Slashdot Mirror
The Worst Foods to Eat Over a Keyboard
An anonymous reader writes "Pasta? Pizza? Keyboards are often subject to the harshest of conditions -- spaghetti sauce, coffee spill, et al. ZDNet is running a list of worst-food nominations. What is your pick?"
Cause it would stick to every key.
Ramen is bad to eat over a keyboard... poor poor keyboard. At least it tastes like spicy chicken!
I would say the In-N-Out 16 x 16 burger would be no fun over a keyboard: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/TexasBurger Guy/InNOut/inout_big.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v207/TexasBurger Guy/InNOut/inoutreceipt_big.jpg
I killed a laptop with this - not on the keyboard, but knocked the cup over on the desk and capiliary action sucked it up through the little vent holes where it set to work on dissolving the tracks on the MB quicker than I could yank the battery out.
You live and learn!
My mother's cooking. Worst. Food. Evar.
(nt)
Orange fingers + keyboard = orange keyboard.
It's not recommended to lick off the orange powder from your fingers either since that makes your keyboard full of either saliva (best case) or an orange paste (if you do a poor job licking).
Vote Libertarian
Slow news day
This should be a poll.
Worst option: Cowboyneal.
Best option: Breasts!
chilli dog with cheese
maple syrup.
Boggers. Once you get one of those in there, you gotta open it up and scrub it out.
you get oily fingers and crumbs in the keyboard
Every time I spill Coke on my keyboard (yes, it's happened more than once) I've had to replace the whole thing because the coke at away at the circuitry. When I clean off the soda, the solder and wiring come with it.
My vote would definatly be a mango. The stickyness gets everywhere and combined with the fact that they are VERY juicy, you are left with one large sticky mess. Ever spill a nice can of pop on your keyboard? Same thing.
:)
Good fruit though.
This is news? Hell people, just look down for a sec and see for yourself.
Spam. :-)
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
1 Litre of Chocolate Soy Milk on your keyboard requires a large amount of time in the college chem lab using distilled water to remove the "deposits".
(I used tap water to start, distilled to finish)
Congealed Chocolate Soy Milk is bad. Worse even than how people view it in its un-congealed state.
The letter Q still does not work properly on that keyboard...
Try to hack my 31337 firewall!
Orange Juice is the most insidious. I spilt OJ on my Dell laptop keyboard. Then I took the extreme measure of using water to wash it out (I didn't take the keyboard off the laptop as I didn't know I could). Everything seemed fine for a few months. Then, gradually, one-by-one, keys started to get sticky. Eventually, about eight months laters, my keyboard became unusable and I had to replace it.
Helping with organizational effectiveness is our job.
They must be running out of topics to right about when they start writing about how food ruins a crappy $15 keyboard...who cares.
Feces. Definitely the worst. Impossible to get out. Makes typing hell, as with each tap of a key, the smell of poop comes wafting out of the keyboard. ohhhhh, food? Well I suppose Dorritos are pretty bad. Yeah, dorritos.
Is a more lightweight, disposable version of those plastic keyboard covers. It would be a membrane thin and flexible enough that it wouldn't interfere with your typing, but which could be thrown out at the end of the day. It would also, conveniently, protect your keyboard from wayward food particles and corrosive finger oils.
I can only assume that if making such a thing were easy it would have been done by now.
The flake bar could be disaterous - I've had electronic equipment destroyed by chocolate before!
But seriously, add in likelyhood of the food being eaten over a keyboard and top of the list of most dangerous foods would have to be potato chips (what I think USofAmericans call crisps).
Twisties == death to keyboards.
BTW. easiest way of cleaning them is pull off the keys,turn the board upside down and shake. To pull off the keys using common office equipment, take a paperclip, straighten it, bend it into a U shape about as wide as a key, put a small hook on each end of the U, pointing inwards. The hooks can be made by bending the paperclip around the shirt clip of a pen. Slip the open end of the U over a key, engage the hooks underneath the keycap and pull.
Laptop keyboards are often most easily de-keyed with a butter knife (pref. without butter)
Sounds like it would be really hard to type like that.
Like the cheetos comment slightly higher - doritos contain some kind of cement like powder which when combined with the oils on your fingers produce some mild perma dye - I once got this glue like orange substance on the seat of my car (was driving wearing a nice suit and didnt know where else to wipe my hand) the orange stain is still there!... if you eat them over a laptop expect to find bits of them for the next 18 months in the keyboard.
smoking, and ashes, although not food, are the worst. my keyboards may have survived incidental coffee and other drinks, but my smoking habits costs me about 3 or 4 keyboards/year, especially the area from tab/escape to 4/'r' gets damaged (i smoke 'left handed'), causing keys to lock in the end...
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Jelly? Perhaps today's puny, mushy keyboards would stop working properly when confronted with some measly jelly. My keyboard laughs and keeps on clickety clacking along in data input perfection.
I'll stop using it when they pry it away from my cold, dead fingers. If I ever can't interface it with future PCs I may have to stop buying new computers.
Vote Libertarian
They're not so bad to eat over a keyboard, but when you get the frosting on your fingers and try to type, it isn't pretty.
it's what's for diner.
*scratches key with fingernail, sniffs*
Yup, pizza sauce.
And what of the left "shift" key? *moistens fingertip, applies to key, sniffs*
Sri Racha--it's good with burritos.
I use an IBM Model M, the cockroach of keyboards, not only can it withstand the worst of worsts in food, but it can survive nuclear war!
Let the commencement BEGINULATE!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I spilled a V8 on my keyboard, now it's covered in red V8 crust that won't come off.
Which reminds me...never shake a V8 after you've opened the can.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Sperm! Everyone gets that over their keyboards, right?
For a subject like this, I'm almost rooting for the GNAA trolls to get here first. Because, "Jiz" really was the non-linear solution many were no doubt hoping for.
Man I should be a high priced consultant.
Here is a what a quick Froogle search came up with.
Keyboard Condom
I can confirm that Pepsi is at least as good as Coke, possibly better, at ruining keyboards.
I've chunked through more keyboards eating Cheetos. Not only do the crumbs fill in the voids between keys rather quickly, but you also get that nasty orange residue on the keys. Needless to say, I no longer eat Cheetos while coding! I now try to stick to things like M&M's and Skittles.
bash: rtfm: command not found
at least no question for me.
"Rice Bubbles"?
Last I checked, they were called "Rice Krispies". (Or, if avoiding trademarks, "puffed rice".) Where did "rice bubbles" come from?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
Jizz?
I drink a lot of the stuff, and I have a split-level computer desk with a wide, pullout shelf for the keyboard. I've often caught the mug with a headphone/mouse/usb cable and almost hooked it all over the keyboard.
Then there's the issue with coffee spray. I've yet to propel meatballs or spaghetti or pizza in quite the same way.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
Take it apart and clean it every six months or so.
