The Baby Gate 6700

The other day I was tricked into doing computer work for an individual, not a business. I don't normally do "residential" work anymore as it just eats away at the little free-time that I call my own. But an employee of a business I service told me he uses his computer at home for work and that I could bill his employer. So I was kinda stuck.

I was met at his house by his mother-in-law, who was at home with this guy's baby while he and his wife were at work. She took me downstairs and introduced me to the misbehaving computer (hard drives were defaulting to PIO mode instead of DMA due to a timeout scenario - fixed by editing the registry).

When it was fixed, I wandered back upstairs. At the top of the stairs I found a pretty substantial baby gate. Steel and tall - not the flimsy plastic lattice-looking ones - and there was no obvious way to open it. Since I was standing on a step that was lower than the floor, climbing over it was impossible. I just don't have that kind of reach. After rattling it around for a few minutes, the mother-in-law finally came out with a just-awakened baby and opened the gate. Pretty embarrassing.