by Ron Enderland

So, the word’s out.

Yep, the world has discovered that if you start Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side of the Moon" just as the MGM lion finishes its third roar at the beginning of "The Wizard of Oz," the music and the movie mesh together perfectly. Well, until the music runs out, of course.

This is remarkable, but by no means a rarity. I have discovered several other cases of Synchronicity (hey, isn’t that an album by The Police?). Allow me to share them with you.

My first computer was Ol’ Betsy, an IBM 486 SLC2-66 with four megs of RAM. Hey, RAM used to be expensive, remember? Anyhow, I eventually added four more megs, making a total of eight. At this point, I had a Windows machine extraordinaire. That beauty could suddenly handle Windows apps like a circus juggler, keeping five or six open at once with very little effort. It was also like an Olympic sprinter, able to go from double-click to open program in seconds. Then, I decided to further enhance its performance by installing Windows 95.

Well, you probably know how well Win95 runs with eight megs of RAM. It was at this point that I made the synchronization discovery.

I booted my computer one day just as "Hey Jude," the Beatles classic, happened to start playing on the radio. "Hey, Jude, don’t make it bad . . ." was coming out of the speaker just as my BIOS was kicking in.

"Then you can start . . ." was what I heard as autoexec.bat began loading my various set points and drivers.

"Hey, Jude, don’t let me down . . ." as the screen went black and the mouse pointer appeared.

"Na, na na na na na na, na na na na" as the icons started appearing.

"Na, na na na na na na, na na na na" with screaming in the background as the error message about being unable to load essential Windows drivers appeared. If I clicked the "Okay" button really fast, then the final "Na, na na na na na na, na na na na" would fade out just as the opening wav file would play and the computer would lock up for the first time.

Like I said, the synchronization was eerie.

After hitting Ctrl+Alt+Del to unlock the machine, I double-clicked on Netscape Navigator. The radio was beginning to play "American Pie."

"I knew that if I had the chance . . ." as the little blue splash screen appeared.

"Helter skelter, in the summer swelter . . ." as the screen went gray with the Netscape desktop.

"I met a girl who sang the blues . . ." as the navigation buttons would appear across the top of the screen.

The final "this’ll be the day that I die" as the dial-up window would open.

Simply astonishing, the coincidence.

After an afternoon of net surfing, I shut the computer down. "Free Bird" was starting as I hit the "Shut Down" option on the Start button.

"This bird you cannot change . . ." as the screen would finally go fuzzy and the dialog box would ask me "Are You Sure?" If I immediately clicked "Yes," then the closing guitar jam would start just as the "Please wait while your computer shuts down" splash screen would appear.

As the guitars faded out, the final screen advising me that I could safely shut the computer down would come up.

I found the whole experience to be nearly mystical.

Utterly fascinated with the whole concept, I have begun seeking out more cases of synchronization. I’m not sure, but I may have discovered a relationship between the Stones double album "Exile on Main Street" and the installation of Office 97 on a Pentium 100 with 16 megs of RAM. I’ll keep you posted.