Everybody Loves Friday the 13th!

...except for paraskavedekatriaphobes (and my Sony Vaio SZ series notebook computer).

The fear of Friday the 13th is called paraskavedekatriaphobia, a word derived from the concatenation of the Greek words Paraskeví (Παρασκευή) (meaning Friday), and dekatreís (δεκατρείς) (meaning thirteen), attached to phobía (φοβία) (meaning fear). This is a specialized form of triskaidekaphobia, a simple phobia (fear) of the number thirteen, and is also known as friggatriskaidekaphobia. The term triskaidekaphobia was derived in 1911 and first appeared in a mainstream source in 1953.

And the computer? Instead of going into sleep mode on Friday the 13th, it rebooted itself to a black screen. After running diagnostics and booting up in "crazy graphics screen" safe mode, it eventually displayed the following error message:

Product: Windows.
Problem: Video hardware error.

Description: A problem with your video hardware caused Windows to stop working correctly.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: LiveKernelEvent.
OS Version: 6.0.6000.2.0.0.256.6.
Locale ID: 1033.
Files that help describe the problem: WD-20090214-0940.dmp, sysdata.xml, Version.txt



Although the SZ series hasn't been recalled like the Sony VAIO TZ models, it has been running awfully hot lately... And it has contributed to the delay in finishing things (like Encephalon) in a timely fashion.

So please stay tuned!