I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing



  • This morning, I treated myself to some pancakes for breakfast. While eating breakfast at my desk, I was pouring syrup on the pancakes when someone stepped into my cubicle and asked a question. While answering, I didn't realize I had turned a bit, but was still pouring the syrup - into my keyboard....

     At least coffee runs out when you turn a keyboard upside down....

     I suppose it could have been worse, it could have been the keyboard on the laptop.

    *sigh*



  • Dit that with sugarry lemonade, two.5 years ago.

    Escape and Ctrl remain tough to press, to this very day. I gave it away and replaced it.



  • On the plus side, if you get hungry during the day, you can just lick your fingers.

    Personally, I enjoy shaking mine out every month or so, just to see how many crumbs I've collected (and which ones I can identify).  Ooh, that was an Oreo...



  • @cconroy said:

    Personally, I enjoy shaking mine out every month or so, just to see how many crumbs I've collected (and which ones I can identify).  Ooh, that was an Oreo...

    Try having cats... two, including one very poofy Maine Coon.

    Every other week or so, I pull about half a cat worth of fur out of my keyboard.  The vents on the front of my tower also get clogged up quite nicely and require cleaning.

    I opened up my case the other day to figure out why my floppy drive wasn't working (still don't know why it's not... it's plugged in and all, so I suspect it died).  I found the killer dustbunny from hell, created entirely out of grey Maine Coon fur.

    *shudder*

    Seejay



  • @cconroy said:

    On the plus side, if you get hungry during the day, you can just lick your fingers.

    Personally, I enjoy shaking mine out every month or so, just to see how many crumbs I've collected (and which ones I can identify).  Ooh, that was an Oreo...

     

    I shake mine every week or so. Sometimes I remove a few keys and clean the "insides" using a brush and a bit of alcohol.

     



  • Just get some hot water and melt that syrup right out. Then rinse it with distilled (or deionized if you can get it) water and dry it out and you should be good to go.



  • It's be interesting to pour buckets of hot water into a keyboard, if only to see what happens once it dries out... However, I've chosen to use this as an excuse to get one of the new wireless keyboards/mice that our company is upgrading to. Sometimes things just work out...



  • Actually, you should have poured the syrup on the laptop.  So you would have an excuse to have the company upgrade the laptop.  ("Mr. Boss, I need a new laptop.  This one's as slow as molasses.")



  • @snoofle said:

    It's be interesting to pour buckets of hot water into a keyboard, if only to see what happens once it dries out... However, I've chosen to use this as an excuse to get one of the new wireless keyboards/mice that our company is upgrading to. Sometimes things just work out...

    It wouldn't be too exciting: it would just work again.



  • @snoofle said:

    This morning, I treated myself to some pancakes for breakfast. While eating breakfast at my desk...

    You guys eat at your desk?

    That's friggin' nasty.



  • @snoofle said:

    new wireless keyboards/mice that our company is upgrading to.

    I'm always wary of an office full of 200 people using the same wireless device.  There's bound to be a conflict at some point. 



  • Oh, lucky you!  I've been meaning to try this out:

    http://www.instructables.com/id/EU0DY6QKNCEZ7BHEZ0
     



  • @snoofle said:

    It's be interesting to pour buckets of hot water into a keyboard, if only to see what happens once it dries out... However, I've chosen to use this as an excuse to get one of the new wireless keyboards/mice that our company is upgrading to. Sometimes things just work out...

    I regularly disassemble my keyboards, mice, and other input devices and put them in the dishwasher. Keyboards are especially nice; most got a water-proof membrane with a connector port that you can just remove the "brains" from. If so, the brains are a little module that's probably hot-glued to the strain-relief on the USB cable on the inside and attaches via ribbon cable. Everything else is dishwasher safe. Mice are a little bit more work; there's more guts to remove and they're harder to put back together.

    Shudder. I can't stand dirty keyboards. 



  • @themagni said:

    @snoofle said:

    This morning, I treated myself to some pancakes for breakfast. While eating breakfast at my desk...

    You guys eat at your desk?

    That's friggin' nasty.

    When I worked for a large corporation with its own office complex, including a cafeteria, I swore I'd never eat at my desk as I saw many others (usually management types) do.  Then I changed jobs to a small company with only an office suite, in a building with no cafeteria, in NYC where the average deli counter is smaller than my desk, so...

    I agree that it's nasty, but unfortunately there's no good alternative.  At least I wipe down my desk when I'm done eating, which is more than I can say for most people. 



  • @themagni said:

    You guys eat at your desk?

    That's friggin' nasty.

    Yeah, but by 8 a.m. they're hungry and still at their desks.

     



  • @cconroy said:

    On the plus side, if you get hungry during the day, you can just lick your fingers.

    Personally, I enjoy shaking mine out every month or so, just to see how many crumbs I've collected (and which ones I can identify).  Ooh, that was an Oreo...


    Tell me, how did you fit an entire Oreo into your keyboard?



  • got one of those too - gotta brush them a lot - especially in the springtime here.



  • @pauluskc said:

    got one of those too - gotta brush them a lot - especially in the springtime here.

     

    Just got home from work to discover both cats had somehow locked themselves in the bathroom for the day (which is where the box is thankfully).  They were probably fighting in there while waiting to be let out.  I found *piles* of fur all over the darn place... just mittfuls of it.  The floofy one must've been stressed or something because he shed like it was 40C in there.

     I think I know what I'm doing for the evening.  *sigh*

    Seejay
     



  • fun times!  just shave them with a #4 barber shop shaver...  works great to reduce fluff.



  • @Carnildo said:

    @cconroy said:

    On the plus side, if you get hungry during the day, you can just lick your fingers.

