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What's That In Your Keyboard?
An anonymous reader noted that The Beeb has an
article on the crap you find in your keyboard. I usually wear my keyboards out fast enough that they need replacing before cleaning (which is good since nate took his keyboard vacuum with him when he moved). Besides that, I spill a mocha on my keyboard at least every 2-3 weeks. Thank god you can get keyboards for ten bucks!
Now noways research come from AOL and not have biased or skewed results. I think that they are keeping out a very important part of the results...
34% crushed up AOL CDs
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
never ceased to amuse me how a user could, with total poker face, tell me they hadn't been drinking any coffee near the keyboard, they had been sitting there all day and it just stopped. Then I'd hold up the keyboard and watch something like heavily creamed coffee drip out.
LOL, don't you love users?
I build data-driven websites, and I've learned that I need to build at least some sort of audit-trail capability into the sites because users are *always* fucking up and entering the wrong data and then blaming us. Nothing better than *nailing* a user during a meeting in front of their superior...
Client: There's a bug with the content system. Several of the items I entered have disappeared. Why does this happen? I thought you tested this stuff!?!?!?
Me: Hmmm. Actually, nothing gets deleted, it only gets marked as "inactive" and is no longer displayed... let me see... [I tap out a few SQL queries]... hmmm, looks like they're still here, and it looks like you deleted them all yourself at 5:43PM yesterday from IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.... we could have your IT people tell us what computer corresponds to that IP address, maybe someone else was using your account?
Client:Oh. Uh, um. OK.... I don't know what happened... err....[shifts nervously in seat]
Client's Boss:Ah. I see... good job John! [glares at incompetant underling while making angry-looking note in red ink in his elegant leather executive DayTimer]
Doesn't happen that often, but boy, is it worth it. It's just that there's so many bugs that occur in the development process, clients know they stand a good chance of succeeding if they blame their mistakes on your "buggy code". :-)
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
Not really much of a story, but at least it's true. I know, because I was the tech.
Customer: Arghh.. sorry I can't type that, my keys keep sticking.
Tech: Sometimes if you turn your keyboard upside down and shake it, that helps.
Customer: (sound of shaking in the background) Eeewww! There's all this nasty white flaky stuff.
Tech: Yeah, a lot of times dandruff gets in there and makes it harder to type.
Customer: I do NOT have dandruff.
Tech: (thinking to himself) Wow, I can't believe I just had this conversation. I feel like I'm in a shampoo commercial.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Unfortunately, gods help me, I used to work in a "character" building dating back to 1912. The place was split office/residential - really LOW INCOME residential.
One of the charming residents, while not being a crack dealer (they'd all been chased out by that point) had absolutely zero grasp of cleanliness. The guys apartment was completely and utterly infested with cockroaches... crawling on the walls, filling the fridge, you name it.
And this lovely heritage building? Nothing but wood, which is just a migration highway for the roaches. We'd have to deal with the buggers on a daily basis, crushing any we saw, and spraying wherever we could. That was bad enough.
But I cannot POSSIBLY relate the disgust when I found out that one had laid an egg sac in my keyboard. I found out because suddenly, little baby roaches started boiling out between the keys.
I am -so- glad I'm not there anymore, and in a nice, antiseptic, concrete-and-steel office tower.
I have fairly straight hair, but when I open my keyboard for cleaning, most of it in there is somewhat curly...
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reminds me of the movie gattica when they're trying to solve the murder mystery and since they have genetic information on all of the employees and all of the people in the world (I guess) they're able to figure out who should be there and who shouldn't be there due to stuff like hair, dead skin, finger nails clippings, etc. in the keyboard.
makes you think how much you shed while being huddled above your keyboard staring too intently on the monitor on your desk...
My father, being the engineer type, was compelled to restore this device to serviceability. However, the thing which the Japanese do in pachinko parlors besides playing pachinko is -- you guessed it -- smoking. The machine was clogged with tar and ash, and most of the balls (which are inscribed steel balls, somewhat smaller than marbles) resembled small spheres of dirt. Thus, most of the restoration of the machine involved taking it apart, scrubbing the tar off, and putting it back together.