Unscrew what can be unscrewed, and lever the keys off with a screwdriver. Clean the under-key area as well as everywhere else with some window cleaner (or whatever solvent you have around) and clean the keys one-by-one in warm, soapy water. Then let everything dry (a hair dryer set on a cool setting can speed things up with the main part of the keyboard) and put everything back together again.
By the way, if you're unable to put together a keyboard layout from memory, I suggest taking a couple of quick pictures of your keyboard with a digital camera - at least that way you won't be left wondering which key goes where.
sory, I had to.
No matter what got into your keyboard, unless it's wet and was damaged beyond repair, you can just disassemble the keyboard and clean all non-electric parts with water and detergent. The keyboard will look like new, if you remember where all the keys go.
Zolpidem is the worst, everytime I take one at the keyboard, I always wake up the next day with the weirdest posts imaginable at the forums I frequent.
If you are about to wash a keyboard with some dishwasher or washing powder -- don't forget to use some antistatic agent. Otherwise in just a couple of days your keyboard will become dirtier than ever.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Damn chips get struck between the keys.
This article is way out of date, most keyboards aren't worth money anymore - they're disposable items. I buy a new one every few months because keep smashing the old one's - its a great tension relief, especially for Windows. Just find a cheap brand of keyboard that you like the feel of and keep buying the same one, theres no need for this fancy crap.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
After a few months, tap out the keyboard.
You can see you're not going to be able to validate Moore's law into the distant future.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
There are worse things you can get on your keyboard than food. Remember that next time you borrow a computer from someone of the male sex, especially if their computer is primarily located in their bedroom.
There was program on the BBC the showed how potentially dangerous eating at your desk is. They took samples from the journalists desk, and a toilet from Glastonbury Festivals after it had been used/abused for three days (think steaming pile of shit and piss). There was nearly 100x more dangerous bacteria on the desk than on the toilet seat.
Scared of flying, pointy things snce 1979!
I just got back from White Castle and decided to check slashdot while I'm eating. Thought it was pretty funny that this article was on top. The worst thing I manage to eat over a keyboard is anything with crumbs, they get all over your keyboard and inside it, and if it's greasy (like potatoe chips or white castle) it's even worse. I don't usually spill drinks on my keyboard and I don't think I've ever done that. Except I spilt some fruit punch on my friends keyboard once (on his laptop too.) He just took apart the thing and cleaned the keyboard, his keys are still a bit sticky and his laptop is a few years old.
Guess what I'm typing this message on?!? Yep, a Model M. Totally indestructable.
If, and only if, it would ever start failing by undefined gue from multiple types of 15-year old food, I'm sure I can just dunk it in a bucket of soapy water and get another 15 years out of it.
To Terminate, or not to Terminate, that's the question - SCSIROB
Crackers are impossible to eat without corrupting your keyboard, eventually. And eating pussy is hell on it as well. It takes one hell of a can of compressed air to get those curlies out.
I think it's better to go with types of food rather than individual foods. Here are my top 3:
1. Food that can crumble into small pieces that are hard or hardens because when they get stuck under the keys u can't really push down on the keys to type anything. Sometimes shaking it will make it go under other keys. Will have to spend a while removing the key caps and cleaning. Chips, bread crumbs, etc.
2. Sticky foods, or foods/drinks that turn sticky when dried up. Examples are soda water and BBQ sauce. When u spill coke and don't clean it all up, it's going to dry and turn sticky, thus trapping in foods in #1.
3. Stinky food....I eat stuff sometimes by dipping in fish sauce. when that stuff gets on the keyboard it's hard to get rid of the smell unless u do a full blown cleanup
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Why link to a ZDNet poll? Why not just run a Slashdot poll? If the eds are thinking this is a hot idea that they just have to try why not run it as a Slashdot poll?
If it's about ZDNet having run it first and so now owning the "copyright" to this poll (WTF?) then just wait two hundred and fifty years and run it after their copyright expires.
Seriously though, screw those bastards. ZDNet is such a whored out media oganization it is pathetic. They're little more than a propoganda machine for anybody who wants to pay for an ad staged as news and follow it up with a dozen opinion pieces sucking the same cock. They're the Fox network of IT media.
Linking to them for a poll topic? Shit. The news is really slow these days.
Yogurt is the absolute worst.
Of course it never stays on the spoon and the second you put the cup down with the spoon in it you know the thing will tip over.
The bottle just gets harder and harder not to spill on the keyboard...
Not a food per se but a friend of mine has destroyed several keyboards when late night post-pub gaming has turned into uncontrolled vomiting.
(And yes an actual friend opposed to a scapegoat alter ego.)
Though I have spilled an entire cup of coffee right on a keyboard before, spilling food directly on a keyboard isn't the danger. The danger/annoyance is getting food on your fingers, then having to type. When I eat at the computer, I eat left-handed and type with my right. Anybody else do this?
I really won't get any more ridiculous than one-hand typing, because let's face it - it's geeky to an ugly degree if you can't leave the computer for the ten minutes or so it takes to eat. Fatass.
Big League Chew shredded bubblegum killed my Vic-20. *sob*
i dont have this problem... oh yeah I use a model M!! type hard or go home
hey, to the pr0n stars like Kobe Tai it is a sort of food..
Meanwhile, I know a guy with an ergo-centric, never going to get carpal tunnel syndrome, wierdo layout with the keyboard split, that he paid $59 for. He has to replace it every 18 months or so. He even has a no food or drink policy in his computer room. And nobody can type on it, not even him.
Keyboards are one of the few things with computers where cheaper is better. Save the extra money for ram.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Not really food, but it can damage keyboard. Lots of my keys have timy little melt marks where a hot bit of ash has fallen.
There are four sorts of people in the world: fools, lunatics, idiots and morons. - Umberto Eco, Foucaut's pendulum.
{click}-{click}-{click}{click}{click}-{click}-{cli ck}{click}-{click}
Wifey: God Damn it Bill, I told you, no more teens!
{click}{click}-{click}-{click}{click}{click}-{clic k}
Wifey: Or transvestites!
{click}-{click}-{click}-{click}{click}-{click}
Wifey: That's better, read the news.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
There is noting as unplesant as plain old normal Coke (aka Coca Cola not the mind benders, mind you) on your keyboard: you get instant stickiness to your fingers and all attempts to clean it off with a moist i.e. not so dry cloth, will result in permanent damage at least to some keys. Worst of all are the permanently stuck down i.e. on keys. Repair is best by total disassembly and washing with methanol (I found this out the hard way by not wanting to salvage my 100 pound original IBM keyboard vom 1985). After that experience I changed to mineral water as my perfered beverage...
