I hate interruptions but I didn’t mind them when I took Computer Science classes.

In a computer’s core, an interruption is anything that comes along while the computer is busy doing some task and grabs its attention. Maybe you moved the mouse, typed a key, stuck in a USB card. These things, most commonly hardware interrupts, cause the computer to stop and deal with whatever issue has come up. Buried deep in your processor, if it is *truly* compatible with the old IBM codes, is one interrupt that reports “Printer on Fire”. Apparently this was such a possible threat in the old days of paper dust, rotating drums, and flammable ink that finally a signal line was added from the printer port directly to the CPU so when it occurred your computer stopped everything to mention this small but important detail to you. I always thought this was an urban legend until in a computer class one day I was taught how to simulate it, and sure enough!

Several people here have been fighting with an interruption to their computer work in an not so funny way. Someone very dear to me got an annoy-ware virus on her computer. It looked like a windows dialog. It had a reasonable but slightly scary message, about how she was unprotected and that she need to turn on some sort of virus blocking. The fonts were right, the size was right, the colors right, the wording right, and so she clicked “OK” on it.

That’s the thing with these type of Trojan horse pop ups – they can make a little noise but can’t really DO anything until you give them a hardware interrupt – a mouse button press – to latch on to. Once they have that, they’ve in a very real sense been given permission to execute something nasty. Next thing you know the nice lady had constant dialogs popping up, the computer sloooooooowed down, and there were promises that if you only sent $70 to some fly by night place (credit card only, please!) you could be rid of it.

Is this illegal? Technically no but it ought to be. You see, you invited it in when you clicked on it. You empower it to rampage through your system. Fortunately you can get rid of it, and for free, but it’s difficult. Imagine though how may people don’t know what to do and pay this ridiculous fine. A lot of money is made by these annoy-ware jerks!

And yes, isn’t it so much like some of the sin we can get in our lives? Something comes along that really has no power over us, but we let it “get to us” and it moves right on in. We don’t fully grasp how much of our lives its going to take over – is that what people see when they take that first drink of beer? The bum in the street, penniless, begging for someone to help them limp along to another drink? Of course not – we see glitz and glamour. Don’t you watch TV? Beer is cool! Hard drinks are sophisticated and elegant. And we get pressured, sometimes by friends or co-workers to “just try one” and to “fit in”. Next thing you know we spend more and more time at it, and more and more money. I mean, everyone is doing it, and isn’t fermentation a natural, designed by God process? It *looks* like a blessing from him, as much as chocolate or cheese.

The solution is free, of course, yet it cost God’s son quite a bit. Still, imagine how many people don’t know what to do about it. They end up paying a price and getting nothing, literally, in return.

So the next time something interrupts you, on your computer or in real life, and you don’t understand it and it seems a little threatening, until you know what it is just click cancel. But make it your business to know what it is the next time and be ready for it, or it may not be your printer that’s about to catch fire!

Randy