The other trouble with pachinko machines is that the balls get everywhere if there are young children in the house ....
A science broadcaster on the Australian radio station Triple J is running a study where he asks listeners to donate their belly-button lint.
http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2
-- veni vidi nuclei deceri --- I came, I saw, I dumped core.
Of all the keyboards I've gone through, the most popular items in mine were my own hair.
I have since solved that since I shaved my head. Balding problem and keyboard problem solved in one fell swoop.
Seriously though, has anyone ever removed a spacebar from a keyboard sucessfully and put it back on? That's one key I seem to have the most trouble with on keyboard maintenence.
I believe that most cockroaches are female and pregnant, so when you stamp on them you are simply scattering the eggs...
Should we assume that the pun in your subject line is unintentional?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I just wipe it off with a damp rag and it's as clean as the day I bought it. What are you people talking about?
Finally, another human who understands how valuable a real keyboard is. I find the old 84 much faster and easier to use than the later versions. The Ctrl-Alt-Caps keys seem to be located to break your fingers every time you try to use them.
Does anyone know where to get an 84-key AT keyboard these days? I purchased 6 new ones many years ago, hoping they would last the rest of my life.
Unfortunately, I seem to be living longer than planned, and I'm down to my last one.
HELP!
Hot Grits.
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
works even better with pot. pot doesn't suffer as much from dehydration as shag (=tobacco for rolling your own cigarette, or a home-rolled cigarette) does.
//rdj, just finished a shag.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
They are sold by the spin-off/descendant of the IBM keyboard division.
My house has about (give or take) 6 cats.
Once when I was about 17 I popped off all the
keys to my keyboard because my enter key had ceased functioning -- and there was enough cat hair underneath to build a whole cat.
If only lego mindstorms were around, perhaps I would have succeeded.
Seeing this comment about $10 keyboards makes me want to cry. These things are the worst kinds of shit imaginable. A good keyboard will last a decade or more. The really great keyboards just feel right, too, not like the $10 crapola that makes you feel like you are typing in oatmeal.
Places where you can get good keyboards are from Cherry Switch Inc. ; they sell the only 'clicky' USB model I have seen, and from PCKeyboards.com. Or if you are more adventurous you can scrounge a bit. The Apple Extended (original) was really excellent, as were almost any of the old IBMs. I recently hit the mother load with these - the insurance company that we share our building with threw out over 100 the PS/2 style AT keyboard - genuine IBM click and feel. I grabbed 7 or 8 of them, and now regret not backing the car up and grabbing them all. What a waste - the new equivalents to these cost $100 each.
I cleaned my own just now, and here's what I found:
- Dog hair
- Crumbs from various snacks
- Sticky syrup from when I spilled Jones into it.
- Human hair
- Dust
- Lint
- A pea (i have *no* idea)
- A piece of nacho
Now, if I just had the guts to look under my sofa cushions....Got Rhinos?
I've been collecting all the gunk that I shake out of my keyboard and constructing it into a lifesize model of Jon Katz. With swivel-arm grip. I'll submit the story, complete with pictures, when it's done.
We must respect evil, and we must make evil respect us.
What amazes me is that corn flakes were an actual, distinged segment of the keyboard-crud population. Noodles, I can understand, but... corn flakes? And where is the "dried coffee/coke stain" category?
I really am not interested in how they, um, <crunch>determined</crunch> exactly what various dessicated bits 'o blackened crud lodged under the keys were...
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
I dropped fruittttttttttttttttopia on ttttttttttthe lettttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttter 'ttttttttttttttttttttttttt'
::
-Swift
-Swift
I can only imagine what the results would have been if it were taken at an American college campus.
1. Dried Beer Residue (23%)
2. Dried Coffee Residue (15%)
3. Unidentified caffeinated particles (11%)
4. Doritos (6%)
...
