store. We added the manual credit card machine and manual credit slips as well. Sounds solved, right? The register didn't retain the tax info. That will have to be redone, there, tomorrow morning.

What does BSOD mean?

The other night, I dreamed that I was sweating over my tax returns.

BSOD=Blue Screen Of Death

The tech called me this morning. The computer was indeed DOA. He said the capacitors had oozed on the mother board. That's the first time I've heard 'oozed' in relation to a computer. The hard drive was failing and some other stuff too. The data was saved and now lives in a new computer installed around 10:00 this morning.

Taxes? Eeeek!