When Geeks Dream

Our apartment, 6:15 am.

Sean: "Wow. You woke me up from a bad dream."

Me: "Awww, honey! What was your bad dream?"

Sean: (sheepish) "You'll laugh at me."

Me: "Er...probably. What did you dream?"

Sean: (grudging and sheepish) "Well...we were asleep in our bedroom. And there were rows and rows of washers and dryers in the bedroom, like they have at the laundromat. And you woke me up and said: 'Honey! Wake up! That penguin we hang out with? I left the dryer on and I think he's stuck inside!'. So I got up and checked and sure enough, there was a penguin going around and around in the dryer. I let him out and he kind of ran off, all dazed. Then I look more closely and say: 'Oh my God! There's a seagull in there, too!' So, I let him out, but he's really angry and starts biting me. I'm trying to pry his beak off my fingers when he just attacks me--pecking and biting. So I hid under the covers and pulled them over my head. That's when it got really weird."

Me: "Er...that's when it got 'really weird'?"

Sean: "Yeah. The next thing I know, a whole flock of seagulls is attacking me--"

Me: (laughing) "A 'Flock of Seagulls'? Did they have the hair--"

Sean: (emphatically) "No. So they're all pecking at me, and I'm saying: 'Hey, stop, just one of you was hurt! And I tried to help!'. But they wouldn't listen. They started dropping .pdf files on me!"

Me: ".pdf files?!?"

Sean: ".pdf files. There was code everywhere. I couldn't figure out what to do to stop it. So you were trying to reconfigure my web server to make it refuse .pdf files and beaks."

Me: ".pdf files and beaks?"

Sean: "Yes. I was shouting instructions to you, and you said you were trying to make it refuse .pdf files and beaks; and I was like 'There's no 'beak' file...' I didn't know what to do. That's when you woke me up."

Me: (not trying very hard to stifle laughter) "I think you're working too hard, honey..."

Now, we'll never know what happened with the seagulls who dropped .pdf files. Did I successfully reconfigure the browser to refuse beaks? Maybe Sean fell back asleep this morning and can let us know in a subsequent blog.