Monsters & gremlins

This is what I was doing earlier when the machine was super sluggish. So what the devil's going on?

It's almost all always the case, when I come face to face with some enormous monster blocking my path, if I don't flinch I realize that it's an optical illusion. Instead of one gigantic, ferocious problem -- a monster -- it is really just a swarm of much smaller gremlins, some of them fierce. This week they massed together to create an apparent monster of computer failure. I've lost about two days' work in blind combat (because I didn't really understand what I was doing), but I've driven off or maybe slain the worst of the gremlins and now continue on my quest.