I love Slashdot to death, but this is probably the least interesting thing I've read in about six months. It's not like there was anything suprising in the article... crumbs, hairs, dead skin, etc. No kidding. What the hell else would you expect to find in there? The article also noted that you can clean your keyboard by turning it upside down and shaking it, or by vaccuuming. Yeah, no shit? That's how you clean a keyboard? No wonder mine don't work after I run them through the wash.
And this is coming from me, a guy with a serious keyboard fetish. The keyboards they were shipping HP Vectras with a few years ago were divine! Dunno if they still make them. Heard IBM's top-of-the-line keyboards are sweet, too. I hate those $10 keyboards. :-)
OtakuBooty.com: Smart, funny, sexy nerds.
hmm.. metal.. gives me an idea.. anyone know where I can get a chrome keyboard, black lettering and NO keys with silly pictures of floating windows?
//rdj, uses a +/- 10 year old HP keyboard
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Various particles resembling cereal grains, biscuit crumbs, bread crumbs, pastry flakes and chocolate crumbs (56%)
We don't want all of that to go to waste! Lets market it as a new cereal, Keyboard Krunch(tm)!
Part of this balanced breakfast.
eeeeewwwwwww.....
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I wear pants.
Ever hook up the keyboard when it is apart? Typing on those three plastic layers without the rest of the keyboard is fun, if you remember where all the keys are. I actually almost typed a full sentence without the keys at all. It would be cool to brag that your keyboard is less than 1mm thick.
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I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I have to clean them out of my cereal box every morning. I don't know how the darn things get in there. . .
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
Most of what's in my keyboard is lint. Where the HELL does that come from? I clean a lot of it out of my mouse on a regular basis too. Pisses me off.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
There's a guy at the office that has the nastiest keyboard I've ever seen. Not only does it smell bad, but there is a thick layer of slimy silly-putty-like stuff covering all the keys... food residue? I had the luxury of editing some code on his machine today and it's a great way to boost productivity, ala "I need to finish to get away from this keyboard!!".
Enjoy
--ChrisB
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Those little bits of fingernail that you trim away are called "parings" not "pairings". Parings as in to "pare" or trim your nails.
Sorry to get pedantic on you, but somebody had to.
--Jim
Yeah, I'm nitpicking, but that's the second time in the last couple of days I've seen it misspelled. The right spelling is easy to remember, it's made up only of the first letters of the four DNA bases: Guanine, Adenine, Thymine and Cytosine. No "i", nothing to do with the various places named "Attica".
(The sequence GATTACA doesn't code for anything in particular. GAT codes for aspartic acid and TAC codes for tyrosine, and there's a base left over.)
No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
It ain't ME you're looking for.
-- Alastair
I've only had this keyboard for about 4 months. Not quite long enough to build up a sufficient layer of crud. Keyboards at home are decorated with the residue of any variety of greasy chips. Dots of pasta sauce decorate the keyboard, 4mm tape, cd drive, cpu and monitor. Uh.. hair, crumbs and stuff, which makes the crud puppy look like Martha Stewart, is tucked in between the keys. Keys don't often stick and I'm usually careful enough to spill liquid (coffee, soup, romulan noodles, etc.) on my clothes than accidentally clean out the crevices of the keyboard. Who knows, someday the world may come crashing down and all we'll have for food is keyboard soup. 8^)
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
The electronics are encased in plastic, so you could probably stick it in a dishwasher to clean it(haven't tried it though). I have spilled entire glasses of water on it and it was fine when it dried(clean too!)
Here's what I think would be really useful - a keyboard that allowed you to store keystroke macros. Like say, a macro that opened up an editor, typed in a program, ran said program, and finished up by deleting said program from the computer. Heh, heh.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
Worst I had to clean up was a coffee spill in a keyboard from a cow orker with a serious dandruff problem. While doing the cleanup, I discovered something else amusing.
In the case I experienced, I pretended not to notice, because, what the hell, HR's not my job, and the cow orker in question was getting the work done. But it may come in handy should you ever have to break out the Bag Of Dirty Tricks.
