Haiku Computer Error Messages

Computer Error Messages


A file that big?
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.


The Website you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.


Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.


ABORTED effort:
Close all that you have worked on.
You ask way too much.


Windows NT crashed.
I am the Blue Screen of Death.
No one hears your screams.


Yesterday it worked.
Today it is not working.
Windows is like that.


With searching comes loss
And the presence of absence:
"My Novel" not found.


The Tao that is seen
Is not the true Tao, until
You bring fresh toner.


Stay the patient course.
Of little worth is your ire.
The network is down.


A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
To a simple stone.


Three things are certain:
Death, taxes, and lost data.
Guess which has occurred.


You step in the stream,
But the water has moved on.
This page is not here.


Out of memory -
We wish to hold the whole sky,
But we never will.


Having been erased,
The document you're seeking
Must now be retyped.


Serious error.
All shortcuts have disappeared.
Mind. Screen. Both are blank.


First snow, then silence.
This thousand dollar screen dies
So beautifully.

This amusing collection of haiku was circulated by e-mail in uncredited form in the summer of 2000, and has been reproduced on several hundred websites, usually also in uncredited form.

However, David Saum's website presents what may very well be the original version: each haiku's author is credited by name, the number of haiku comprising the collection is larger than commonly found, and it appears the contributors may have been members of a mailing list. Furthermore, a comment in the markup of that page states that May 6, 1998 is the date of the latest update made to the page.

Only afterward was the myth created: the annoying and patently false device of attributing the haiku to SONY / VAIO in Japan for use with their computers. Why is it that some peeps are so enamoured of "true stories" that they feel the need to invent them? What irony.

- Ed Note, editor-in-cheeZe, Encyclopedia Darcica