A Windows glitch delayed the New Years fireworks at the “Needle” in Seattle, as described in the following excerpt from Seattlepi.com.

A computer glitch led to a delayed fireworks show at the Seattle Center on Monday night as partiers waited to ring in the new year.

The show started on time at 11:59, said Mary Bacarella, spokeswoman for the Space Needle, but in the last minute of 2007 the crew from Pyro Spectaculars realized that the computer file running the show was corrupted.

Instead of continuing to use the bad file, the company’s three-man crew, stationed in a trailer near the Needle, executed the show manually. “The whole show was supposed to last eight and a half minutes and it went for 11 and a half minutes,” Bacarella said.

Bacarella said the show ran in numerical sequence and all the fireworks went off, but it was not in sync with the music. The show’s accompaniment was a compilation of Oscar-winning tunes, including “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

“This is the first time in 14 years this has ever happened,” Bacarella said.

Pyro Spectaculars, which is based in Northern California, has been responsible for the show during that period. “Usually, they would hit a button and the computer would run the whole program…,” she said.

But for many revelers, the problems didn’t matter.

Robert Malan, 32, of Buckley, said it was his first time watching the show at the Needle. “It didn’t make much of a difference. Fireworks are always cool. But it could have used some different music. It could have used some rock and roll.”

Malan’s friend, Dennis Bozung, 35, of Tacoma, however, is a veteran. It was his seventh year at the Needle display.

“Besides the manual detonation, they still had a good show. I like the big one that launched off the top of the Space Needle. That’s what everyone was waiting for and they still got it off,” Bozung said.

This article was obviously written by a technically challenged reporter. The delayed was caused by a “bad file”?

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