The zip drive is whirring, my keyboard is clicking, my beige box is humming- all is right in the land of Abdul the computer. Today I spent half an hour or so just taking it all apart, unplugging every cord, swiping all the dust off and getting all the fuzzy stuff out of the spaces between disk drives that has accumulated there for several months. I've been stressed out lately, and it always makes me feel better to bring something under my utmost control. When that something can't be my life, at least it can be the inanimate objects in my room.

Have I ever told you the story of my computer's name? I think not... I was eating dinner with Nate and Patrick (fellow ungeeky geeks) one evening last semester, and the discussion turned to our families. I discovered that Nate had a twin, and I asked if they had "twin names". You know the type- matching little girls in matching pink poufy dresses named Kayla and Katie, or something equally alliterative and irritating. No, Nate replied, his twin's name is Greg. The conversation became a challenge when we began to try to figure out the least "twinniest" names we could possibly think of. My pair, the hands-down winner, had us all rolling on the floor, and have since received the dubious honor of becoming the names of my local and network desktop icons: Abdul and Johan.

In various fits of anti-corporate sentimate, my other icons have had name-changes as well: AOL Instant Messenger is now "Good for wasting time" and ICQ is called "Procrastination". My most accurate name transformations have been inflicted on those doomed Microsoft "My Briefcase" and "Inbox" icons, which now bear the names "Not useful" and "Garbage", respectively.