parity errors

parity errors pl.n.  Little lapses of attention or (in more
   severe cases) consciousness, usually brought on by having spent all
   night and most of the next day hacking.  "I need to go home and
   crash; I'm starting to get a lot of parity errors."  Derives from
   a relatively common but nearly always correctable transient error
   in RAM hardware.  Parity errors can also afflict mass storage and
   serial communication lines; this is more serious because not always
   correctable.