Sound Explanation

Over the past few years, my computer has tormented me with odd sounds. First, it was a cat meowing. I practically tore my kitchen apart looking for some poor, trapped kitty. Later, it was some guy yelling, "MOM." Sometimes it was people laughing or sighing. On New Years they shouted, "Happy New Year." On Halloween, it was "Happy Halloween." There were dozens of different sounds. The sounds came at random times. I could be lying in bed and hear my computer taunting me.

I figured it was either a virus or some hacker was picking on me. I complained about it on my Blog, but no one had ever heard of such a thing. Lindsay was sure it was my computer reacting to something I was doing. It wasn't until one evening we were just watching TV and heard the sounds that he went into action.

He believed it was AOL. That made no sense to me. Why would AOL do that to a paying customer? And why just me? No one else had this problem.

Lindsay began an instant message dialog with an AOL tech. Which, by the way is a great way to communicate with them. There are no issues with trying to understand each other's accents.

It turned out that AOL was behind the sounds. Someone on my buddy list had been using those sounds. Every time they connected with AOL, my computer let me know with whatever weird sound AOL offered at the time.

Lindsay changed some settings on my computer and I thinned my buddy list. The sounds have stopped. Now, I kind of miss them.