Minute Miseries...I Mean Mysteries

Here's a little mystery for you to solve. I was walking away from the Ref Desk toward the tastefully and sumptuously appointed employee break room to enjoy a simple repast of the plain but nutritious peasant fare of my people.* A youngster of maybe 12 intercepted me. I was crestfallen: I could already smell the heady aroma of coffee that had been on the burner for 3 or 4 hours.** But I was stuck.

"Hey, where's the computer thingie?" he inquired.

I had no idea what he was talking about. Do you have any guesses? I'll post an answer to this in a future post, provided somebody actually makes a guess. Maybe there will be a prize.

*OK, I was staggering toward the skanky break room to get more horrid coffee and microwave some leftover pizza. Sheesh.

** Every now and again, I try to popularize a word that I make up or reassign. Some years ago I thought up a good one that totally did not catch on. What is the cognitive equivalent of a typo? A thinko. Yeah. Didn't fly. But here's another one that I have been championing for about 5 years and may yet achieve escape velocity in the culture at large: what do you call coffee that has been sitting on the coffee machine burner for hours and hours and is now thickening through evaporation and smells like it's had machine oil dumped in it? Smelted coffee. I like the industrial sound of smelting, which I imagine smells bad. C'mon--start using it.