Computer hunting

No doubt about it – it’s computer hunting season. You enter the library, and swarms of caffeinated students are circling around the occupied computers like blood-thirsty hawks, ready to pounce at the first sign of someone leaving. \nThere are three types of people you need to look out for this season.\nThe Swoopers: When you finally spot an available computer and gleefully begin to dash toward it with strides of relief, these folks will swoop in out of nowhere and press their filthy fingers to the keyboard right before you can throw your coat on the chair. This is shocking, embarrassing and difficult to recover from. You can try to pretend that you were headed somewhere else, but everyone knows what really happened. \nThe Lockers: These students have figured out how to lock their computer so nobody can log onto it while they are away. I take pride in my fine-tuned radar that allows me to efficiently scan several dozen computers and spot the one displaying the gray log-in screen, and nothing rattles me more than when I get to one of these only to realize that it is locked. This cowardly tactic should not be allowed. Either you’re at the computer or you’re downstairs at Chic-fil-A, but you can’t have both.\nThe Teasers: Teasers are those people who flail about in unnecessary movements while at their computer in a way that makes it appear that they are packing up to leave, when really they have no such intentions. There is nothing worse than wasting precious hunting time hovering behind people making a big scene ruffling through their backpacks only to watch them open a new Word document minutes later.\nLast week, I was in the library reading on the couches when the fire alarm went off. As we were being herded out like unruly cattle, the library authorities announced that all the computers would be shut down during the evacuation. Upon re-entering the building, it was a mad dash for the computers. I didn’t even need one but got caught up in the mob mentality and grabbed one just because I could. \nThen this girl came up to me and asked if anything of hers had been on the screen when I had logged on, which was ridiculous because all the computers had been shut down. I think she was hoping I would offer to leave the computer because it had been rightfully hers before the alarm. I don’t know what the protocol is for this situation, but it seems to me that everything is fair game after an evacuation. I told her this and then Facebooked for an hour. Yeah, I just made that a verb.\nAnyway, I’m planning to start an underground service for computer hunters. I’ve bugged the library with cameras that I now monitor 24 hours a day. For a negotiable price, I will provide you with around-the-clock information about potential computer-leavers’ locations that I will feed to you in code through Walkie Talkies. Contact me for more information.\nHappy computer hunting.