44 Using English at Work
Lesson 6 - Having Computer Problems
spent most of the morning in meetings, organizing my desk and taking breaks -fairly typical, I think, of many people who in an office - so now I really need to get serious about working on my report if I'm going to make some headway and meet the deadline. If your parents are planning to visit you, you may try to make some headway in cleaning your house before they arrive by cleaning the bathroom today and the kitchen tomorrow and the living room the next day. Each day, you make some headway on cleaning your house - you make some progress.
Unfortunately, as soon as I sit down in front of my computer, it starts acting up. When we talk about machines and equipment, "to act up" means to stop working properly. For example, your car radio might act up and stop playing music, or your cell phone might act up and not ring when people call you - that would be great, actually, for me! In the story, my computer is acting up at work.
First, my computer screen freezes. A "screen" (screen) is the part of the computer page that you can see on your computer monitor. You have a screen on your television, a screen on your computer monitor; many people a screen on their cell phones. The screen is where the images and text are shown. When we talk about computers the verb "to freeze" means to stop responding, to stop working. It seems like computers often freeze whenever I'm in the middle of writing a very important note! When my screen freezes - when my computer stops working - I have to boot it up again. "To boot something up" means, in this case, to turn on the computer. In the morning, the first thing I do is to boot my computer up and it usually takes two or three minutes before it's ready for me to use. But because my computer is acting up, I do what all of us do to try to fix our computers, I try to restart it by booting it up again.
Next, I try to print a copy of my report. I'm going to print the information in my file - my electronic file and put it onto a piece of paper using a printer. These days, many companies and organizations have their job applications on their website and if you want to apply for a job, you need to print out the application before you can complete it. Notice, here, we can use "print" or "print out," they mean the same in this case. I try to print a copy of my report at the office, but of course, it won't print. I discover that the problem is with the printer; it's jammed. If a piece of equipment is "jammed" (jammed) it means that paper or something else is stuck inside of it so it can't work correctly. When photocopiers and printers get jammed, we usually have to open them, reach in, pull out the paper that got stuck, and then put in new paper. My report won't print because the printer is jammed, so it takes some time to clear it, or take out the papers that are stuck, for it to work again. We clear it - we take out or remove the paper; that's what you do if you have a jam.
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