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Parking with Windows

Microsoft haunts me even in the parking lot.

Matt Asay Contributing Writer
Matt Asay is a veteran technology columnist who has written for CNET, ReadWrite, and other tech media. Asay has also held a variety of executive roles with leading mobile and big data software companies.
Matt Asay
Matt Asay

I had a great dinner tonight with the Openbravo management team in Barcelona. As we walked up La Rambla from a decadent pre-dinner "meal" of lava-like hot chocolate, we headed into the parking garage to get our car.

The door to the parking payment machine was open as we got into the garage. The computer had malfunctioned and the parking attendant was rebooting it. I got there just in time to notice the operating system (used city-wide) that was causing this parking attendant grief:

Windows.

One can't even park anymore without getting the Blue Screen of Death.

Incidentally, the parking attendant couldn't figure out why I wanted to take a picture of the payment machine. For my part, I couldn't figure out why he wasn't running a real operating system. :-)