Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

This post has absolutely nothing to do with banks or banking law. On the other hand, it involves a dark fantasy that many of us harbor, but few of us live out: killing your computer.

When ctrl + alt + delete doesn't work, just shoot the darn thing.

That's what one man did on Monday night, according to Colorado Springs police. Lucas Hinch, 37, was cited for discharging a weapon within city limits after he took the fight with his computer outside and got the revenge most of us only dream about.

"He got tired of fighting with his computer for the last several months," Lt. Jeff Strossner said. "He was having technology problems, so he took it out in the back alley and shot it."

[...]

Hinch shot it eight times, Strossner said, "effectively disabling it."

The computer is not expected to recover.

That last line makes reporter Cassandra Kloos my new unrequited love interest.

Hinch was even more revealing to the Los Angeles Times.

Hinch told the Los Angeles Times he has no regrets.

"It was glorious," he said. "Angels sung on high." 

The Dell kept giving Hinch the "blue screen of death," he said of the machine's final moments. 

"It was extremely frustrating," he said. "I reached critical mass."

As was the case with most people who reach "critical mass," a meltdown quickly followed.

"It was premeditated, oh, definitely," he said. "I made sure there wasn't anything behind it and nothing to ricochet."

Hinch was issued a summons for discharging a firearm within city limits, which Hinch called a small price to pay for justice.

“That computer had a bad day," he said.

You learned that machine, boy! You learned it real good!

A couple of years ago, I had an HP laptop that kept giving me the blue screen of death. Instead of shooting it, I engaged in a series of epithet-laden soliloquies via telephone with a customer support person who insisted on calling  himself "Dave" but who I insisted on calling "Mujibar," since I understood only 15% to 20% of his sort-of-recognizable-as-English-but-not-quite responses. HP took back the infernal machine and performed some kind of Santeria rituals on it. It came back devoid of blue screens, but I never got back that lovin' feeling for it and within a year retired it and replaced it with, ironically, a Dell desktop, the same brand that Hinch assassinated.

I should have performed a one-and-a-half Hinch on it, from the high board, instead.

The cops confiscated Hinch's 9 mm automatic pistol. If he ever gets its back, I'll invite him down to the Lone Star State and we can set the HP up at a local gun range, give it a last cigarette and a blindfold, and shoot the living sugar out of it. Come to think of it, he doesn't need to bring his nine. I've got plenty of long-and-short barreled options in my own private arsenal to blow it to hell. Most of them are even legal.