The seven most dreaded words a parent can hear.  It means you are about to have an awkward conversation about birds, bees, storks, and maybe even a human body part or two.

You can imagine the panic I felt when my 7-year old casually uttered them.  I nodded blankly as my mind raced for the words my father had used.

The came the follow up question.

“What’s a server upgrade?”

I responded with an eloquent “Huh?” as I looked at the Webkinz logo on his computer screen.

Let me back up a step, in case you don’t know any 5 to 10 year-olds.  Webkinz are furry stuffed animals you can buy for $10-20 at most toy stores, gift shops, etc.  Each Webkinz pet comes with an “secret code”  to log into the website.  There you will find a virtual representation of your stuffed animal.

In the Webkinz world, you feed, bathe, and play with your virtual pet.  Like most things my kids are into, I don’t fully understand it, but the kids love it.

Apparently, the enormous popularity of these critters has gotten to the point where the Webkinz World IT infrastructure is busting at the seams.  Hence, the error message.

Relieved, I calmed replied to my son that if the Webkinz world was Linux-based, they may be mounting additional storage devices via the mount -t command, and if the Webkinz world was Windows-based they might be applying service packs.  And, if the virtual Webkinz  world was actually virtualized on VMware, anything could happen.  The universe might collapse on itself.

He stared at me blankly as he reached for his Nintendo DS.