The worst that I ever had get on and in my keyboard/laptop has to be honey. I had placed my keyboard on the kitchen counter and was looking in the cupboards for something to snack on when a jar of honey fell, broke on the sink and went oozing all over the laptop and started to disappear in the keyboard.
Was I freaking out. At first I just stood there in shock, then I ripped out the battery as fast as I could, turn the laptop upside down. The clean up after was horrible. Thankfully nothing was damaged. Save of course for the occasional sticky key I get every now and then.
Ever spilled champagne, or some other sticky liquid? With the champagne, the keyboard can not dry out, it must be opened and thoroughly cleansed on the inside. And those glasses having a tendency to spill due to being top-heavy and people being tipsy makes the propensity of champagne spills to happen moderately high.
Did it to a MS natural keyboard once, a decent region of the keys wouldn't rebound properly until I opened it up.
When i get bored, i scrape some off with a flat blade screwdriver, just cause it's about the only thing that works to clean it.
The CRT was okay, but most of the keys got stuck solid after only a couple of hours.
I took the (German built) keyboard apart and rinced the yogurt off with warm water and soap.
Okay, I could just lie and say everything was fine afterwards. It wasn't. One of the tracks was broken in two places (I was extremely careful washing the yogurt off, so maybe a short-circuit ate the track). Normally, with the right tools, this is easily fixable, especially if you know exactly where the break is. Problem was, I didn't have any conductive silver paste so I just penciled over the breaks (it worked with the athlon, right?). Hey, the fix worked (on and off) for a couple of days. In the end, I just bought a new keyboard (a cheap one ;) because it was cheaper than buying the paste.
Lessons here:
Just try to unlock keys stuck after a liquor spill... good luck !
Crumbly chocolate like a Cadbury's Flake bar is obvious, but surely another food that causes crumbs in volumes is crisps (aka potato chips to American readers)? Also, the fact that a lot more people eat crisps over their keyboard than "Rice Bubbles" (Rice Krispies to anyone other than an Aussie), sunflower seeds and the horribly-named angel hair pasta (doesn't that give you visions of choking on follicles and feathers?) combined means that the omissions of crisps leaves this article some way short of the mark...
Garlic bread, hands down. Crisp and crumbly, it's small enough to get between and then underneath the keys, causing a 'crunch crunch crunch' when typing (assuming the key can still be activated).
"No soup for you!"
Coffee and diet coke, although washing the diet coke from the keyboard was successful. I believe the difference is the sugar.
When I got my first job as a journalist in the mid 80's the publishing house had a little takeaway coffee hatch/snack place.
While the sales guys used to get in from about 8:30, the notoriously slack hacks used to get in closer to 10. Now the odd thing is that the snack bar used to stop selling toast at 9:30 - just toast, nothing else.
The reason? Maintenance were sick of clearing crumbs out of the typewriters.
Toast crumbs are still the bane of my keyboard.
I suggest one of these.
For the benefit of non-Aussies, here are the food stuffs mentioned:? pageId=62
D =26
Flake http://www.cadbury.com.au/sites/cadbury/index.php
Rice Bubbles http://www.kelloggs.com.au/DisplayPage.asp?BrandI
Jelly - Jello (what you yanks refer to as jelly we call jam).
definitely haggis.
while it's a tasty finger-food, it does a number on the keyboard.
There are times when I only have to shake my keyboard a few times upside-down to get a new stash ;)
talk to your mom about that. And I wouldn't kiss her on the mouth either....
Crusty Rolls, any time I get a cheese roll, I have to shake the keyboard over the bin afterwards....
But seriously folks, cats get jealous of laptops ... leave them open and the cat marks them as terrortory (yes George, that one's for you) when you are not looking.
Two different people have brought me laptops for repair with this problem, and both were irretrievably damaged.
Women are tough to eat out over a keyboard...oh wait, I am a slashdot geek, so I only fantasize I had a girl for a little QWERTY DATY action.
:-)
Yeah, I'm going anonymous.
...is this really "stuff that matters"?
Slashdot is definitely going down the drain. Time to look for a new publication, I suppose, something that really has "News for nerds", as opposed to pointless noise. Any suggestions?
No, really. Is there anything else as addictive as Slashdot, but more satisfying for computer nerds?
Oh how I long for thee again!
Working from my hotel.. beer in hand.. oh shit! glug glug glug glug *mad dive to save the beer*
Too late, spilled the beer - oh, and spilled it on the laptop.
Thermal protection kicks in, Laptop shuts off. Turn down the brightness so the laptop stays on.
Lost about 8 keys. Had to use alt codes to log back on my laptop because I lost the ASDZXC keys.
Eating isn't the only thing you shouldn't do at your desk.
We have bubbles, not krispies, you insensitive clod.
Yay me!
..I'm not sure why this article didnt mention the most obvious and common food found in keyboards. bread. specifically breadcrumbs. The result of a simple sandwich, sub, roll, bagel or somesuch (mmmm. getting hungry now...) , easy food to eat whilst browsing the web too. unlike all those fancy foods listed in the article...angel hair pasta? and even the flake bar was wrong - dont we all eat high energy choco bars? The glucose biscuity stuff of Boost bars (guarana or glucose version...not plain!) really does powder everywhere :-)
...don't eat it - don't put it on your (laptop) keyboard.
I thought up all kinds of foods people aren't likely to have in front of a computer, like Maine Lobster with Drawn Butter. However, sticking (pun intended) to foods one might actually try to eat while geeking it up a notch, I thought about two of my favorites: soup (most any kind) and Swiss Miss pudding cups. These bastards more or less ruin a keyboard.
e =CTLG&product_id=26-773# and now I can actually wash the keyboard in the sink with the dishes.
So I went and bought one of these http://www.radioshack.com/product.asp?catalog_nam
Not much of anything has ever stuck permanently on this new keyboard.
Whenever Mrs. Fitch breaks wind, we beat the dog.
oh man :<
<anamexis> I was opening a coke, right
--> Beefpile (~mbeefpile@cloaked.wi.rr.com) has joined #themacmind
<anamexis> and it exploded
<anamexis> ALMOST all over my keyboard
<anamexis> but I got it away just in time
<-- Beefpile has quit (sick fuckers)
<anamexis>
Grbge news posts like this would be better served in generl discussion section tht slshdot despertely needs.
nd yes my " " key , dmmit, the letter tht strts the lphbet is broken on my keybord due to melted chocolte.
This happened to a friend of mine:
:)
At a LAN party he accidentially spilled a coke can over his keyboard.
Luckily he had a second one to replace it. So he placed the new one where the old one was and simply turned around the broken keyboard above the new one without thinking.
He sucessfully spilled coke on two keyboards
Stop making that big face!
because it is also the worst food to eat period. (if you're not familiar with it count yourself lucky, it is fish reduced to a gelainous state by soaking it in Lye).
