Your What?

A guy needed a little help getting on to the Interweb. A little bumpy, but I got him to Yahoo and after a few tries he got into his email. I sat back down at the DeskSlave perch, job well done and all that. A few minutes later I was summoned back to his computer. "Where's my I drive?" he asked.
"Your what?"
"My I drive."
Sophisticated readers know that on Windows, your hard drive is the C: drive, the floppy, if you've still got one, is the A: drive, and so on. (The Mac is a bit different: when you turn on your computer, angels guide the data to the right place. No need to worry about anything.) I remembered that there was a website called idrive.com that allows you store items remotely, so I asked him if that was what he meant. He gave me the sort of look I would give somebody if they walked up and started speaking in tongues.
I started from zero. "How do you usually access the I drive?"
"It's right here! It's always right here!" he said, his patience running out, waving the cursor over the left side of the desktop where all the shortcuts for browsers and programs live.
"Do you use it on our computers?"
"No, just at home."
"But not here."
"I've never been here before."
"Do you need to go on to get to it?" I asked, trying to edge my way back to the idrive.com idea.
I got the sort of "Oh, I'm talking to an idiot look" that I like so much.
"Do you know where your I drive is physically located?"
He admitted that he had no idea. I explained that I thought it was either something that he accessed online or it was something attached to his computer at home.
"So I can't get at my documents?" He demanded.
"I don't think so."
Deep, angry sigh, complete with the "Fine kettle of fish" look that Oliver Hardy perfected in the 1930's.

Good parenting requires

that after your child cries for 15 minutes and a DeskSlave has asked you to take a break from the Internet and take the kid outside that you go over to the new video section and browse.

I think that's in this book:

Damn you, Mario

Two days ago I got a call from a kid who wanted biographies of Mario Lemieux. The catalog said we did, but I like to check the shelf and pull the books and place the hold just so everybody knows that the books will be on the holds shelf and not at some desk someplace. I told him I would make sure they were actually on the shelf before he came all the way in. He said he'd wait. So I went over and got them and by the time I got back, the kid had dropped the call. So I reshelved the books. Of course, an hour later, the kid with dad in tow were in, looking for books about the man known, apparently, as "The Magnificent One," "The Great One" having been taken already by Gretzky, and "The Greatest" kinda owned by Ali. So back to the shelf I took them and handed off the books. (Evidently, Mario's parents brought snow into their Montreal home and packed it down on the carpet to turn it into ice when Mario was a baby and stood him up on skates on it. And I think he kilt him a bar when he was only three.) This should have been the end of it, only this evening I was helping a youngster look for the Catwings books by Ursula LeGuin and there were the Mario biographies jammed in the midst of the Madeleine L'Engle books. Cretinous hockey fans!

Trick Question

This one just in:
Woman walks up and asks, "Are you the Reference Desk?"

Narcoleptic Computers

A coworker was urgently summoned to the Children's Computer area shortly after opening. The computers, she was breathlessly informed, were not working. Not at all. Quickly applying her finely honed troubleshooting skills, she bravely reached over and jiggled the mouse on one of them. It sprang to life, as did the others in their turn.

A feeling of impending dread

A young couple just had a "situation" involving who had their laptop and whether it was in the library someplace (i.e. stolen) or in the car. I really hope it's in the car. If it's not, I will be grilled about whether I have seen it and how we can allow people to steal things. I'm holding my breath.

Thank You: an Update

Many people still think that "Oh, OK," is a good substitute for "thank you."