Fred: Ghost or gremlin? And an origin story.

Back in the days of our youth, #1 and #2 were roommates.  We were lucky to have relatively spacious dorms, with one bathroom per room.  (The only downside?  We had to clean it ourselves.)

Our toilet randomly flushed itself.  We decided that our toilet was possessed by a ghost, and we named him Fred.  The next year there were toilet clogs and light flickers.

Fred followed #2 to college and was finally exorcised by a friend who dabbled in things Wicca (and new-age).  He would show up occasionally in graduate school (at which point #2 started thinking Fred might be a gremlin rather than a ghost), mainly sticking to plumbing and electrical things.  He will often do both at the same time but thankfully has not as of yet had the chance to mix the two.  (We like being, you know, alive.)

Now Fred’s back to make #2’s day a difficult one…

No work today.  We have a severe Fred infestation.   My laptop, desktop, and external hard drive are all dead.  My laptop no longer boots and started smoking while not booting.  My desktop has been reformatted because it keeps restarting and getting the video card replaced didn’t fix it.  And my external harddrive has bad sectors and has been getting “i/o errors” which I understand is a bad thing.  Partner’s laptop has this stupid red dot thing; where is my external mouse?  The internet at work keeps turning on and off.  Also all of our sinks have been leaking and partner broke a pipe trying to fix one.  And two of our toilets are randomly refilling.  It will be a while before either of us will be able to wait for a plumber.

#1 had a good day though.  I just got word that I have passed another level in my tenure process!

#2: maybe Fred is sticking with me to bring you luck
in which case, I will take that temporary sacrifice

#1: I really appreciate your taking one for the team.

Hope your Thanksgiving holidays are Fred-free, dear grumplings!

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