Bah! Humbug!

It's just about a decade ago, and this county government's chief administrative officer calls IT to complain that every time he moves his mouse pointer to the bottom of the screen he gets music, says a pilot fish on the scene.

"We had a hotshot programmer, fresh out of college and with a know-it-all attitude," fish says. "He quickly ran down to fix the problem and get brownie points.

"After about an hour he called down to the IT shop and told me to bring over the portable USB hard drive and to copy all of the CAO's data and reimage the hard drive because his PC has the Jingle Bells virus and it cannot be removed."

Fish grabs the drive, and when he gets to the CAO's office the hotshot begins to rip into him about how bad the corporate virus scanner is and how the firewall should have stopped this virus from infecting the CAO's PC -- and how he was going to find out who was responsible and that head was going to roll. Then he stomps off.

Fish plugs in the drive and starts to work -- and sure enough, every time the mouse pointer touches the task bar at the bottom of the screen, "Jingle Bells" starts to play.

After about 20 minutes of intermittent holiday jingling, fish has had it, and he turns the volume knob on the speaker all the way down.

But the next time the mouse pointer touches the task bar, the song returns.

"I moved the pointer to the task bar and listened for the music," says fish. "It wasn't coming from the PC speakers, but from a stack of paper in front of them."

He traces the mouse cord through the stack of papers. There in the middle he finds a musical Christmas card. Every time the mouse cord is pulled tight, it opens the card enough to start the song.

Fish shows the CAO, who bursts out laughing. Then he grabs the card. "Come with me," he tells fish, and down to the programmer's office they go.

The CAO marches into the room and in a stern voice announces, "We found out who gave me this virus -- and it was you!"

As the programmer goes pale, the CAO opens the card and slams it down on the hotshot's desk.

"It began to play 'Jingle Bells,'" fish says. "And guess who the card was from? Yes, the programmer.

"The CAO burst into laughter again, but not the programmer. At least our CAO has a sense of humor."

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