Today is a very sad day for me. My love, my dear Windows has passed away. We were together for over 20 years, her illness took control over her, and during the last days she passed away.

Before I give you further details about the disease she had over the last year, I want to switch back the wheel of time, and talk about our unique love story that we have shared over the last decades.

It was a nice sunny day in 1992, where I met her in school. She wasn’t the best looking girl, but she wasn’t the ugliest one. The biggest problem was that the selection of girls wasn’ really huge, you had to live with what you got. Mainly she looked like a gothic type: black clothes with some white blinking cursors. I just called her DOS – don’t ask me why…

There were also these other girls, but they were just crazy and hippy, we have just called them Linux: hard to handle, impossible to understand how they work internally.

In the first weeks and months we had struggled very much with each other, she wasn’t really easy to handle. As long as I was playing with my fingers on her keyboard everything was fine. She told me a lot about her family, especially about her dad. Bill was his name – a business man from the greater Seattle area. He was working during the whole nights and days in his little garage, dreaming of becoming a famous man.

Once upon a time her dad told her that money isn’t everything, and that 640k of cash is enough for everyone on earth. Today I think her dad was completely wrong on that. But that’s another story.

Since we have met in 1992 we were dating each other regularily and we have known each other better and better over the days, and months. In 1993 she changed her look completely – and she turned into a very nice looking girl. She had nice windows around her whole body, I was allowed to touch her with my mouse, it was just an awesome experience. Everyone else at school was just jealous about her. Man, I was really happy during these days – I just called her Windows 3.1

But as soon was we had to do more and more work concurrently at school, she didn’t really scaled very much. Sometimes her heart just stopped working for some seconds, and she just feel down to the floor. I was very very anxious about that, because that happenend over the weeks multiple times. When I talked to her dad, he told that this behaviour of her was fine, because she just scheduled here work cooperatively. She completely relied on me for the scheduling, and when I was giving her too much work to do, she just stopped working. So it was mainly my fault…

Over the time this problem was really, really annoying, so I finally send her to the hospital for doing some medical checks in 1995. Sometimes she was so unstable that it was impossible to do any work with her. After a few weeks in the hospital she came back – as a completely different women. OMG – she was now so hot!!! Nice looking face, an awesome body, and she was also able to do concurrent work much better. In the hospital they have made a surgery and changed her to preemptive scheduling – whatever this means. The fact about this was, that finally I had no control over her anymore, she just decided herself when to do work, and when not. My brother (his name is SQL Server) couldn’t really deal with her about for this reason very good – but that’s again a completely different story. From this time on I just called her Windows 95.

Over the years she was getting more and more the look of a nice looking young woman. The craziest thing happed when she attended once upon a time a ME (Millenium Edition) party. She was getting so much drunk during that party, that she was completely destroyed over the next months. When I now look back at that time, it was just an crazy awesome time: sex, drugs, and rock & roll. But it seemed that we have enjoyed a little bit too much the various parties. Here father was very angry about us, and he hired a watchdog for her: his name was Dave Cuttler. His goal was to change her in a radical way!

That man was really serious, and I had a huge respect from him! He changed her completely – but in a very positive way. We were just getting adults – with all pro’s and con’s. Dave called her from this time on a professional woman, so I just called her Windows 2000 Professional. This was also some time around the year 2000.

In 2001 we graduated from school, and she finally got her XP degree. She and all her friends worked so long for this degree. Some of her friends just stopped studying and learning in 2001, and are still doing work with their XP degree – unbelieveable! From that time on she was my Windows XP girl.

Over the next years our life wasn’t really an adventure. Both of us were working, working, and working. We haven’t seen each other too much over the time, but life was good. In 2007 she had the crazy idea of doing a plastic surgeon (you know, getting bigger boo…, etc.). I wasn’t really a big fan about this idea, but she wanted to it, so I let her. But the result was just aweful. Before the surgeon she just looked better. Her doctor was a man called Vista…

But Mr. Vista knew that he made a big mistake, so she want back to him in 2009/2010, and she finally returned as the hottest woman on earth: from there on she was my Windows 7. We had finally an awesome time together, everything was fine, everything was perfect, we already talked about getting children, but back in 2012 she had a major car accidient. She stayed several weeks in the hospital, and they were able to recover her completely – almost. I got her back as my Windows 8 girl. When I first looked on her, I though – OMG is this really her? She looked completely different – she had tiles on her face. Yes, tiles!

Besides the tiles, she also had a splitted personality. Sometimes she called herself Classic Desktop, sometimes she called herself Metro. That accident changed her completely. I have talked to the doctors in the hospital, but they said, that we have to life with that splitted personality, and that they can’t change anything about it. They just told us that people with splitted personalities are the future. Sounds like a crazy joke, but when a doctor tells you that, you have to take that as granted. In addition the evangelists in the various churches around the world were also preaching that splitted personalities are the future of human life. I thought I was Neo from Matrix: the whole life that you have lived in the past was just one big fake!!!

After her splitted personality was getting really hard and aweful, I had to put her completely in a medical care center. I was not able to give her the necessary support at home. I’m travelling a lot, I have to do a lot of customers work (together with my brother SQL Server), so I can’t care about her the whole day. She just needed a 24/7 support service. A very hard decision, but it was the only way how to deal with it. We have met each other about every weekend, done some nice chats together, and enjoyed the weekends together.

Over the time, when her illness was getting worser and worser, I also started dating another woman. I have blogged about that new love story back in 2012. And last week, I got a call from the hospital. Yes that call: she passed away…

In the first, it was very hard for me to live with that fact, but on the other hand I’m now already dating that other girl for almost 9 months. So she is now my big love story, and my future. Of course, we have lived almost 21 years together, but I can’t grieve forever, I also have to look forward for my own life. My dear, my love, Windows I will miss you forever!

Interesting enough I have read during the last days in the news, that researchers in the Seattle area found a medicine against splitted personalities. And it seems that this medicine will be also released to all affected people over the next months without any fees. Unfortunately it’s too late for my love, she’s gone – forever. Rest in peace.

My former love Windows also had a big, powerful car, which is now useless to me, therefore I’m selling it. Here are the specs of it:

*) Intel i7 CPU, Q840 @ 1.87 GHz?

*) 8 GB RAM (4×2 GB)?

*) NVIDIA Quadro FX 880M (1920×1080)

?*) Two USB ports version 3.0, one Powered USB port version 2.0?

*) eSATA?

*) LAN/WLAN

?*) DVD/CD

?*) Ultrabay for 2nd 2.5″ hard disk?

*) Docking Station?

*) 250 GB 5400rpm hard disk

?*) TPM Module?

*) Smart Card Reader?

*) German Keyboard

So if you are interested in buying a piece of history from my life, that travelled across the whole world with me, please send me an email to “klaus DOT aschenbrenner AT sqlpassion DOT at” to discuss the further details.

Thanks for reading

-Klaus