"Our official policy is that users are to take care of non-work-related files themselves, but it's usually quicker just to take care of the transfer myself than to give instructions to the user about where files are stored and the easiest way to move them."

So fish goes to work via remote access, and has almost finished transferring all the files when she runs into a problem: She can't find any music files. They're not in the location they should be for the application the secretary is using, though when fish tries to copy files from that location there's an error.

Maybe the files aren't visible because they're in use, fish thinks, and asks secretary to shut down the program. Still no luck. Fish searches the entire computer for music files. Nothing turns up.

"Finally, I went down to her computer, hoping to trace the specific songs she had in her library to files on her hard drive," says fish. "I opened her music application, only to find an empty library. A moment of panic struck my heart, as I feared that the first error-bound transfer had somehow wiped out her music collection.

"I turned to her and asked her where she usually goes to listen to her music. She pointed me to the application -- and to the online radio stations, built into the application.