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When I'm not working in the Hardware Store, I help computer newbies with their computing needs. An old friend of the family (As in, a 75 year old man.) is still in the insurance business, and often needs my help to troubleshoot a lot of issue he has in his office.
He calls me in one day to help him with this interesting problem. It appears that he is unable to print any documents, or exit a program, or open a new tab in Firefox, and so on. These are very interesting errors individually. When taken as a group, they become even more interesting. I'm thinking, "virus?" .. no, can't be.
So I get to his office. I begin to see the problem when he shows me his windows, and tries to click on the "File," "Edit," "Tools," (etc) menus at the top of any given window. He clicks on any of them, and they immediately close, as if he hadn't clicked on them. This was quite the error.
Luckily, I had spotted the problem immediately after observing the effects. His desk was not the most spacious location to be using a computer and a mouse, housing a printer and Fax machine, a small rolodex, a series of stacks of papers and folders, an inbox and outbox, and a paperweight. It was a small desk, yes, with very cramped conditions.
... which presented the opportunity for his rolodex to creep ever-closer to his keyboard. Indeed, a small stack of pages from the rolodex about the size of a deck of cards was resting on his escape key. No wonder the menus were closing immediately. He was effectively holding in the Escape key for hours now!
@ @. Wow.
It actually happened again two weeks later. He called me at home, and told me that he's unable to click on anything. "Tom, (fake name) please move your rolodex to the other side of your desk..." And he did, and everything worked out. Awesome.
He calls me in one day to help him with this interesting problem. It appears that he is unable to print any documents, or exit a program, or open a new tab in Firefox, and so on. These are very interesting errors individually. When taken as a group, they become even more interesting. I'm thinking, "virus?" .. no, can't be.
So I get to his office. I begin to see the problem when he shows me his windows, and tries to click on the "File," "Edit," "Tools," (etc) menus at the top of any given window. He clicks on any of them, and they immediately close, as if he hadn't clicked on them. This was quite the error.
Luckily, I had spotted the problem immediately after observing the effects. His desk was not the most spacious location to be using a computer and a mouse, housing a printer and Fax machine, a small rolodex, a series of stacks of papers and folders, an inbox and outbox, and a paperweight. It was a small desk, yes, with very cramped conditions.
... which presented the opportunity for his rolodex to creep ever-closer to his keyboard. Indeed, a small stack of pages from the rolodex about the size of a deck of cards was resting on his escape key. No wonder the menus were closing immediately. He was effectively holding in the Escape key for hours now!
@ @. Wow.
It actually happened again two weeks later. He called me at home, and told me that he's unable to click on anything. "Tom, (fake name) please move your rolodex to the other side of your desk..." And he did, and everything worked out. Awesome.
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