"Waste not one watt!" - CZ
The worst food to eat at a keyboard? The organs of my vanquished enemies. Getting guts out of a keyboard is a bitch-- not to mention all the DNA evidence it leaves behind for the CSIs. (Of course, they're pretty tasty too.)
UTF-8: There and Back Again
spaghetti sauce, coffee spill, et al.
s
'et al.' is short for 'et alii'. This translates directly to "and others." However it is only used to refer to people, not things.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latin_phrase
I think, therefore I am. I think?
Imagine this, you have your father's office laptop (very costly IBM Thinkpad in 1999) on the coffee table running HellBender at a grainy 640x480 (I'm in that grotto with the ceiling guns). You have a small jar of payasam sitting there on the table. It was wrapped in a plastic bag with a couple of rubber bands (it was made the day before and kept in the fridge). I take the jar, open the plastic without looking up from the game. You know , the rubber band snapped and next thing you know the laptop keyboard is coated in sticky COLD payasam with vermicelli sticking to the padded keyboard bottom.
I still get teased by my sister whenever I take any food near her PC when I visit my parents.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
i apologize for a "counterstrike story" but it's OT so i was playing CS, on aztec and i had the bomb the game started and my dad brought me up a pizza style garlic bread type thing and some pineapple juice, now i'm hiding behind a crate while my team kills the other team off and i have the fatal decision eat the garlic bread and drink the juice or run and plant the bomb, the first option was the one i chose, so i couched down and started eating my bread which had allot of drippy garlic stuff, so i had bread in one hand and juice in the other and a CT came snuck up to me really slowly and stood on the crate i was hiding beside, I heard something so with my juice hand pushed my mouse towards the crate saw him had the shit scared out of me and threw my juice in t he air all over my keyboard and dropped my garlic bread upside down on my keyboard dripping garlic stuff all over it but i managed to press the left mouse button and blow the head off the slightly surprised CT, i then planted the bomb won and spent three house cleaning every key on my keyboard :(.
when I was 9, on a brand-spankin' new Pet 2001 Professional Computer with 3.0 ROMs and a full-size K/B.
It was right after lunch, and I was showing off to a couple of Australian kids my 1337 programmin' skills, viz:
10 PRINT " IS A DORK"
20 GOTO 10
Went into the other room, got named (older) brother, and dragged him in to see the proggy. He was less than pleased, and expressed such displeasure physically on my back. I had just started to come down with bronchitis, and the combination was too much for my lunch to bear.
I'll never forget the suffering on my father's face when he came home, sat down at the table, and tried for hours to clean that thing.
It never really worked right after that. He even replaced the keyboard, and it still had keys that wouldn't always conncect.
It doesn't even need to be spilled. Just placing one near the keyboard while effervescing is sufficient. Those tiny unseen droplets accumulate in all of the worst places. The board gets sticky, the key motion is screwed, the same as if you spilled it.
The first time nothing much happened.
The second time it managed to do something to scramble my hard drive.
There's a better Bash.org quote: (from memory)
Dammit I just spilt man juice all over my keyboard
TMI!! TMI !!!
Eww!!
Oh No! I meant Mango Juice!
Damn that was a bad typo...
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
White Castle, its even bad for your keyboard. Spend 10 min eating a sack of 20, spend an hour working it through your system, and spend the next day never further then 20 steps from a toilet...
#include bier;
At my office, we wash standard dell keyboards in our diskwasher when they are too gross to save. we have done it maybe 10 times, and it has never failed... we just let the KB dry for a few days first!
People that spill their food over their keyboards must have M.S. or eat like pigs. Seriously people, is it that difficult to keep the food inside your mouth?
Spaghetti Code is worse than spaghetti sauce.
Not sure why, but my keyboard seemed impervious to anything until it got splashed in red wine.
Mostly it's the drinks, not the food that's the problem. (Soups and ice cream being the exception.)
The only problem I've had so far (crosses fingers, touches wood, sticks fork in electrical ouch) with food and keyboards was a laptop with a drinking problem.
One rum and coke and it was out perminantly. And it wasn't even advertized as a lightweight.
Crumbs are nothing!
The first major laptop/food interface wasn't really a spill. The laptop was on my coffee table, downloading something. I put a bowl of noodles on the floor whilst I went out to the kitchen for another beer. Unfortunately I caught my foot in the power cable and dragged the laptop off into the noodles. After a bit of a wipe and a brief stay in the airing cupboard it was none the worse.
More recently, I had the machine on my lap, checking my email whilst I ate a bowl of breakfast cereal. Half a pint of milk and miscellaneous grains really didn't do it a lot of good. I thought for a while it was dead, but after disassembling it, cleaning the keyboard in the shower and leaving it to dry out for a couple of days it seems to be OK, although I do still find the occasionaly grain of barley.
It's a Dell Inspiron, by the way. Very robust, if a bit slow by modern standards.
No geeks or nerds should be eating anything with a GI of more than 50 over their keyboards.
Deleted
Just open a pop can often enough and the fizz will build up an nice caramel color on your board.
Everybody Google "Virtually Indestructible Keyboard." I clean mine in the dishwasher!
But back to the topic. You think food is bad? Try smoking a pipe. Ever see a pipe smoker get mad and start yelling? It's like talking to a dragon. Sparks fly everywhere. Now add to that bits of charred tobacco, dots from the holepunch, and the perennial favorite, human hair. Imagine this veritable tinderbox two feet from my head while I'm playing Quake. Somebody shoots me. I get mad. I start yelling...
It was like a miniature forest fire going in there.
A donut with those damn sprinkles or crushed peanuts.
Try eating one without dropping half those damn things on the keyboard, floor, everywhere. As my old man used to say "How the hell did you miss that big mouth of yours?"
WTF? Over?
A cigarette.
I once worked in a department where we tested laptop based software for a large insurance company. One of my collegues spilt his mulligatawny soup he was having mid-morning all over a poor little IBM T21.
Luckily, the soup was really thick so turning the thing upside down was good enough to prevent it running into the innards of the laptop.
Unfortunately, it was really hard to clean off (remove all the keys...) and there was some stuff that had obviously got somewhere warm inside the laptop as after a bit of use, the laptop started circulating air that smelt of stale curry...
Not quite as bad was the incident with the exploding can of irn-bru. Super sticky goop, but at least not quite as smelly...
Serves: One revenge-deserving fool
Ingredients:
2 cups sugar
1 teaspoon lemon juice
1/4 cup butter (if keyboard will later be subject to intense licking)
Tools:
Conserves skillet
wooden spoon
one glass of ice-cold water
Heat sugar and lemon juice at medium temperature until caramel forms. Continue heating, stirring constantly, until mixture becomes thick enough to coat spoon. Lower temperature and continue heating until mixture further thickens. Stir from time to time. To test caramel consistancy, let fall a drop into the glass of ice water - if the caramel forms a hard string that will snap if stressed, it is at the correct "hard crack" stage. If you intend to add butter, let cool slightly then mix in.
