We'll take our knowledge transfer any way we can

Business analyst pilot fish is working from home on her laptop when the household cat jumps up on her desk and walks across the keyboard to...well, wherever.

"Soon after, I noticed the mouse on my laptop was not working," says fish. "Immediately I knew some set of keys had been touched by the feline invader and locked the mouse, but had not a clue how to undo it.

"Next day I got back to the office, ported the laptop and used my wireless mouse. I asked our developers, my fellow analysts and a few random geeky co-workers, but no one knew how to fix the problem.

"I finally broke down and entered a ticket to the local desktop support group with the title 'The cat killed my mouse' and included the story. Within an hour, a tech was at my desk asking me to retell the story, much to the amusement of those seated around me.

"The tech said, 'I'll be right back,' retreated to his office and returned a few minutes later, telling me, 'You have a very smart cat. The command to lock and unlock the mouse is FN F5.'

"Suddenly the odd-looking icon on the F5 key was very clear -- and 30 people learned how to lock a laptop mouse."

Transfer some knowledge to Sharky. Send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You'll get a stylish Shark shirt if I use it. Add your comments below, and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.

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Copyright © 2016 IDG Communications, Inc.

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