© 2010 Warren Block

Last updated 2010-10-07

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It was a dark and stormy night. Fred had been trying to build links, a text-only web browser, but the compile kept failing. The nerds on forums.freebsd.org insisted on details and seemed to only get more annoyed when he would tell them "It stopped with some kind of error like a #45". Outside, lightning split the sky and crawled from horizon to horizon. With thunder rattling the windows, something in Fred’s mind remembered script(1), a command which could capture the output of a console session into a single file. As he experimented with options, an unspeakable horror crawled from the mud of nearby Unspeakable Horror Lake. It began oozing with dark purpose toward the unsuspecting Fred’s house. It really was unspeakable, even speaking about it this much is pushing things.

Meanwhile, Fred had managed to capture his console session into a file with script(1), and posted the error section to his thread on forums.freebsd.org. No answers had yet been posted, so he got into the car to head to the local convenience store for beef jerky and cheese puffs. The unspeakable horror, now in the road outside Fred’s house, unspeakably poised its glistening unspeakable surface for an unspeakable jump… and was mowed down by a speeding truck carrying 40,000 pounds of outdated tapioca pudding and crossthreaded plumbing fixtures to the surplus/salvage store in the next county.

The End.