On Desktops and Disorientation.

Imagine this:

It’s three o’clock in the morning; you’re feeling a little tired and mildly inebriated. You decide it’s time for bed and proceed to switch off the computer, but only get as far as closing the browser. Then you fall asleep.

You’re woken somewhat indecorously by an urgent beeping noise and realise that your dormant fingers are pressing certain keys on the keyboard. You remove them hastily and open your eyes, only to be met with a strange sight, a surreal sight, an unnatural sight. The desktop on your monitor has turned a full 90° to the right. The North Pole is now somewhere in the South China Sea and the South Pole has migrated to Ecuador. To feelings of tiredness and mild inebriation is added an indefinable degree of disorientation. And then the horror sets in: 'My Computer is Broken,' you shriek inwardly. Two questions immediately occur to you. Firstly, how did this happen? Secondly, what do you do about it? (Or it might have been the other way round in my case, I really don’t remember.) Such was my dilemma at a point in the diurnal round when I gather the human mind is most susceptible to torture.

My mind, as is it is routinely wont to do in difficult situations, emulated the amoeba. It split in two; but, quite unlike its single-celled model, it proceeded to engage in debate.

‘You’re tired.’

‘I know.’

‘And slightly inebriated.’

‘I know.’

‘And a little disoriented.’

‘I know that, too.’

‘So go to bed and sort it out tomorrow.’

‘You must be joking. There’s no way I’m going to bed with this hanging over me. Do you realise what an issue a broken computer is to me?’

‘Yes, but tomorrow you can call a computer engineer and get it seen to.’

‘It’s Saturday tomorrow.’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘And Sunday the day after that.’

‘So it is.’

‘It would mean spending at least two days without a computer, possibly more. I have to see whether there’s anything I can do using my own ingenuity.’

‘Ha!’

‘Go away.’

I tried to remember where my fingers were when that impolite bleeping assaulted my senses. Somewhere at the bottom of the keyboard, I think. That’s useful… I pressed everything, but without success. I tried all the F keys, even though they're at the top. Same result. This was going to take logic and a systematic approach. Jeez!

I turned my head sideways to check that the desktop was intact, if a little (!!!) out of position. So far so good. I tried moving the pointer around. It was hardly fluent (and fluency is useful to the disoriented mind) but I was able to place it where I wanted it with some effort. I selected Start-Control Panel and examined the options. Nothing suitable. Plan B: close down and re-boot. That usually puts things right, doesn’t it? It didn’t. The two actions thus described took longer than it takes to describe them, and a lot longer than it takes to read them. Fortunately, the Triple Alliance of Tiredness, Inebriation and Disorientation was losing its grip; a second wind was rising (the mental sort, that is.) I had a brainwave. I typed desktop turned sideways into Google and received a lot of returns. I selected the first.

‘My cat has walked over my keyboard,’ bleated the first query in some forum or other, ‘and now my desktop has turned sideways. What do I do?’

It seems funnier now than it did at the time. At the time I eagerly scrolled down to the first answer, the best answer proclaimed the heading. It was simple, no frills. I liked that.

‘Press Ctrl-Alt-Up.’

I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Up, and within minutes was heading bedwards, insufficiently tired and no longer inebriated, but cured of disorientation and much lighter of heart. Thank you Google (for a change.)