I even hesitate to publicize this, but what the hell. No such thing as security through obscurity, right?
"How to determine the amount of time your SO (or a problem cow orker( is spending surfing for pr0n:"
- Take a small jeweller's screwdriver.
- Run the screwdriver the length of the keyboard between two rows of keys.
- Lift the screwdriver and examine the hair.
- Depending on hairstyle, the ratio of pubes to straight hairs is directly proportional to the amount of time spent surfing for pr0n.
In a corporate environment, that's probably probable cause for an investigation. Best to do this discreetly on your HR manager's 'puter first to see if it's gonna work.Of course, I must now add the following corollary:
No need to worry about keys coming off on the keyboard where I used to work, they were cemented on by ... uh ... dimethylgrundge, yeah that's it...
It's time to change keyboards when your fingers keep getting stuck to the gookum.
Vote Naked 2000
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
At least for those smokers who don't smoke pre-rolled cigarettes, but who roll their own.
A guy I know once mentioned he'd turn his keyboard upside down whenever he was out of rolling tobacco and it was too late at night to actually go buy some. He claimed there was usually enough tobacco residue in there to keep smoking until the stores opened.
News and bla for computer musicians: http://lomechanik.net/
The strangest thing I ever found in a keyboard was a dead mouse (the biological kind, not the peripheral kind). It was an old Apple IIe, one of those machines with the keyboard and motherboard all in the same box. It was used for stock control in a factory in the South East of England. The nearest we could guess was that the mouse had crawled in through one of the unused connector holes at the back of the machine.
The worst aspect of this incident was the fact that I only found the mouse due to the smell. It appeared that it had become lodged between the keyboard PCB and the casing. This had obviously caused it some distress, as it had apparently urinated before expiring. Beats the hell out of the usual Coke stains for both odour AND durability, I can tell you!
--
The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
Hrm, # of keyboards * 2grams * 12 months = enough to feed a third world country.
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
Apparently you can put most keyboards in the dishwasher to clean them.. because the electronics are sealed off.
Yes and no. I've heard of this being done, with the proviso that you rinse the thing off thoroughly when done (preferably with distilled water) and then similarly dry it thoroughly.
I should have done that with the last keyboard I ruined. I spilled a Diet Coke near it (I only drink diet drinks near the keyboard -- no syrupy stuff to worry about) but didn't realize how much had gotten into the keyboard until the next day when it wouldn't work. Drained about a tablespoon of Coke out of it then, but apparently the acid had attacked the circuitry enough that it was too late to save. Might have been alright if I'd immediately run it through the dishwasher or the shower.
No, no, no. It ain't ME babe,
It ain't ME you're looking for.
-- Alastair
I use KeyTronic keyboards both at home and at work. I can see all sorts of crap that's gotten between the keys, but thankfully they keep on working. I love the feel of the keys. I'm sure I'm the dissenting opinion here, but I hate the super-clicky PS/2-style boards. I also enjoy having a super-sized Enter key and having the backslash at the upper right corner to the left of BackSpace.
To anyone else who has KeyTronic (turn the keyboard upside-down and look at the label on the bottom), how does open one of these to clean it? There are no screws on the keyboard anywhere. I can blast a compressed-air can between the keys, but that must miss a lot.
Any suggestions? My keyboard at home is a circa-1995 101-key keyboard with an old-school 5-pin DIN plug. I do not want to get the 104-key variety with the infernal "Windows" keys, and I certainly don't one with the "Internet" keys or "Power" keys. There's nothing worse than playing a DOS game and accidentally hitting the Windows logo when you intended to hit Control or Alt and getting popped out of your game.
