Whaaaaaaaaa!

The following is a true story.

This afternoon, I was sitting at my desk, actually being productive (which hasn't happened so much these days). I was working in Word to develop an artistic invitation to the Peer Advising retreat that is coming up around the corner, checking my email, and ok, facebooking.

A sudden and extremely loud wailing blared from near my end of the office. I looked around, somewhat annoyed, and assume that the fire alarm had gone off in an absurd, solid tone wail. I continued to work until I noticed that people were beginning to gather around my desk.

A few seconds later, Heidi had grabbed my laptop off of its docking station and began wildly hitting any button and unplugging any cord she could find. I did what anyone would do in that situation: I said, "What the heck?!?" and then got up and walked away. Upon a manic shutdown, the wail had been silenced, and it was confirmed that the insane noise was indeed from my little laptop. Seriously. It was as loud of the fire alarm.

Turns out, sometimes your internal microphone in your laptop can turn itself on without any touching of microphone controls. And if said microphone happens to be turned up loud enough and the accompanying speakers have also somehow been turned up loud enough, the result is a "WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA" that very closely resembles a fire alarm.

Needless to say, I was pretty embarrassed, but I could only be so embarrassed because the IT guy that came to rescue me had no solution to my little problem. I can only assume that he must have been just as embarrassed. All I'm saying is, watch out. This could inexplicably happen to you. Keep an eye on your seemingly well-behaving laptop; it could revolt and try to blow itself up.