My best friend, Chuck, purchased a new portable computer for his job. He travels a lot, and needs to have all the important information at his fingertips.

Unfortunately, in installing all the software an insidious new computer virus was also installed. This new virus randomly inserted profanity and scatological references into his printed copy, but didn't display them on the screen. Since Chuck trusted his Spell Checker software, he never proofread his copy, and in short order he'd insulted most of his friends and all of his business associates.

When one of his more outspoken friends finally brought the situation to his attention, Chuck was very humiliated and became extremely depressed. He then developed an irrational desire to punish his computer, and he tried several methods to punish his computer for the grief it had brought him.

First, he attempted to cause corrosion of the power supply terminals by sprinkling them with sodium and calcium chloride from highway deicing barrels. Next, he scraped away the solder joints from the board. Finally he threw the whole system out the eighth floor window of his hotel.

Poor Chuck's actions were reported to the Computer Protection Services. The next morning, he was arrested and charged with . . . a salted battery, breach of contacts, and making an obscene clone fall.