echo("wtf"); panic();

I guess it was bound to happen some day ....

It was only a matter of time I guess ...
Today my iMac BSODed.

Well not exactly. I guess (after a couple minute google and wikipedia search) that a better term would be that the UNIX kernel core of my iMac running Mac OS X Tiger decided to execute a kernel panic a few minutes ago. I was minding my own business doing some work with a few apps open (e.g. Firefox, iTerm, Transmission, etc) and went to open up Parallels Desktop b/c I wanted to check something in Quicken (Quicken for Windows came free with TurboTax last year). As Parallels was coming up, suddenly a gray overlay descended my screen top to bottom and a rather abrupt image was placed dead center ....


Mouse and keyboard didn't response and all I could do was turn off the machine (and yes, the irony of this happening when trying to open Parallels to run Windows XP on my Mac does not elude me).

I am not so naive to believe that Macs are without there problems, but this still surprised me. When researching Macs prior to getting my iMac about a year ago I read countless forums where people complained about this or that and the troubles they were having with there Macs. Macs are not perfect .... however .... they are MUCH more stable and userfriendly while doing the 90% of stuff you do everyday. Most of the errors people described were either attributed to hardware or were the result of the user trying to do something "outside the norm" and unable to get it right. This has been my experience as well. Normal stuff ----> works like a champ. Unusual stuff ---> works well and occasionally doesn't want to do what I asked, but is always polite about it.

This was the first time my Mac was ever mean to me.

Everything seems to be working fine now. I will post again if I have any future problems ... I just wish I new what the problem was. An Apple error report agent started when I rebooted and I sent in my memory dump info .... hopefully whatever strange little bug was executed is fixed in Leopard.

** the very observant among you may have noticed that this post was written in the middle of the day in the middle of the week ... when I should be at work. Well I didn't feel great yesterday/this morning and called in sick. Mystery solved. **