Slather generous amount of mixture evenly across keyboard with spatula or wooden spoon. For a better presentation, before the mixture cools, use sponge dampened with warm water to remove enough off the top to expose the keys.
Let cool. Serve gift-wrapped or framed, or leave in front of computer for an optimal "Surprise!" factor.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
Not that I drink the crap, but my kids do.
:v)
If they spilt it on their keyboards, that would be fine. But, oh no, not good enough for 'em. They have to pick my $100 wireless keyboard to spill it on.
Useful tip: After cleaning, dissolved tracks can be replaced with conductive silver PCB repair paint.
My last keyboard survived 3 coke washes with this technique before they finally killed it off.
Vik
Hot sauces seem to be absolutely vicious to metal components, especially when there's a DC flowing through them. Saw it on Mythbusters, so it MUST be true ;)
A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it well worth the effort.
and many falls. After some time, some keys stopped working. So I've grown some nice plants and flowers in the fertile soil between the keys of my first keyboard. The second one got too close to a warming bulb, keys twisted in all kinds of Bosh'esque curves, but after replacing F1-F3 with PrtScn-Pause and some cutting of edges of Tab, it still works. I got the model M, but it's "reserve" one - a bit too noisy for nightly use. Actually, got it used from a discount store, from after-flood salvage - this one was least covered with mud. But a warm bath and some drying later it worked just fine. Right now for the second PC I use a cool-looking cheap multimedia keyboard, that unfortunately is made from very poor plastic. The corner broke off after the first fall, but keeps working. The broken plastic was sharp though, hurting my wrist, so I decided to bend and smooth it using a lighter... have you ever been extinguishing your keyboard? Ah, there were these keyboards at my univ, with enter key falling off. In some of them the key has gone missing. So I got smart, I was coming to classes with my own enter key, inserting it for my use, and taking it with me when the classes ended.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
...accidental sperm from unexpected ejaculation...
If you're that numb, skip the (uni?)sex and go back to your XBOX.
OTOH, there are some psychoactive drugs that make ejaculation come before the orgasm - I'm guessing you should avoid those...
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I eat breakfast at the computer every day, with two pieces of toast. Not that white wonder-crap either, some nice, heavy whole-grain toast, toasted fairly dark. Makes it somewhat crunchy.
Every bite is a crumb-bonanza. I have to clean under/around the keyboard every few weeks.
I think the keyboard is due for cleaning or replacement soon...
Time is the quality of nature that keeps events from happening all at once. Lately it doesn't seem to be working. -Anon
This article has far too many strange australian foods for us junk-eating north americans to understand!
Pedialyte.. once those grape-flavored elctrolytes get inbetween the plastic layers, they do wonderful things to a ps-2 bus.
meh
The author doesn't know that you can pry up keys from the keyboard. Spaghetti is "almost impossible" to remove? Ha, just get a pen and pull up three keys.
You do not like them?
So you say!
Try them! Try them!
And you may!
Try them and you may, I say!
Wait, no, I found this: Individual keys can be removed and scrubbed with hot, soapy water for a more thorough cleaning.
Chorizo Burritos
http://xs4.xs.to/pics/04481/p556222.gif
For some odd reason, only one beverage universally results in loss of keyboard: Mountain Dew. All other spills can be fixed by washing the board and letting it dry, but they never properly recover from Dew.
Anyone else experience this?
"73% of quotes on the Internet are made up" -Ben Franklin
ejaculating accidentally isn't one of them!
Not a food, but my gf spilled it over her keyboard and it essentially melted it.
Try eating a kebab while reading ./ ...
http://www.watch.impress.co.jp/akiba/hotline/20050 305/etc_airtouch.html
It cost me 30 euros, and it is actually a bit difficult to get used to it because it is weird to touch. Also, some keys are differently located than they usually are (e.g. the " \" key is at the left bottom corner, where in general the left ctrl key is located). I guess a non-foldable model would be better (this is really something I don't care about), but I think it still is a good buy for people like me who always have to drink coffee, water or something in front of their computer. Oh yeah, and if you have a pet too: I was amazed at how much cat fur was stuck between the keys of my previous keyboard when I opened it ...
Had a big open sandwich with lots of stuff on top, including a small mountain of potato salad. Lost grip of the whole thing, it fell up-side-down on the keyboard. It never really got completely clean after that.
We figured we'd clean up the mess in the morning. Turns out, by morning the spit had eaten its way through the plastic membrane that forms the circuitry in cheap keyboards. Nothing there to clean off -- the circuits were gone. Kinda reminds me of a "stainless carpet" ad, where they admit that their carpet can't withstand battery acid, and show a picture of the holes it will cause.
Coffee is another annoying substance, though not for a keyboard. If you spill it near your case, it will seep up into the groove between the case base and cover. And then dry, forming a very good seal. I once spent about 1/2 hour with a knife trying to cut that seal open.
for the same reasons as wet cement.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Everybody knows laptops are much more, lets say, affected by foods and liquids. And lets not forget about the social factor which includes people making fun of your almost seemingly edible laptop. As I have experienced first hand.
I sure wish I did because it would have prevented a whole lot of awkward explaining during class....
Perfect is the enemy of done.
All I know from reading at -1 is that the GNAA thinks Micheal uses jiz as a source protein, a refreshing beverage, hair gel and a prefered form of anal lube.
I just think it would have been fitting, an I enjoy seeing the occasional +5 Troll with 150 mod points dumped into it. Is that so fucking wrong?
I spilled a glass of single malt scotch (Talisker Distillers Edition) over my laptop. Took 3 weeks cleaning the keybooard in destilled water and drying out to sober it up again... ;)
DISHWASHER, realy, poke out all the keys, get the elektronics out and shuff it in the dishwasher. Brandnew!. Thenafter you have fun trying to put it back together! Awesome!
Slashdot 1|0 Productivity
The food of my horrible, lonely geek life destroys my keyboard! :P
The Crimson Dragon
The author seems to think that everyone is a clumsy dolt who spills whatever they're holding if they come within range of a keyboard. I eat and drink a lot in front of my computer and have not had one accident involving stuff being spilled on the keyboard. I don't hold my food over the keyboard like it's a placemat. Reclining and eating might be a good option. I don't know why this person wants to make it seem like it's an impossible feat to eat and use the computer at the same time. Oh well, I guess I'm just a little irritated at the idea.
curry. any curry.
Not a Star Trek TOS fan? For more information on Horta, see
http://www.70disco.com/startrek/horta.htm
dacap
English -- gotta love it! / The engineers refuse to refuse the rocket until the refuse is removed from the launch pad.
