fandomhighdorms | Computer Lab [Thursday Afternoon]

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Computer Lab [Thursday Afternoon]

William had a jumpdrive and... no idea how to use it.

Fortunately, he knew people who had a much better grasp on these things than he did, which is precisely why he had called Claudia and was now trying to resist the urge to pry the casing off one of the computer towers as he waited for her to show up.

[ooc: expecting she who's been mentioned in narrative, but open!]

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Claudia wouldn't blame him for prying one of the things open. They were interesting!

She headed over to the computer lab pretty much as soon as she'd gotten his message, curious to see what kind of tech he'd been introduced to, this time.

Man, it was like the guy got Christmas all the time.

"You know, you can just call me 'Claudia'. 'Miss Donovan' makes me feel like I'm being yelled at by a foster mom."

"People keep saying that," William admitted. "It's just- not something I'm accustomed to." Look, he was already wearing modern clothing (mostly because he had no idea how he was supposed to go about getting the clothing he'd come with washed), one step at a time here.

"Well, you know, just so long as you know it's an option." Claudia shrugged and came over to look at what he was doing. "So. Whatcha got?"

"This," he held up the flashdrive he'd been carrying in a pocket since Tuesday. "There is... information on it I'm being required to access. Only I'm not quite sure how."

Claudia nodded. She could go with "you plug it in here and then you click this", but she was pretty sure William would appreciate a bit more of the why along with the how. "I can help you with that. You been introduced to disks and drives for computers, yet?"

"I've been told a little of microchips and how they store data, but nothing so specific," he shared.

"I can do real specific for you, later, if you like. But, quick overview: in the old days, the only way to get data from one computer to another was with these little square things called disks that were, like, super easy to damage and held, like, no information. Very clunky. I'm told it sucked. Lucky for you, you skipped the dinosaur age of computing, so you get to use flashdrives, like that one. Way smaller, way more info, and the computer does almost all the work for you. All you gotta do is uncap it, plug it into the USB port, and open the folder to see what you've got inside."

Well that seemed... relatively uncomplicated. He took the cap off the flashdrive and looked over at the computer, trying to find this 'USB port'.

"Does it matter which one?" he asked, having spotted three slots that seemed to be identical.

"Not as long as it fits without forcing it in."

William had already been in trouble once for damaging school property, he didn't particularly care for that to happen again.

At least, not so soon after his first offense. Give him another week or two and he'd probably be breaking in to the science lab.

With a shrug, he popped the flashdrive in the port, and was rewarded with a chime and a dialog box asking him what he'd like to do with these files. After a moment's hesitation, he grabbed hold of the mouse, pleased when his assumption was proved correct, and the arrow on the screen responded to the movements of the small device. "So how does one actually open the folder?" he asked, hovering over where the dialog box was giving him that very option.

"In this case, you make sure the option's highlighted and click 'okay'." He seemed to have a handle on the mouse, so she didn't try to explain what clicking meant. "When you just have a box showing the contents of the drive, you can open different folders and files by double-clicking on them."

"I see," William nodded, and did as instructed until he found himself with a list of jpg files (not that he knew, precisely, what a jpg file was, but he could make a reasonable guess). Hovering uncertainly over the first file listed, he turned back to face Claudia. "The images are... likely quite gruesome. I'll understand if you don't care to see such things." Although truth be told, he kind of hoped she'd be fine with it. Brainstorming was much easier with someone to bounce ideas off of.

"Dude, what exactly do you need this information for?"

"I am... assisting Mr Holmes in investigating a case." That possibly involved werewolves, and at the very least involved people being mauled.

"Like a murder case?" Claudia probably shouldn't have looked so cheerful at that prospect.

Oh, like William would judge her for that since that had basically been his own reaction. "Precisely like that."

And then he was double-clicking on the file, bringing up the first image of what looked to be a rather brutal mauling.

"Wow, someone had a really crappy day." Claudia scooted over to get a better look. "Yeee."

"I want to get a closer look at the throat, here," he pointed to where the majority of the damage had been done. "Mr. Holmes told me it was possible to enlarge the photographs with the computer."

"Depends on the image program. Check the menus along the top, or try holding down the control key and the shift key, and the one with the plus and equals sign."

It took a bit of trial and error, but eventually he managed to get the image enlarged.

"There were wolf hairs found on the body, and so the official police report claims it was a wolf attack, but this wound... it seems far too large to have been caused by a wolf's jaws, and besides that, such attacks were rare enough in urban areas in my time, how on Earth would a wolf pass unnoticed in downtown Baltimore?" he paused. "There was one witness, who claims they saw a, a, werewolf, fleeing the scene." From his tone, it was evident that he didn't put much stock in that particular theory either. Which left him with... a lot of very puzzling questions.

"How does someone identify a werewolf on sight? Don't they just look like really big wolves?"

Claudia's werewolf experience didn't exactly mesh with most pop culture.

"A very good question," William agreed. "Folklore is rather unclear on the matter. Some tales say, as you do, that they look like very large wolves. Others describe a creature that walks upright, but covered in fur with the head and claws of a wolf." The idea that werewolves could be real hadn't actually occured to him, no. "It is this second type that the witness claims they saw."

"I wonder if there's actually two separate species." Yeah, 'if they were real' wasn't even a question for Claudia. "You know, biology really isn't my realm of expertise, but shouldn't a wolf bite be, like, snoutier?"

William wasn't sure what to respond to- Claudia's apparent belief, or at least lack of disbelief, in werewolves, or her actual question.

"..Snoutier?" was that a word? He couldn't be sure, a great many new terms had entered the language since his time, after all.

"Yeah. Like . . . longer. Kinda pointy?"

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Computer Lab [Thursday Afternoon]

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