This is so ludicrous that I'm having serious trouble believing it.
The position I am currently occupying at work is brand new, and limited-term funding. As a result of which, there wasn't already a desk set up to take me. I was on an old grey desk, slightly too small, nicked from somewhere else and with a brand new computer that used a USB wireless adapter because there weren't enough network sockets in the wall.
Today, my new desk finally arrived. Which meant unplugging everything, packing up, transferring, plugging everything back in...
Being a modern new computer, the keyboard and mouse plugged in through USB, and the back of the very trim little business-type computer chassis had six USB ports available. Okay, one for the wireless adapter, one for the mouse, one for the keyboard, hit the power button...
Neither the mouse nor the keyboard worked. Non-functioning USB ports? No, there were lights on both peripherals. I waited, I tried jiggling everything, I tried swearing, I tried rebooting and then, not seriously expecting a response, I tried unplugging both devices, while the computer was still running, and swapping them. Not moving them to different ports, just swapping them.
Whereupon they both merrily decided to work.
Please, please don't tell me that either Windows XP or the BIOS has been set up to save time by assuming that devices plugged into the Universal Serial Bus, the one truly agnostic computer connector into which anything can be plugged including mug warmers, microscopes and frigging laser guided missile launchers, are always plugged into the same port? Because that would be, like, really stupid and insanely annoying.
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