…or at least, he tried to, last year. This is an updated article from last February’s newsletter. Given that the weather is similar (sadly), the cat is still “helping,” and it contained some useful tips, I’m sharing it again.
Our cats are normally outdoors, in the barn or garage during the winter. But the weather’s been so cold that we’ve been keeping them in the house...all seven of them (that was five last year for anyone keeping track).
So when I started this a few days ago and walked away from the home office PC for a couple hours, I came back to a keyboard that was flipping the screens in the direction of my cursor arrows, the screens were sideways, and I couldn’t really type. Had to press the power button to get things back, and even then, I had a keyboard error, like it was stuck.
A couple bangs on the keyboard, and another boot, and whatever stuck wasn’t anymore. I was back in business and the yellow-orange fur that flew from in between the keys identified the culprit. Apparently,”Pickles” wanted to help me write this.
When I recovered my autosaved file, here’s part of what I had as extra help…
M,.nmkldassd dfsivd l;ol;op
I don’t know if Pickles was satisfied with that or not; he’s not saying.
But sometime after that, he must have pressed enough keys to screw up the screen controls and effectively lock up the PC. Maybe he was just mad that I was starting another column writing about the weather – or angry that the keyboard failed to consider the ergonomic needs of a cat.
But intentionally or not, he did help write the column this month, reminding me of a few important things to consider. First, if you’re going to be away from your machine for a while and others (human or not) might have access to it, it’s not secure to leave it unlocked. Lock your screen.
Next, save frequently. If you have Autosave (virtually all MS Office products do), turn it on or make sure it’s on, and that it works. I ended up throwing away most of the original column (it started with the weather again), so I wouldn’t have lost much. But if Pickles had decided to “contribute” to a client’s network assessment report, and it hadn’t been saved, THAT could have been a day’s work, gone.
Finally, sometimes problems are just so ridiculous that you have to laugh. I’m still chuckling about this, and Pickles probably is, too. This was up there with the time we found a mouse nest inside a client’s crashed fileserver. Maybe if they’d had a cat that might have been avoided.
