...and do equations the easy way!

I'm very close to joining the ranks of those who start a blog, post once or twice comments to the effect that they aren't really sure what they're going to be writing about but they're going to give this a go anyway, and then are never heard from again. But on a positive note, I began my blog with the intention of recording nothing but pointless minutiae, so I should feel no shame for the tediousness of anything I share.

So today there was a period where I seemed to be the only one in the office. I wasn't quite, but it was close. And in the stillness I became aware of an incessant beeping. And then I ignored it because I had better things to worry about, such as work, but every few minutes I would notice the beeping had not stopped, so eventually I got up to locate the source before it began subliminally influencing my behavior and my coworkers returned to find me stabbing myself in the eye with a mechanical pencil, in time to the beeping.

I found the source in the office of our academic coordinator. It was coming not from her computer's speakers, but from the CPU itself. So I looked at her PC desktop to see if I could identify the problem, and there was a folder on her desktop that was being renamed to something along the lines of "85````````````````" as I watched, even though no one was touching the keyboard. So I double-clicked on the folder, thinking I might interrupt the renaming process, and it began renaming the first file in the folder to ``````````````````. So then I opened up Word to see if I could type anything else. I couldn't type anything at first, and then ``````````````` appeared.

See! I was right to fear subliminal influences! The computer was clearly possessed!

So then I fiddled with the ` key, thinking it might be stuck, but it seemed to be moving as fluidly as it ought -- only after I fiddled with it the automatic typing changed to 5555555555. So I sat down in front of the monitor and in a quiet yet confident tone said, "You have my attention. I am ready to receive your message."

Ha! I lie! I just unplugged the keyboard to stop that infernal beeping before anyone took up a hatchet, and then e-mailed our computer tech about it.

Some time later, our academic coordinator returned and I rushed over to explain what I'd done and plug her keyboard back in. "I have more problems with my computer..." she said with slight exasperation. Plugged in again, and what do you know, the beeping had ceased. So I went back to my desk, and a minute or two later our computer tech appeared and headed straight for the AC's office.

Another couple minutes, and our computer tech came over to ask if I had done "that" to our AC's keyboard. "What's that?" I asked.

"When I picked up the keyboard, a bunch of water poured out of it."

So I would like to say here that our AC is a kind person with many fine qualities. But I think I have some idea why she has so much trouble with her computer.