Afternoon, after the first Compu-Sciences class

[Damien Griffiths]

Damien sat down at one of the computers with a sigh of relief. It had taken longer than expected to navigate the corridors to this place. With a push of the button, he turned on a computer, and looked around to see if Less was also in the room.

"Okay Less, have a seat. Have you ever used a computer before?"

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less was indeed in the room. He sat down next to Damien and leaned over to look at the screen with polite incomprehension. He could read the words on the screen, but it was difficult as he was not used to reading back-lit texts and thus had to keep stopping himself from closing his eyes. He would probably do better if the screen brightness was turned down slightly.

"No, I haven't," he answered as he fiddled with the keyboard absently. Someone should do something before he breaks it.

[Damien Griffiths]

"Okay, then we'll start with the basics." Damien started pointing things out on his computer, and told Less what they were called. Monitor, speakers, mouse, keyboard. Locations of powerbuttons, the CD-drive, USB ports for other devices. "Think you can remember that? It's important to know what everything's called. Try turning everything on by yourself."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less poked at the power button softly, then harder when the computer failed to turn on. Finally the monitor lit up and a cheerful jingle rang out, startling the werewolf boy. He carefully wiggled the mouse and noted how the arrow on the screen moved.

[Damien Griffiths]

Seeing Less' responses to the machine, Damien slowly started explaining things like desktop, cursor, and most of the general things to do with computers, like running programs - especially Word - and how to use them. After that he rummaged for his notes and slowly recounted what the professor had taught them today, and what they were supposed to be writing for next class. All in all it took at least two hours, maybe even more.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

By that point, Less had started attempting to type in Word. Unfortunately, he was very imprecise at using the keyboard, and additionally pounded on the keys far too hard. It was hard to tell what he meant to type out, but the result was, "comopuerterersa weweree ionjvenmtedd iun19760s. tyhje firsty oinews werre siomplke opuinchjdcards oppoeerastors."

Yeah, this was going to take a long time to master.

[Damien Griffiths]

Damien sighed as he saw Less' typing... yeah, this was going to take a while. Again he started explaining how to use the keyboard, showing how to do it.

"Don't hit the keys too hard, and make sure you're on top of the key you want to use for your word. If you're not confident you can hit the keys quickly after eachother, just do it slowly. You can always look at the screen to see what you've typed..." and here he pointed at the garbled words on the screen, "... because right now I can barely make out what you've typed up." He slowly typed up the same sentence on his own machine, showing how he held his hands and pressed the buttons.

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less Than Beta carefully mimicked Damien's movements on the keyboard, and after a few false starts and a bit of time was able to copy out the sentence on his computer. After a bit of thinking, he added "The very first wqs developed by Joseph-Marie Jacquard, and was desined as a loooom controled by punch-cards. This was in 1801. It wS FOLOWED BY A STEAM-POWERED NAVIGASHONAL CALCULATER IN 1833 BY CHARLES BABBBBBBAGE."

[Damien Griffiths]

Damien nearly facepalmed at the next sentence. Yeah, this was going to be a looooong day. With a sigh, he pointed out that Less had pressed Caps Lock instead of A, and what it did. It was going better on the spelling front, though. As a spelling aid, he explained the Word spell-checking fuction.

Alongside teaching Less how to work the computer, he wondered if he was ever going to get his own essay done...

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less retyped the sentence, carefully making sure that he didn't hit Caps Lock again. It still turned out with typos, but there were less of them. The spell-check helped a lot, but for some reason it kept telling him that 'Jacquard' was spelled wrong, when he was certain he had copied the name down correctly.

[Damien Griffiths]

Seeing the confusion, Damien explained that the spellcheck doesn't know names - maybe a few common names, but a name like 'Jacquard' wasn't going to be in the dictionary it used. After all, it would be very difficult for it to know all the names in the world, and since some names look like regular words, the program could get confused between the two.

In the meanwhile, he opened a file of his own and started work on his essay. It was progressing a lot faster than Less' one, but still slower than he'd liked because of explaining so much to the werewolf. Time kept ticking, and the clock passed by a few hours...

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less finally finished his with a triumphant click of the "save" button. As he had no idea how to print it out, however, he was still stuck on what to do. He poked Damien in the shoulder to get his attention, then pointed at the screen worriedly.

[Damien Griffiths]

"What is it? Oh, you're done!" Damien looked over the text quickl, still seeing some typos here and there that the spellcheck hadn't fixed, and smiled. His own was also done. "Okay, now we're going to print them." He looked around to find a printer, and there was one nearby. He stood up and walked over to it.

"This is a printer, it can put the text you type to paper. I'll just turn it on... there. Now if we go look in Word, in the File menu there's an option called Prit. I'll just click that, and then it shows you which printers are on and connected to the computer. This one is now on... there we go, here it is." Damien selected the right printer, selected Ok and behind him the machine started whirring and spewing his sheets of paper. "Just like that."

[Less Than Beta East Tundra]

Less watched the machine with interest. When it was done, he pulled out the sheaf of paper and flipped through it.
"It's warm," he noted. He handed the report to Damien then went over to his own computer and coped what Damien had done. It took a moment to remember which printer the other boy had selected.

[Damien Griffiths]

"Yes, that's because the printer uses a laser to put the ink on the paper." Damien looked a bit proud of his knowledge here. He did know a bit about how computers and machines worked. "The laser makes heat, so the paper is warm when it comes out. Now, I think this should be okay to turn in in two days. Now..." with a glance at his watch, "... I think dinner is in order. I hope they're still serving at this hour."