I was a co-op student with IBM when the ill-starred PCjr came out. One of the great things about it was the keyboard, after they got rid of the "Chicklet"(tm) keys and put real key caps on them. The first business show I did after the PCjr was introduced, we shipped two keyboards for each PCjr on display, and a dishwasher. The booth was plumbed, and at any time, half the keyboards were connected to PCjrs on display and the other half were in the dishwasher and the dishwasher was running. Halfway through the spiel, we'd start talking about how the keyboard was water proof and "gunk" proof, disconnect the keyboard, walk (drag the prospect) over to the dishwasher, swap the keyboard with one in the dishwasher, walk (drag the prospect) back to the PCjr, hook up the keyboard, and continue the demonstration. Over four eight-hour days I must've performed two hundred "keyboard washings".
Spllied ketchup on mlne once. Took the keys off and cieaned lt. Lt wasn't untli a month later, when someone trled to use my keyboard, that L realized L swltched a couple of keys when L put them back. Guess my typlng skllis were better than thlers.
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Ditto here. I have three sets of wireless desktops in my house. One for the Living room computer, one for the home office, and one for my SO's computer.
She accidently spilled coffee with loads of cream (or something equally bad) into the keyboard - I mean, literaly filled the case with sticky liquid.
As soon as I heard her yell, I walked in, saw the keyboard, and calmly flipped it over and popped out the batteries. Half an hour later, it was soaking in the sink, rinsed out a dozen times with clean tap water, and left alone for a day.
After a day, I shook out a few drops of water that had puddled somewhere in the body, left it alone for 24 more hours, and put new batteries in it.
Voila! Perfectly working (and cleaner than before) keyboard. Just make sure no power is flowing through your solid state device, and water is a perfectly fine cleaner (as long as it's not done often enough to make tracings rust, which usually requires water sitting on the board).
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Let loose a bunch of nano-ants to get in there and eat all the organic matter. Maybe some genetically engineered micro-leeches.
Naw, they might secretly send out embarassing email at night when they are supposed to be working. Either that, or they will communicate with other nano-janitors all over the world, and some Monday morning, when everyone comes in for work, we will all be eaten alive by swarms of these things.
Thank god you can get keyboards for ten bucks!
:-]
Yeah, but some keyboards can be much more expensive to replace.... So far, I've been rather lucky.
Actually, I'm surprised none of the Mac regulars here have brought up the Apple Extended Keyboard II, the finest typing device ever to come from the six-colored halls of Cupertino (well, the design, anyway; the keyboards themselves were made IIRC in Cork, Ireland). Its codename was "Saratoga", with good reason: it was big, brawny, and built to last. Fabulous keyfeel, and able to withstand a pounding from late-night Marathon sessions. Even better; if you lost, the durable construction and extra-long ADB cable made it easy to slam it against your desk, or (better yet) your opponent.
Today's model is OK, but it can't hold a candle to the original.
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Has anyone taken any photos with an electronic microscope in a keyboard? This would be an interesting sight. :)
I wonder how many ants I squished in my keyboards. Hmm!
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
For the Keyboard Krunch (tm) cereal, we should have our own survivor contest with slashdotters, the winner gets to be on the cereal box!
Winner being the only person able to actually finish a bowl....
*shudder*
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I wear pants.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
At work, I use an 84-key IBM AT keyboard. This thing was made somewhere around 1984 to 1985, and it is the King of Keyboards, but I won't go into all the things I love about it. What's important is that I am the only person who ever uses it (other people get lost when try try to work at my workstation with its 84-key keyboard and OS/2), and I have used it for a long time (since about 1988, I think).
I cleaned it once around 1993, and then a few weeks ago (August 2000) the keyboard finally experienced its second cleaning. This involved opening the keyboard to clean it out, and also removing each key individually and lovingly scrubbing it by hand in warm soapy water. I stayed late one night to do this, and the boss popped by. He said something along the lines of "We have people who can do that for you," referring to the gofer girls who are usually bored silly and chatter all day long when I'm trying to work in peace. The thought of one of those passionless dimwits operating on my precious keyboard, made me shudder with revulsion. I said, "Does a true warrior have a peasant sharpen his sword?"
The greasy black grime came off the keys quite nicely. "Ah, so that key is labelled F8, huh? Yeah, now that I think of it, I remember having an F8 key."
What I found inside was:
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