For months, Greg had been requesting one of those new LCD monitors. The price was a quarter of what it had been. Thanks to Bill Gates wallpapering his mansion with LCD, the manufacturers had fully recouped their development costs. Besides the slightly curved screen and the resulting confusing glare, the most annoying "feature" of the CRT was the spray of escaped electrons (and a few X-rays, not enough to worry about) giving him a negative charge, the resulting staticky feeling, and his face acting as an electrostatic dust filter in conjunction with the monitor.

As he raced to finish a spreadsheet before the deadline, the dust was accumulating, and between that and the curved glare, and needing new glasses, and itchy dust irritated eyes, he could no longer make out the figures. Suddenly, nothing in his world was more important than destroying that CRT.