The nice thing about computers these days is the ability to do more than one thing at a time. The technical term is multitasking. Another of my hobbies is chess. Playing chess has also reached the Internet. One can play chess 24 hours a day against other fanatic's, insomniacs and others that populate the Internet community. You simply run a program that connects you to the server providing a graphical chessboard interface and before you know it you are caught in the heat of battle. The program I use to connect to the Internet Chess Club provides sound effects from a plop as you pick up pieces and replace them on another square to a clank when you've suddenly been checkmated. I was playing well and my rating (a numeric measure of ones playing strength) went up over a hundred points. It would of course go down on other days, but the hope is always there that you are improving and the rise is just a reward for hard work. Having made progress and not wanting to take a chance on losing those precious points on the same day I decided to peruse my other haunts on the net. About that time my wife returned from work. Talk of the day commenced, what have you been doing, anything interesting happen today, kind of stuff. I commented that I had purchased a new CD, Bleecker Street, folk songs of the sixties sung by modern artists. I was back to my humming and singing, I was so much older then I'm younger than that now". I told her I had it on the hard disk and would be happy to play some for her. Paul Simons Bleecker Street and Bob Dylan's My Back Pages Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now. I sang in my sweet tenor voice. My wife of course began admonishing me to let her listen, she didn't want to listen to me sing, wives can be so unkind. We continued to listen for a moment, and I began to feel uneasy, what was that popping sound. I hadn't heard it on the previous tune but it was quite regular now. And then no sooner had it appeared than it was gone. Perhaps I would have to rerecord that song. Then started (John Sebastian's Darling be home Soon) and I began to sing along again, "But I've been waiting since I toddled, for the great relief of having you to talk to". Some of us live under the illusion that we sing as well out of the shower as we think we do in the shower. Gail was quick to point out that I had promised not to sing. I stopped singing but continued to hum lightly, but I continued to hear my voice "For the great relief of having you to talk to." The realization was sudden, should I tell her or just let her figure it out, there was no way to avoid embarrassment, somehow my voice along with recording were faithfully replaying from the hard disk, but how could that be. A few moments later the answer presented itself. Sitting right in front of me a microphone used for other computer applications had obviously accepted input and real audio had combined that with the CD for a truly hideous sing-a-long, my wives evaluation That also explained the plop plop as coming from the chess game through the computer speakers captured by the microphone and combined with the CD for a very unusual cacophony of sounds. I figured out how to disable the microphone when not in use, and avoid such embarrassments in the future, or perhaps I've discovered an inexpensive karaoke machine.