Dear Amritsar,
Six months ago, my wife Dierdirndl had a horrendous gardening accident involving our dog Charlie Whatts, a dozen pool noodles and the Gallifreyan Minister of Regeneration and Bean Dip. She lost 79 per cent of her brain and various other body parts too intimate, disgusting or unpronounceable to mention.
The good news is that my wife had been part of a pilot project created for just such a situation: every six months, medical technicians at the Gezundheit Institute would scan her brain patterns. After the accident, they rebuilt her brain using nanotechnology (which, I was surprised to learn, did not refer to tiny robots made by somebody's Italian grandmother), then programmed it with the most recent scan. Dierdirndl lost two months of memories, but the only important things that happened in that time were our oldest daughter's 16th birthday and the release of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, so, on balance, things turned out pretty well.
After all, she could always see Age of Ultron on DVD.
After the operation, Dierdirndl was back to herself in no time, if you don't count the time she kept repeating the word "orifice" for three and a half hours when we were supposed to be playing bridge with the Mugabes. Or, the time she burned down the house when she left a lasagna in the oven for eight hours while she stared emptily into space. Or, the time she disappeared into the Peruvian jungle for 16 days, returning in a blood-stained wedding dress holding an AK47 and saying she couldn't explain what happened "for reasons of national security."
And, me and the kids were really looking forward to that lasagna.
Since the fateful day of her accident, Dierdirndl has periodically glitched (which, as you no doubt know, is an acronym for Gone Loco and...ITCHED). Every time it happens, we take her back to the Gezundheit Institute for tests, but they haven't found a cause for the anomalies (which, as you are probably aware, is not an acronym for something, but really sounds like one). Do you have any idea what could be wrong with my wife?
Boris "Back" Atchoo
Hey, Babe,
Medical technologies aren't really my thing, so I asked Laurie Neidergaarden, the Alternate Reality News Service's medical beat reporter what he thought of your predicament. "Got me," she replied. "Space aliens doing something...spacey?"
So much for journalistic expertise.
Much more helpful was the response of Phil, the mechanic from the shop down the street (temporarily on loan from The Tech Answer Guy): "This woman, Dierdirndl Atchoo, her brain was using the MicroSquish Executive Function OS - commercial name Bulgarian Badger - Version four point oh seven point seven oh four, right? Of course I'm right. I wouldn't be much of a mechanic if I wasn't right, right? Well, there's your problem right there."
Right...where? I reminded Phil, the mechanic from the shop down the street that I didn't have his background, training or hair. He laughed, a sound halfway between a tinkle and forgotten childhood. "Always happy to elaborate for the layperson," he said. "One of the features of MicroSquish OS's is Auto Update, which is kind of clever if we're talking about the OS of a smart car; otherwise, meh.
"You see, MicroSquish realized that the vast majority of its products' users were not really aware of how its OS operated, so they would automatically accept updates without thinking. So, the company streamlined the process by making its OS automatically accept updates without seeking the user's approval. Unfortunately, many updates conflict with existing parts of the OS - that's why you get glitches (which is actually an acronym for GLIT Cache Hell Every Summer - sorry for the pedantry)."
To keep this from happening in the future, you must take your wife to the Gezundheit Institute immediately and have them shut down the Auto Update function in her brain. This means that she will have to assess and approve or reject each update herself, but at least natives of the Peruvian jungle will be safe.
Send your relationship problems to the Alternate Reality News Service's sex, love and technology columnist questions@lespagesauxfolles.ca. Amritsar Al-Falloudjianapour is not a trained therapist, but she does know a lot of stuff. AMRITSAR SAYS: According to one recent survey, 87% of Americans say "bad things should be opposed." This seems to contradict other recent surveys that show that 47% of Americans would steal from the church collection plate if they could get away with it, 63% of Americans would cheat on their spouses with George Clooney if they thought they wouldn't get caught and a whopping 84% of Americans approve of a war against Islamic nations as long as they don't have to be the ones who risk their lives fighting in it.
Americans confuse me.