The Online Photographer

when is somebody going to invent an un-dirtiable keyboard?

They have them. They are horrible to type on but they have them.

I vacuum out my keyboard every so often. Then I use a paper clip to remove the tufts of cat hair that is wrapped around the keys. (I cobble them into wigs. A good week's harvest in the shedding season is enough to make a quality merkin.) Just be careful. I once pulled about 8 keys from my laptop and had to recover them from the dyson.)

Your keyboard woes reminded me of a recent experience I had with mine. My computer is an all singing, all dancing, 64-bit Windows wonder that I put together myself. It's paired with a big LCD screen and a fancy mouse. All are finished in high gloss black and silver. They really look the part (and work OK too). The keyboard, however, is a grubby, cream-coloured old Dell, at least 8 or 9 years old. It was one that was dumped by a big insurance company and still has their name on it. I use it, despite the comments I get about it, because it's such a wonderful thing to type on, with the heft and responsiveness of an electric typewriter (remember those?), and proper clicks produced by mechanical linkages rather than the usual plastic membrane that makes it feel like you're typing in porridge.

Anyway, one day I turned on my machine, entered my password and was told that it was incorrect. Repetitions, checks that Caps Lock was off, etc, all produced the same result. I was beginning to think I had some malicious software. So I tried a different keyboard and found absolutely no problems - my password was accepted, and everything worked as normal. Then I tried my faulty keyboard with an old computer and discovered that the "B" key had stopped working. My initial problem had arisen because, when I typed my password, one letter wasn't being transmitted and I hadn't counted the symbols in the entry box so hadn't discovered this.

I mentioned this to an acquaintance who said, without seeming to pause for thought, "Mmmm, I've been reading that there's a problem with bees." Sharp or what!

The happy ending to this tale is that I got three of the unwanted Dell keyboards, so I'm currently running on number two, and if the gremlins (or verroa mites) strike again I can fall back on the last one. I hope your keyboard arrives soon Mike, and has a long and fruitful life.

Try using a gallon of distilled water. Just pour it over the keyboard. I'm assuming you've done the usual - turn it upside down, shake, blow canned air into it, etc. Unplug it from the computer first (I hope that is obvious). The distilled water should dissolve the gunk and should dry without leaving deposits, etc. Once you are sure it is dry (upside down and right-side) then give it a try on an old computer if you have one.

It depends on the problem of course, but I've repaired a few this way after people dumped soda on them. My last mac keyboard had to be replaced, though, since nothing would save it. It is amazing how many food particles two kids can drop into a keyboard over the course of a few years.

You're still lawn mowing ?
I thought there'd be about 2 feet of snow up there in Wisconsin already.....

I just recently learned that St. Isidore of Seville is the patron saint of technology. It seems he did early work in database theory in the 600s. Who knew ? While St. Izzy may not appreciate goat sacrifice, perhaps he would hear some minor prayer you might throw his way. When it comes to matters technological, we all need help from time-to-time.
Reference: http://www.scborromeo.org/saints/isidores.htm

FYI, as a former record collector myself (who still has 4500 LPs to show for it ... yikes!), I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but the fact that a record is shrinkwrapped is no guarantee that it's new and unopened.

Many used-record stores have shrinkwrap machines in the backroom and although you can usually identify the rewraps by the type of shrinkwrap material that was used or the lack of wear on it (or wear visible on the jacket underneath it), there's always the possibility that even a record that clearly has vintage shrinkwrap on it isn't actually new, but merely a record that was rewrapped many years ago. This often happens when one used-record store buys the inventory from another one that's gone out of business (a common occurrence these days, I imagine.)

If it makes you feel any better, it can be surprisingly easy to be fooled and I've personally been caught out by this many times over the years.

I should move to Wisconsin (my twice removed in-laws live there) and live next-door so I can help with your tech problems. Small price for your blogs! (Says a techman from California.)

Mike, with your status as a professional scribe you need to have a backup keyboard on hand. Just saying :).

Mike:

I made the mistake of buying a "Honda" Craftsman as well. One possible cause of the failure to start may be a lack of gas in the fuel line. If the mower has been serviced or not used for a long time, the line and carburetor are empty and since Sears opted to not have a primer pump(or thottle!) there is no easy wasy to prime the line. I usually open the air filter and pour a small amount of gas into the carburetor; once or twice is usally enough to get thing going. As a side note: be prepared to have every cable on the mower break within a few years.