    Personally, I enjoy shaking mine out every month or so, just to see how many crumbs I've collected (and which ones I can identify). Ooh, that was an Oreo...


    Tell me, how did you fit an entire Oreo into your keyboard?

    No, no, not the whole Oreo, just the bits that didn't make it into my mouth... 



  • Clearly, you need to use an Atari 400 for your work. Completely food-impervious keyboard!



  • @VGR said:

    Clearly, you need to use an Atari 400 for your work. Completely food-impervious keyboard!

    Or you could just use a model M. Aside from being all-round the best keyboards ever built, they're impervious to liquids, syrups, food, or whatever (short of actually immersing the thing in salt water and waiting for it to rust). There is a deep tray underneath the keys, and the key spring mechanism itself uses a creative interlocking cylinder arrangement, so anything that falls onto the keys ends up caught on the tray and doesn't make it through to the mechanism underneath. Just pop the keys off, wipe down the tray with a damp cloth, and put them back again - it'll continue to work as good as when it was made (which was probably in the 1980s). If you pour enough water on from above, the tray routes it around the electronics and out through holes in the bottom, so even then nothing important is affected.

    (They are also impervious to accidents with heat, knives, and falls from third story windows, from personal experience)

    Back then, engineers put some thought into their designs, instead of just bashing out the cheapest thing they could.



  • @themagni said:

    You guys eat at your desk?

    That's friggin' nasty.

     

    Sometimes (as in: it's 3 AM and I have a lot of stuff to do) I have to.



  • I  dropped an opened coca-cola can on my school laptop once. The IT admin wasn't too happy.



  • @freelancer said:

    I  dropped an opened coca-cola can on my school laptop once. The IT admin wasn't too happy.

    School laptop?!!!

    Kids these days

     

     

    <<<< Just graduated from HS last year 



  • @snoofle said:

    This morning, I treated myself to some pancakes for breakfast. While eating breakfast at my desk, I was pouring syrup on the pancakes when someone stepped into my cubicle and asked a question. While answering, I didn't realize I had turned a bit, but was still pouring the syrup - into my keyboard....

     At least coffee runs out when you turn a keyboard upside down....

     I suppose it could have been worse, it could have been the keyboard on the laptop.

    *sigh*

    I know what you mean.  I was disemboweling the team lead the other day and the blood got all over everything.  Fortunately upper management (son in law of the CEO) walked by and thought the blood spots on the monitor "looked, like, way kewl" and gave me $20 for it.

     

     



  • http://xkcd.com/c237.html

     

    Keyboards are, indeed, disgusting.



  • @seejay said:

    I opened up my case the other day to figure out why my floppy drive wasn't working (still don't know why it's not... it's plugged in and all, so I suspect it died).  I found the killer dustbunny from hell, created entirely out of grey Maine Coon fur.

    Is the drive full of cat hair?  It does get everywhere.  I find hair at my place from other peoples cats. 



  • @ShawnD said:

    @seejay said:

    I opened up my case the other day to figure out why my floppy drive wasn't working (still don't know why it's not... it's plugged in and all, so I suspect it died).  I found the killer dustbunny from hell, created entirely out of grey Maine Coon fur.

    Is the drive full of cat hair?  It does get everywhere.  I find hair at my place from other peoples cats. 

    It very well could be... it's not a device I use often so I don't know when it stopped working, until someone asked me to print out a document for them and gave me a floppy.  Then I discovered it was dead.  I'll probably pull it apart when I have a few spare minutes and see if there's something wrong with it.  Else I'll just rely on the portable one that comes with my laptop.  :)

    Seejay 



  • @themagni said:

    @snoofle said:

    This morning, I treated myself to some pancakes for breakfast. While eating breakfast at my desk...

    You guys eat at your desk?

    That's friggin' nasty.

     why exactly is that nasty?  I eat at my desk sometimes, and last time I checked I don't have food smeared all over eveything.  Believe it or not, it's possible to eat and not get stuff everywhere.
     



  • I'm amazed that people actually take the time to disassemble and clean out their keyboards.  Keyboards are cheap, my time is worth much more to me.  When my keyboards get to the point they need more cleaning than a good shake will do, it's time to get a new keyboard.



  • @smbell said:

    I'm amazed that people actually take the time to disassemble and clean out their keyboards.  Keyboards are cheap, my time is worth much more to me.  When my keyboards get to the point they need more cleaning than a good shake will do, it's time to get a new keyboard.

    Depends on the type of keyboard.  Sure, if you have a standard $10 keyboard, then it's not worth taking apart and cleaning.  But when you pay $50+ for a keyboard, I'd rather take an hour to clean it as opposed to getting rid of it.

    Seejay 



  • @asuffield said:

    (They are also impervious to accidents with heat, knives, and falls from third story windows, from personal experience)

    All at the same time?  Care to share the story?



  • @Carnildo said:

    @asuffield said:
    (They are also impervious to accidents with heat, knives, and falls from third story windows, from personal experience)

    All at the same time? Care to share the story?

    Nothing interesting, just that when you work with soldering irons and other similar tools you gradually learn which things are fragile and which are not. And sometimes you drop things, or knock them off windowsills. The keyboard on my desk right now is both the oldest item on it, and the one with the least scars (and those few will probably come off next time I go over it with isopropanol and a wire brush).



  • I often dismantle my laptop's keyboard-chasis assembly as to vigerously tap the end of the keyboard assembly on a table, usually pound out a huge amount of crumbs, hairs, etc., usually the keyboard feels a bit softer afterwards.

     

    And Re: Throwing keyboards out

    Sometimes after a while, keyboards just get a "feel" to them that if you replace them, that certain "feel" would be gone, i.e. the softness of certain keys, and how the overall keyboard feels, as well as replacing keyboards every time they get dirty isn't exactly financially efficient.
     


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