Or you can buy a new keyboard...seriously, they are not that expensive. From TFA :)
Have you metaroderated recently?
My experience is different: Cherry is my favourite. At least a keyboard should have individual switches. I once had a keyboard which used one giant rubber slab underneath the keys. At each key this slab had a small elevation with the contact, more or less like the buttons on ATMs etc. The problem is that the rubber hardly has enough force to press up the plactic key, especially when this has also been degisned poorly. Cheaper is NOT better in this case...
For sure.
Sure it's tasty, but damn is it ever hard to get out of keyborad! Once it hardens you're totally screwed!
is bad on many levels.
Anything with a sauce using chopsticks is proble(leading to typo)matic
I imagine the Pr0n industry has it's own set list...
I thought Pizza, but then, no! Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Soup has to be the worst.
cdhz nskcnc v/sdnmajfnsloxioc ckmccmcxcmcmcn bdkvn
BRTTYYYYY
That, and I personally insist on a (more expensive) ergonomic keyboard for my PC, since I've had a history of wrist problems.
Ok, it's nothing to eat but nevertheless a real problem, especially when you have long hairs (ponytail) ;-)
In my student days I used to have people over a lot for parties and entertain them with my Napster hoard and winamp's visualisations. As the evenings progrssed, the chances of spillage increased. Gin and tonic was pretty bad. Even after a day's disassembly, cleaning and drying, my keyboard was never quite the same.
Definitely boogers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Love juice...
I solved the whole food-in-the-keyboard problem by getting a FrogPad, which is a one-handed keyboard. I sits over to the side of my desk (in a much more comfortable position for my arm and wrist), so that as the food slides down my detritus-encrusted chin it just plops onto the now-free real estate in the middle of my desk.
I am not sure if you have these in America: but they are thick milk chocolate surrounding fondant and caramel in an egg shape.
My dad used to be a college lecturer and had a student place a creme egg on the keyboard (unwrapped) and then lift the keybord hard into the monitor support. Apparently the student's letter of explanation had "no matter what anyone said, it was an accident." in the hope that admitting gross stupidity was his best course of action.
...or risotto
The "Pepsi Syndrome" has been the scourge of nuclear power plants for decades.
nuff said
I use an Apple Extended Keyboard II at work with a G5. Amazing keyboard. I hate going back to working on mushy keyboards after working on the AEK for a while. I found out last week that a canadian company (Matias? I think) is making modern USB keyboards with the old AEK switches. Won't need the ADB-USB adapter anymore, but they're pretty pricey.
why were they combining soy sauce and pepsi?
DAMMIT, Jim, I'm a programmer not a bricklayer!
SeaMen for sure!!
Surely, they were eating in the restaurant. There's no way any flimsy to-go bag would hold up to that much grease.
In the old Amiga and Commodore64 days, spilling stuff in your keyboard was a lot more serious than it is these days (laptops excluded). Pouring stuff down your keyboard was basically the same as pouring it diretly unto your motherboard - it was especially problematic on your Amiga since most people had removed different forms of shielding to get room for a 3.5" harddrive. Anyway, the worst substance in my experience is beer - have lost two PC keyboards to that stuff.
- barkholt
Anything with that nasty orange colour.
Stains everything.
Sunflow seeds? I just spit them into a pringles tube, or sectioned pop/water bottle.
I mostly just drink coffee, it's the most computer compatible food.
You lot must be bored.
Is this really news that matters?
I have a cheap-as microsoft kb... I've spilt like 6 of those mega-gulp cups filled with coffee (they're good for staying up all night) in, on and around it, and it still works fine. I think the best course of action is just to get a towel and tip it upside down on that, leave it for about 5 minutes to drain through... And also, instead of using big gulp cups, just use a waterbottle (if using a plastic one, put the milk in BEFORE the coffee and/or use warm not boiling water, otherwise it shrivels up). If you're typing at 3 in the morning, you've probably got the coordination of a blind, deaf, retarded 3 year old.
Oh and people who complained about this post.. "ITS NOT REAL NEWS" you aren't expected to like EVERY single article on this ENTIRE site, its ONE article.. jeez, get over yourselves.
Little bastards get caught between the keys, turning ASDF into QWWEDRFF. Plus, if they make it past the keys, your keyboard will rattle forever more.
Chip H.
...or "Coke" if you're from a red state.
Because carbonated beverages contain as much as 14 teaspoons of sugar per every eight ounces, they get VERY sticky when they dry. This usually gums up a KB for good.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Why the hell aren't they selling Cheetos WITHOUT the orange dyestuff !?? ...personally, I'm not eating cheetos because of the "orange stuff" they put on it...
I was doing a rush job and couldn't get up from the computer to eat......so I got myself a bowl of cereal. instant death of my 12" PB :(
apparently the laptop wasn't hungry, or alergic to milk.
I once glued some keys together with a spill from a fried egg sandwich.
Hot grits, of course!!
You have a constitutionally protected right to be wrong, and I the right to ignore you.
I would have to say my least favorite to deal with is milk
Should have used et cetera, right?
What year was your M made? Be careful, as BS keyswitches have an estimated 20-year life (which kicks a membrane's ass, but it's not indestructible). I've still got six years before my M hits 20 (1991), and I don't use it that heavily (my laptop gets much more use).
Spam
Green chile stew, (mmm mmm good) killed a perfecly good M$ Natural keyboard in seconds when the traces got some of that green chile juice on it. Acidic (more vitamin C than orange juice), conductive, salty with a bit of potato starch and beef oils, it really did the job. I never could get it to work again.
I speak from experience after destroying an Apple ADB keyboard that I preferred to use as input on my Powerbook 520c as opposed to the original flimsy plastic chicklet keys on the laptop. Not only is OJ sticky when it dries, but it is full of electrolytes and makes a very good conductor for shorting out the circuitry. As soon as it happened I unplugged the cord, but I wasn't fast enough.
Pringles crunch so nicely, but there have been so many times where I've been trying to pour the last bit out and they overflow my hand into each and every crack in the keyboard.
With all the Jewish holidays around this time of the year, there's probably more than one keyboard being replaced dut to flying matzoh crumbs and spilled Manichewitz. The solution? A kosher dishwasher.
How many of us can testify to ashes between & under the keys? For some reason, the need to quickly type something often outweighs the logic of "Maybe I should ash this, or even set it down while I type this".
In my experience at least...
That isn't a surprise. Wood isn't very conductive when dry, and wood chips dry fast. Computers run on low voltages. That machine was very old, before heat sinks were required on the CPU. So there is no surprise the chips didn't stop the machine. Only the power supply had any vulnerabilities.
Hmm... how about chinese spearibs?
Orange Juice is the death knell for almost any keyboard. I had to eventually throw away my old Atari 800 after spilling OJ on it... no amount of taking it apart and cleaning it would keep some of the keys from sticking in the down position.
