Going to be a slow week posting
I love my kitties-right up until I want to strangle one.
Saturday night, Mrs. Freeholder was off watching something or other on her iDevice, and I was on the computer just fooling around. It had been a long day in the yard and I was tired. I also wasn’t paying as much attention as I ought to have been.
I had the third-from-last Coke Zero (Get Woke, go broke in action) over ice, in a glass on my desk. One of the cats decided that it would be an opportune time to test my resolve about keeping them off my desk. In the process, the Coke Zero went over. Fortunately, the mess wasn’t as bad as it could have been, because my keyboard caught a lot of the liquid.
Mrs. Freeholder and I got it cleaned up from the desk, the floor and the papers on the desk (fortunately, it was the important ones that got soaked) and I tried the desperation move of flushing the keyboard under running water. Fortunately, that only sort of worked. After drying, it is recognized by the computer, then it isn’t recognized, then it is, then it isn’t. Over and over and over.
Fortunately, I do have a spare, a small Bluetooth keyboard originally meant for use with my iDevice. Because it is small and the key caps aren’t on the “correct” centers, it has been on a shelf for a long while. Right now, I’m using it to compose this and it is an exercise in backspacing.
I have ordered a new Unicomp New Model M to replace the Lenovo Model M-ish one. It ought to be here by the weekend. In the meantime, I’m not going to use this instrument of torture unless I’m forced into it. I guess I probably better get a better spare, too.
Freeholder: I feel your pain. Hang in there; fast typing is over-rated.
I was a Field Service Guy way back when, wrenching on POS terminals and various credit card thingies among other things. Lotsa customers paying lotsa bucks for maintenance contracts that covered darn near everything.
Your 200 pound “bullet-proof” sliding panel fell off the track and squished your machine? Covered. Roof sprung a leak and countless gallons of rain filtered through thousands of dollars of ruined cigarettes on its way to submerging your machine? Covered. Spilled a Coke on the terminal? Not covered. Not repairable.
Bed, Bath and Beyond used to sell a “non-tipable” cup called Mighty Mug that actually worked on smooth, non-porous surfaces. Kitty proof as long as Fluffers doesn’t figure out to lift the cup straight up before tipping it over.
They do make liquid-proof keyboards. They are not the best, but they also are not crazy expensive…
I much prefer the old mechanical key click/clack of the cherry keys. You can find them in a keyboard for less than a 100 bucks.
And a cheap USB keyboard should be less than 25 bucks.
I always have at least one spare sitting around gathering dust…
The mouse is a similar deal.