Along time ago.
I "do the computer stuff" in the office where my Nan volunteers. They go out and help retired service people filling out grant forms and stuff.

Anyway, this was in the days before the smoking ban and all the old geezers who worked there smoked like chimleys all the time in the office, and I had asthma and an overprotective Nan, so I would have to be announced before I could go in so all the old fuckers could stub out. This had the undesired consequence that whenever I went in I was the center of attention, everyone looking at me and silently cursing me for interupting their everlasting fag break.

So I get a call saying the computer is dead (they only had three, all the actual filing and stuff was done in a set of massive filing cabinets, with files dating back to people who were in their eighties in the seventies). Okay, I'll come down tomorrow.

Head down, and the machine is dead. Utterly dead. Doesn't work at all. No power, nothing. So I faff around for a bit, and decide, not really knowing what I'm doing, but not wanting to look like an idiot in front of the old colnel watching what I was doing, and hope for the best.

The problem soon became apparent. I had to explain to the old feller who sat on the other side of the desk to the computer (it was one of the old flat style ones with the monitor on top of the PC) that the fan slots in the back of the machine do not make a great substitute for an ashtray. Even if it is just now and then when the ashtray is full any you're too busy to go empty it.
(snay, Thu 24 Sep 2009, 16:33, Reply)