1. A variety of `power glitch' (see
glitch); momentary 0 voltage on the electrical mains.
2. Missing characters in typed input due to software malfunction or
system saturation (one cause of such behavior under Unix when a bad
connection to a modem swamps the processor with spurious character
interrupts; see screaming tty). 3. Mental glitches; used as a
way of describing those occasions when the mind just seems to shut
down for a couple of beats. See glitch, fried.