i think i broke something I am a bad, awful, evil person. I did something I am not proud of. I accidentally knocked over my computer at work. You'd think big top-heavy computer equipment would be manufactured to be able to sustain this kind of abuse, whether intentional or accidental, but you'd be wrong. It seems that knocking a computer from its normal upright position to a sideways formation on office-grade carpeting causes fairly severe problems. Let's revisit the fateful event.

It was Friday afternoon, just before 5:00 in fact. I was innocently turning my chair when disaster struck. One small nudge from my foot was all that it took. Crash! Peeking out above the walls of my cubicle, I looked around to make sure no one else saw what happened. No luck. Everyone was now laughing at my clumsiness.

I picked everything back up and things were working fine. Disaster averted. For about five minutes. Then the Blue Screen of Death appeared. I froze. The blue screen stared back at me, mocking me with its blueness. Help desk was no help. They only assured me that they would get someone down here as soon as they could. But I work for a company with something like 300 million employees, and some guy out in Texas with a knocked-over computer does not get top priority.

So here it is now, Monday morning. The computer is still telling me that there is a non-system disk error. The help desk guys tell me it's the hard drive. Nothing works. I am at someone else's computer until 10:00. I'm scared, lonely, and confused. The people here are strange and unusual. I'm only 20 or 30 feet from the comforting walls of my normal location, but it feels like I'm in a different world. And once 10:00 gets here I will be thrust out into the unknown, no home, no computer, no phone, and I'm afraid of what might happen to me out there.
  ¶ monger187 wrote this on 1/31/2005