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What's That In Your Keyboard?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-at-least-it-isn't-squirming dept.

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!

8 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm... by Megahurts · · Score: 5

    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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  2. Kitty :~) by tippergore · · Score: 5


    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.

  3. 56%??? by Ribo99 · · Score: 5

    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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  4. Pr0n:work ratio determined by pubes in keyboard! by Tackhead · · Score: 5
    > it's not as bad as an ex-boyfriend's that was covered in dried semen,

    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:"

    1. Take a small jeweller's screwdriver.
    2. Run the screwdriver the length of the keyboard between two rows of keys.
    3. Lift the screwdriver and examine the hair.
    4. 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:

    1. If you see a whole lot of your cow orkers running around the office tomorrow, frantically swapping keyboards with other cow orkers, you can further assume that whenever they're not surfin' for pr0n, they're reading Slashdot.
    2. Contact fuckedcompany.com and do what comes naturally.
  5. Strangest thing... by Mindwarp · · Score: 5

    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!

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    The gift of death metal does not smile on the good looking.
  6. Ketchup by empesey · · Score: 5

    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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  7. First nanotech application by slickwillie · · Score: 5

    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.

  8. What I found by Sloppy · · Score: 5

    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:

    • Paperclips. There were about a dozen paperclips inside of it. I guess I drop these things down between the keys, sometimes.
    • Dead bugs. They were very small, and there were very many of them. A few moths and a lot of what looked like very small roaches. What a charming thought that my fingers have spent many years less than an inch away from a roach graveyard. I also found a lot of very tiny spherical things that looked like they were made out of bug material. I'm guessing these were eggs or droppings or something. Beats me; I'm no entomologist.
    • Hair. I have somewhat long hair, and some of it ends up down there. Even so, the hair content was nothing compared to what happens to my keyboards at home (where I have cats). I guess I should be grateful that I work in a cat-free environment (not counting all the strays that live behind the building). (Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I brought a cat to work. Would he be scared of all the strangers? (Perhaps even too scared to sleep?) Would he be scared of the machine-gun sound of my IBM keyboard? Would he jump up on my desk? Would he wander around and explore the whole office? Would he piss on the printers? Would he jump up onto my lap and demand to be petted? Some day I'm going to have to find out.... (How come we never have "Show and Tell" at work?))
    • Dust, lint. Unremarkable.

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