The God key

I have spent *many* years managing computers enormous, personal, and all the sizes in between. It is these ‘personal computers’ that are responsible for today’s bile-laden rant, and their habit of always doing ‘stuff’ when you want to be using them for something, you know, productive.

You know the picture: you go to your computer with a task in mind, wake it up if needed, then wait endlessly for it to respond to your click or press of a key. The thing just sits there, with its hard drive spinning (or yes, for you latter-day purists, with the SSD lighting up the ‘disk activity’ light) and gives you….nothing. You wait, and wait, and wait while the computer works on…well, what the hell is the thing doing, anyhow?

The manufacturers and operating systems people will tell you that the computer is performing critical maintenance and system activities, vital to its continued proper functioning. I call bull; ‘proper functioning’ is it doing the work I am asking it to do, dang it, and it should have no other god before me.

So I propose that the hardware folks work with the operating systems folks and come up with the ‘God’ key. The purpose of the key is singular and has but one function, something I call ‘Stop Whatever You Are Doing And Take My Input, Dammit!’ I am confident that these smart folks can add this seemingly-simple function into the code. Give it its own interrupt or whatever, I don’t care. There is always time to optimize the disks, scan for viruses, or whatever, but the computers will find their precious ‘proper functioning’ imperiled if they continue to ignore their masters to the point of being angrily hurled out the nearest window.

So computer makers, do it. It has been many years since any keys have been added to the typical PC keyboard, and I can think of no more critical function the computer can perform than listening to ME!