So in my Creative Writing class last night, we spent the first half of it discussing our homework (which I’d forgotten to print out and bring), as well as different third-person points of view (we worked on third-person attached and third-person detached). I was miffed that I’d forgotten my homework. After the break we went up to the computer lab, where we were supposed to write a multiple third-person point of view short story on some weird news article of our choice (the professor had provided a couple of links to websites such as News of the Weird and This is True). I found one about some inept bank robbers and figured I could make something with that.

Now, I have a what is seemingly a non-problematic habit when typing: when considering what my next sentence is going to be, I hold down the shift key in anticipation of capitalizing my first word. Well, on WindowsXP (Perhaps 2K and 98 as well, I don’t know), when you hold down the shift key for more than eight seconds, you launch something called Filter Keys. Basically it’s an accessibility option of some sort. The problems (Among many) are that it capitalizes all your letters and it’s damn near impossible to turn off. It’s quite frustrating.

So sitting at one of the computers, I inadvertently turned it on. After messing with it for a few minutes, I got frustrated (I get easily frustrated with Windows), and moved to another machine. About 3 paragraphs into my story, I friggin’ did it again. As it was nearing the end of class, I figured I’d print my story out and simply finish it up at home.

But, naturally, it was not to be. That particular computer wasn’t hooked up to the network printer, and the lab tech responsible for such things was nowhere to be found. No problem, thinks I, email is just as good.

Nope, email isn’t working on this one either. And I can’t save it because it’s a networked computer. Forty-five minutes of time, right down drain. Quite the frustrating night.