Fixing it in the hardware

I wrote a graphics-intensive application for one client. He reported that when he tried to drag it from one monitor to another it seemed to lock up. Then he reported the fix: adjusting the fan for one of his multi-monitor video cards, to keep it from overheating.

When you push bits all day, it’s hard to imagine these kinds of real-world interactions.

Or when a multi-threaded, calculation-intensive program kicks the PC’s fan up a couple notches, you realize: hey, I did that.

Embedded developers joke about the HACF machine instruction: Halt and Catch Fire. You don’t expect that on your desktop machine, but don’t rule it out completely.