when you give a moron a printer...

There's a serious issue facing us these days. There's too many people who are computer illiterate.

Now, let me be quite frank about this. I don't give a fuck if some kid knows how to use Microsoft Excel. It'd be great if he did, especially if he's in my chemistry lab group, but to be quite realistic you can probably get by without knowing if you had to. And if you needed to learn, well, you could learn.

In that case, ignorance is okay. It's not like people can go around using Excel haphazardly, and it's not like they can mess anything up too bad by trying to use it.

When I speak about computer literacy (right now, at least), I'm talking more understanding the basic nature of how a computer, and especially a network, operates (the latter may be more important, in actuality). I say this - and I'm writing this post - because I had to clean up for some poor girl. You see, I came to the library - which is relatively empty (relatively) on a Friday afternoon - to print out some notes for Chemistry last week, as well as a paper my dad wanted me to proofread.

So I hit print, and go over to the printer. The time is 5:25.

Well, lo and behold, the printer is out of paper. No big deal... I load in some more paper and printing resumes.

The printing resumed with documents printed at 4:45.

Can nobody else load a fucking paper tray?

You know what, though? I can deal with it. I don't really care if people lost their documents. Yeah, I'm sorta upset that I had to wait 5 or 6 minutes for my document to be printed, but whatever. I'm pretty disgusted that nobody else can load paper into a printer, but whatever.

As an act of good will, in case these kids ever want to come retrieve their printouts, I decided to sort them all and lay them out on a table.

All documents across a Novell network are printed with cover sheets showing the username, time of printing, and document source. It helps a lot when people are swarming over the printers at lunch hour on Monday. But sorting them, I notice this one girl who printed out the same document thrice. I glance at the document source... the first thing I notice is that it's a secure site. The second thing I noticed was that it was from carolinafirst.com.

The last thing I noticed, when I turned the page, was that it contained her full name, address, phone, email, social security number, mother's maiden name, account listings and account numbers.

So I decided to sell it all online!

Of course not, but I know kids who might. So here's a lesson to everyone:

(1) To load a printer, open the drawer and put the paper in the container that's conveniently shaped like paper.

(2) If you execute a print command multiple times, whether you're using lpr or just clicking an icon in MS Word, your document will be printed multiple times. Computer's aren't hard of hearing; they do exactly as you command. Just be patient while they do things one at a time.

(3) Don't print information like your social security number and bank number on a public printer over a public network; and if god forbid that you do, make sure the fucking paper is in your hands before you leave!

As a side note, I went to carolinafirst.com. I would like to make it well known that I could have gotten into her account. In fact, I suppose it stands to reason that I still can, now that I have her information. But being the good person I am, I'm going to rip the information up like I did to the other two copies and throw it away. She'll get away with it this time.

But if I find that banking information again, I may just give her a bit more of a scare.