Ignoring the work she had been doing, she cupped her hand over the familiar back of her little mouse, her index and middle fingers lightly touching the two buttons in a practiced caress. With the adroitness which bespoke long practice, she slid the mouse quickly across the pad so that the small white arrow on the screen shot directly to its destination. This was the small icon providing the key to the infinite resources of the Internet. A quick tap of her index finger gave Laura the screen she needed, and keys clattered as she entered her password, hit the Enter key, then used the mouse once again to hit a different icon and open a work screen. The Internet connection had been slowing down a little lately and there was sometimes a slight delay: Laura had too much work waiting to waste any time. For a few minutes she worked feverishly at the modifications she was making to a reports program, then re-opened the Internet window to find that she was connected and could search for whatever information her heart desired. She selected the Travel category and typed in "San Francisco". If she was going to be there tomorrow, she wanted to know something about the place. Laura had never been to the West Coast.
It's an ill wind that blows no good, indeed, thought Laura. Both her window office and the trip to San Francisco had resulted from a very traumatic downsizing which the company had just gone through. Several old-timers who had found it difficult to keep up with the almost-daily changes in technology had been among those laid off. A few months earlier, Laura had been promoted to senior analyst-programmer, and had used that as leverage to get herself moved from a mid-room cubicle to a newly-vacant window office. As one who had always been able to shut out distractions, she had not found life in a cube to be as bad as Scott Adams depicted it in his Dilbert cartoon strips. Nevertheless, she appreciated the perk. As with all downsizings, this one had resulted in the remaining staff having to pick up additional work, and Laura felt that getting her own office was a small but well-deserved bonus. She had been moving further into systems analysis and design work when the layoffs hit, and now she was back helping out with programming because of the staff shortages. On the plus side, upper management had realized that keeping the remaining staff up to speed on technology issues was now very important, and so Laura had been chosen to go to San Francisco for a 3-day seminar on the details of the newest upgrade to their PC operating system.