-- If you cast your bread on the water, sometimes it comes back angel food cake.
I've seen an ibook come in with the keyboard saturated with beer. Funny part about that was the customer had no idea what was wrong with it. (his roommate had tipped a can of bud into it the previous evening) But yes, the musk of beer on keyboard definitely is beaten hands down by chocolate cow. Not only does it jam up the keys, but it reeks to high heaven for a few weeks. That was on a pro keyboard... they asked me if it could be fixed. I said yep, we have new ones right on the shelf over there.
I've heard two reports of possibly worse though, thankfully experienced and repaired by other people - one had his cat piss on his ibook's keyboard, another fellow had a drunk visitor vomit on his powerbook. ewwwww
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
realy, almost impossible to clean, best solution is always trash...
\m/
Pancakes and syrup; you're guaranteed to drop at least a few drops of syrup when eating 'em, and then you've got slowly drying, sticking syrup throughout your keyboard, and you really just can't ever get it entirely clean.
"To pass through the jungle; silence, courtesy, ferocity, as the occasion demands." -- Kamau, "Proper Passage"
Two words for you guys: fish sauce.
Since I eat at my desk quite a bit, I needed to figure out a way to keep this from happening again. Answer? Wireless keyboard. Now I can move the keyboard before I eat.
In particular when you are doing paired programming.
I've had to clean powdered sugar, not from inside keyboards, but from inside broadcast console faders. The sugar combines with the oil lubricant on the fader to form white dandruff-looking gunk. And it's impossible to eat a powdered sugar donut without spilling some everywhere.
If you want to persuade people not to drink coke (or any fizzy pop - the coke/pepsi results tend to be more impressive ...) just before bed, take a tooth (doesn't have to be human), drop it into a jar of coke in the night in front of them and then sieve it out of the jar in the morning. At best it will be horribly corroded, at worst it may be a small few pieces left. Gotta love that phoshoric acid touch...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
According to the sticker on the bottom of my Model M, it was made 01APR87, and (C)1984. Part No. 1391401 and Plt. No. F4. I've noticed that generally the non-removable cord Model M keyboards aren't nearly as sturdy as the removeable-cord versions, and that the newer removable-cord Model M (some newer than the non-removable ord versions!) still aren't quite the same as the older ones. I wonder why? And if there's a specific cutoff date on the various revisions, when? More info is needed here I suspect. Anyone have more info on this?
Random side note: I'm using an ancient pair of Realitic Nova'40 headphones right now, with an adapter to plug them into my computer (they have the huge old-style headphone plug on them.)
The worst thing to spill into a computer/keyboard/whatever is vomit. Take whatever substance the user is enjoying... masticate it into tiny bits/pulp, add digestive juices... then dump it back onto the machine. Not only is it wet and bad for the machine... it's a hard time getting a geek willing to do the repair.
I had a machine come in from the athletic department, when I worked in the Uni. repair shop, that I did manage to clean & fix (successfully). I gave up on the keyboard, but got the main box cleaned out (eventually wound up soaking the logic board in a bucket of water [sans battery, etc.]).
I would have just made the guilty party buy me a new one.
Easier for you, valuable lesson about respecting other peoples stuff for them, and the freqency of this happening would be dramatically reduced.
And if they don't have the money, make them work it off a minimum wage rates.
(And yes, I am a parent)
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
Good to drink, but bad for keyboards. She takes out about one a year (one just last night, in fact.)
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
It's greasy, the crust crumbles, it smells if it stays in there long. Just awful.
the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur - A.N. White
Any greasy finger-food gets my vote here. It is really annoying to have a thin film of oil all over your keys, and getting it off can be such a pain in the ass, especially when you never shut down your computers.
Don't ever eat sweet sticky food over your keyboard in a rat-infested lab. I accidently dropped gooey caramel on my keyboard (insufficently cleaned it) and the next day, found that a mouse ate the top of the 'H' key.
Please see http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tooth.asp
It doesn't necessarily take a fancy food or drink concoction to ruin a keyboard. From personal experience, I know that a glass of Brita-filtered tap water can permanently ruin a keyboard. Although, also from personal experience, a rum-and-coke will also do the trick in a pinch, if you're out of regular H2O.
...with half-and-half. Think about it. Gooey, quick-hardening, crusty when dry. Took an hour and a half of quick and thorough work to return the keyboard (A SUN keyboard)to somewhat usable. And some keys still stuck for a month after.
Is this submission really /. worthy? hrmm.. i guess a bit of goofyness on a Monday morning can't be all bad. *lets guard down a bit*
"hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
Cowboy Neal!
When I was a kid, one of my friend's parents had a TRS-80 computer. It cost several thousand dollars and had an integrated keyboard, mono-chromatic text screen, processor, etc.. One day, the kids were playing on the keyboard, eating cereal and...whoops. Well, knowing how much trouble they would be in, the kids carefully cleaned the surface of the device to hide all the evidence.
But after about a week, a mysterious stilton-esque odour began permeating the house. It took some time to notice that the smell increased with typing on the keyboard as the odour steadily grew worse.
You may think that that foods which are hard to get out of the keyboard are bad, or ones that damage the components are bad, but trust me; nothing is worse than the foul cheese odour of fermenting milk products.
-SK
The worst messes on KBs/Mice are made by 3 things:
1) The filling from jelly-filled doughnuts
2) That sebaceous tar generated from your own filth after days behind the keyboard without bathing.
3) The worst is both. (they don't taste good together either).
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
We have so many extra keyboards and mice (new ones). When a new employee starts we ensure there desk is cleaned ( a bit of windex) as well as there computer. If their keyboard/mouse is nasty/faded we give them a new one.
I once worked for a bank, and the keyboard was so bad that I bought a bottle of isophoryl alcohol and spent the next two hours cleaning each and every key separately. I had the computer of the former head teller who would drop food on the floor and let it sit there for days.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
Its not the eating above the keyboard that causes problems, its the dropping stuff into. I once had a user complain that her keyboard wasn't working properly. I came up checked it out and sure enough it was wonky. Swapped in a spare and took the "bad" one for further examination. When I opened it up it had two (2) handfuls of bent staples in it. Cleaned them out, took it back to her and called her the staple goddess for three months. From that point on she was careful not to unstaple letters over here keyboard. The carpet in that department was very prickly for the same reason.
the raw flesh of end users who have angered me.
Power to the Penguin!
Man, doing tech support for Satanists sucks.
Cutoff dates really don't apply here, except in one instance.
If the keyboard says "Manufactured for IBM by Lexmark" or "Manufactured for IBM by Unicomp" (some actually say this), it's a non-removable cord model. Lexmark's low quality shows in those, and Unicomp is using Lexmark's old factory (actually, I think it's also IBM's old factory, but quality DID go down). Part number 42H1292 (FWIW, the Unicomp Customizer 101 is 42H1292U - coincidence?)
