Story time, buckos.

Flashback to freshman year, a time when people could go out without weighing the risk toward public health. Remember outside?

I had entered the Nesbitt Room, a public study room where you pretended to get work done while listening to math students complain. On one hand, “my math classes have too much work!” On the other hand, “my non-math classes have too little math!”

Hoping to make progress on my EECS project, I busted out my trusty laptop and started to “work.” My laptop had been bothering me for the past week. The bottom case had came loose, and the resistance to pushing it back into place indicated something had bent or shifted inside. However, “don't fix what ain't broke,” I reasoned, since I could still use my laptop without issue. Oh how wrong, this excuse!

Within my laptop lived two wires. By the Grand Dell Design, these wires should have never crossed. Yet Fate cares not about your pathetic Grand Dell Design. Somehow, with all the tossing and turning of my trusty laptop in the back pocket of my backpack, these two forbidden lovers had their tryst. United against all odds, they started to heat up, and by heat up I mean started SMOKING. That's right: SMOKING.

As part of a public campus, Nesbitt bans smoking. Do you think “no smoking” includes laptops? I had never really considered it before, yet like a meat fire in a toaster oven,¹ the question made itself known. I must emphasize it again: in a PUBLIC study room, around OTHER PEOPLE WHO ARE JUST TRYING TO GET STUFF DONE, my laptop started SMOKING.

Do I find somewhere more discreet to handle this? Or do I address my smoking problem right here right now, in front of everybody? All things considered, a literally SMOKING laptop took precedence. Over the course of the next half hour, under the cautious gaze of my peers (who had taken the liberty of scooting away), I backed up my laptop. And not a moment too soon: after backing it up, my laptop broke before I left the room.