Reminds me of the joke of a guy's first day as a waiter. The Maître D tells him; "W(h)ine for table three". So he goes over and reads them your column ... (Grin)

Maybe you should refrain from consuming copious amounts of Bavarian Pretzels and Sheboygan Bratwurst, while tapping away on Ye olde keyboard.

You ever think of that, huh?

Always blaming the equipment...

I have fixed many a cruddy dirty keyboards by running them through the dishwasher.

Run the dishwasher with just the keyboard and NO SOAP.

Mike,

Since your problem isn't from a power-surge I would think Zeus might not be the appropriate god to try to assuage. I would suggest appealing to Hephaestus (crafting, building) or Athena (wisdom ... the foundation of computers?)

If it's mechanical, I either don't have a problem or I can repair it. If it's electronic - forget about it!

About the records. While in the Army on Okinawa in the late 1960's a friend on TDY to Taiwan brought back some current records which turned out to be locally pirated copies.
They looked ok but would hardly play. The surface noise (I wonder how many readers know what that means) was dreadful and there were a ton of clicks on them.
Maybe you got burned at the used book store by a similiar scam.

A goat would be over the top for keyboard problems, at least on a PC (dunno about Mac sacrifice conventions; I get the impression they require sacrificing a PC user sometimes, so I keep my distance).

A goat will handle most SCSI-chain problems, for god's sake! Wasted on a mere keyboard.

I've just about banned iTunes from access to the shared music library at home; it messes with things when people say they "didn't do anything". I get files missing from album directories, and sometimes complete duplicate sets of files (with a "." added at the beginning of the filenames). It seems to be nothing but trouble. I think the basic problem is that, deep down inside, it believes it owns all your music.

Tom and Tony both give good advice re: keyboards. The undirtiable ones are hell to use. The good ones are worth their weight in any commmodity, they weigh so much. Some classics are still made in new names. Specifically, the old Northgate Omnikey keyboard is now the Avant Prime, and the old IBM ModelM is now made by Unicomp. If you buy one now, it will most likely wear out sometime when Zander is in his Golden Years. The key action on both is substantially different from each other, so I wouldn't recommend one. It amazes me that for all people spend on their PCs, they use the crappy keyboard that comes with it, which has an OEM cost of ~$1.00 or less. Mike, you're a writer. Buy a writer's tool.

Which all reminds me of how much I think Apple is diluting their brand by ignoring the physical interface e.g. all Macintoshes now come with a crappy chicklet style keyboard that is hardly the keyboardist's friend.

Patrick

"I wonder if I've angered the gods lately?"

Yes. And so have I. Misery loves company.

Chris

PS: And why won't Typepad remember me?

One of these, maybe? http://www.google.com/search?q=keyboard+skin

Hey, Speed. They were 5 1/4" floppies. I just checked one of mine.

As for mowers that say Honda, well, my wife grew tired of me stopping to look at the stainless steel deck Yard Man mower with Honda engine at Costco a couple of years ago and told me to either buy one or stop looking at it. So I bought a big chrome H emblem for my '91 HRX 3-spd and now we're both happy.

There is a rollable rubber keyboard. Absolutely no way for crumbs and dirt to lodge underneath the keys. I've got one somewhere around here and keep it just because it seems such a good notion, but I have no idea how it is to work with. Probably like those old Spectrums. :-)

Thanks to those who recommended keyboards. I actually use a pretty good one, although it's not mechanical--the Microsoft [making sign of cross with forefingers] Ergo 4000.

When the new one comes I'll try putting the old one through the dishwasher. That should be interesting. [g]

Mike

Enjoy

http://coudal.com/keywasher.php

Jon: I often see birds all over lawns. There are over 100 geese on the lawn out the window at work right now. While I'm not a big fan of lawns, and they don't provide as good habitat or as much food, or variety, as native prairies or whatever (I'm in Minnesota, prairie is actually native in parts of this state) it's obviously (easy observation in any city) untrue that "no insects or birds use them for food".