Back in the bad old days of Windows 3.1 and 95, I came to expect that my computer would randomly crash, reboot, or otherwise spiral into some sad state that could only be corrected by interrupting the flow of AC power.

It made me so crazy that I switched to Windows NT 4.0, even though it was crappy back then--- suffering terrible multimedia and game support just so I could know that my workstation is at least stable.

So when I found that my ultra-stable Windows XP machine had rebooted itself this morning, losing some of my work in Photoshop and discarding an email I was in the middle of, I assumed it had a good excuse--- maybe it overheated or something; I've heard of that happening.

But ACTUALLY, it was because F#$%king Windows Update decided that applying a security patch to my already-firewalled computer was more important than the work I was in the middle of... so even though Microsoft says Windows XP is the most stable OS ever, it still reboots at random times by design.

If that's not instability, I don't know what is.