Define Catastrophic

Got this error in Visual Studio 2010 today:

Catastrophic failure (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8000FFFF (E_UNEXPECTED))

In reality, I just tried to open a really big file, too big for memory apparently. Hardly a catastrophe. A simple Out of Memory error would have been good.

Bachianas Americanas

Wow do I love this suite. Happened across John Hall's website this afternoon. John's tone is exquisite. Alas, my genetics gave me thin fingernails. I will never get that tone, I don't think.