If it says that it was made in the USA, and makes no mention of Lexmark or Unicomp, it is a first-generation Model M. Removable cord, rock solid. Part number 1391401.
If it says that it was made in Great Britain (most likely in 1998 or 1999), it's a third-generation Model M - the "newer removable-cord" Model M you refer to. It's also 1391401.
My keyboard was made in 1991 (haven't looked lately, and I'm at my laptop right now), part no. 1391401, (IIRC) Plt No F4 (that's the Kentucky (read: original) plant, IIRC). They're all (C) 1984, as far as I know.
First of all, who eats DIRECTLY OVER THEIR KEYBOARD?! You'd have to be purposely leaning forward. If that's you you sit and eat, then you deserve to get crap in your keys.
Don't be stupid.
My friend repeatedly had troubles the morning after a big frat party at the Kappa house. When he'd wake up in the morning, he'd find his keyboard all wet yet he could not explain how. We decided to blame it on the kappa gnomes. (cause it certainly wasn't any type of beverage)
My old keyboards were "crunchy" as hell and very hairy to say the least (not to mention the constant high powered whamming when computer didn't do what it should do). But my laptop keyboard is still clean and reactive as new... guess I don't even dare to think of something spilling or hitting a laptop keyboard.
Destroyed too many keyboards? Solution: Get a laptop.
just a simple sandwich...... damn crumbs
At a job I had a long time ago (in a call center), the supervisor was ultra-paranoid about food and especially beverage around the computers. Turns out a few years ago, someone spilled no more than a spoonful of soup into the keyboard of a Wyse terminal. This somehow fried out the whole terminal, which then sent some kind of surge up the serial connection which then fried out the terminal server and a few other terminals connected to the same terminal server. Sounds ridiculous, I agree, but this wasn't the kind of guy who made exagerrated stories.
I rarely eat in front of my computer, an thus food is not a problem. Dandruff and hair, however are big problems, especially dandruff. I clean my desktop keyboards and laptops regularly, yet I cannot get rid completely of dandruff.
BEWARE: Dandruff may damage your CDs and DVDs. It is full of fat and thus it gets stuck on the front sides of your CDs; if left there a slow migraton of the fat through your CDs takes place which eventually ruins the disks. Excessive dandruff is often due to fat eating fungi, which can also attack your CDs.
I have had excessive dandruff since I was 8 (Now I am 53). For over 40 years I tried to get rid of dandruff, without success. I am a theoretical physicist by trade, bald and with a big grey beard. My hairless scalp as well as the skin underneath my beard produce a lot of dandruff. I eventually learned to live with it, it is just a minor nuissance. This is the human condition: most of us have lots of minor disdeases, most of them not life threatening.
I never thought about diet soda before I went on weight watchers. Once I started totaling up the calories from the Mountain Dew I drive almost constantly, it become very apparent that it was a major source of my problems.
Regular (8 fl. oz)
Calories (kcal) 110
x 1.5 fl. oz per can
= 165 Calories
x 3 cans per work day
= 495 Calories
+ ( 32 fl. oz per glass x 2 meals a day)
= 1375 Calories in the average work day
I now drink Diet Coke (which I did, of course, just for the taste of it anyway) and Dt. Mtn Dew exclusively and drink water or unsweet tea if neither choice is available
Never confuse volume with power.
I actually missed this slashdot news because I accidently spilled about half glass of water over my keyboard last saturday. I didn't think that much water got in to the keyboard and I didn't notice any problems at first. Not until I was about to use tab-completion and it turned out the the tab key now actually produced the character 'c'.
:)
Confused over whether this was due to the water or to some softwarefailure (I had just played around a bit with xterm's configfiles) I had the brilliant idea of restarting the computer, only to find out that I couldn't log in because when I wrote my loginname all the characters where wrong. So there wasn't much to do but to turn the keyboard upsidedown (upon which about a dl of water poured out) and wait for it to dry up. And to my pleasent suprise, now two days later, all keys work, except for "scroll-lock". And well yeah that's big loss
Kha-Nyou. I nevery woulda guessed that a newly discovered rodent could make such a mess!
There is just no way that you are the pine-scented air.
...is not so bad. I have the Microsoft Natural Multimedia keyboard, and spilled a beer all over it once, a nice dark German beer. I figured it was shot, so I took it apart and washed everything with water in the kitchen sink and set it to dry on the rack. It works fine. There was a thin rubber or silicone sheet covering most of the electric bits, so I would have no qualms washing the keyboard at some future point.
Nice Marmot
So I was doing some one handed surfing one night and then I went to this one site uh-oh.com They should really change the name to uh-oh.cum! cause it fried the crap out of my keyboard!
My evil ex-stepmother once spilled a mimosa (Orange Juice and Champagne) on the keyboard of my old SE/30. (This was approximately 30 seconds after I asked her to please not put her drink down on the desk next to my keyboard.) Not only did it ruin the keyboard, but it wasted a perfectly good mimosa.
I was a computer support guy for the local Univerisity and I've had my share of odd things coming out of keyboards. The scariest and most common things that I found was dead skin and finger nails. People would type on a keyboard and notice that a nail is broken or a piece of skin was hanging off their fingers and peel it off and over the keyboard.
Other common things I've found where huge peices of bread crumbs, chip crumbs and cookie crumbs.
Over all my experience with keyboards is here is the best peice of advice I can think of NEVER SHAKE A KEYBOARD UP SIDE DOWN OVER YOUR HEAD!!!
I hate having to get donut dust out from in between the keys!
-6d
Well, it is 12:30 where I am. I guess it IS time for lunch.
If only I knew where I could get me one of those in Boston.
"Live Free or Die." Don't like it? Then keep out of the USA
... you're just so wasted you don't notice the typos
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Worst food-on-keyboard experience I had was when I left my Sidekick in my backpack with a container of Ben & Jerry's (Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough) Ice Cream. I'm sure you can imagine what happened.
I'll never forget all that time I spent on that bus trying to lick ice cream off its precious little keyboard and suck it out of the speaker.
Luckily, I'm female, so licking ice cream of spiffy techno-gadgets can be sexy, rather than gross.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
cum, nut juice, jizz, baby batter, stomach butter, pearly white throat coating gobs o goo
At first, I read this as "an enormous reader writes..."
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
...flaky, crumbly, AND sticky.
~~~
Drupal themes from TopNotchThemes
Horta? I hear ya heard a who!! Oh, wait, that's Horton. Nevermind.
Oranges
Have you tried it? The tooth I tried it on was horribly pucked after 16 hours in some cheap supermarket cola. Hardly fully dissolved but certainly seriously damaged.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
That keyboard cleaning methods section should be mandatory on all porn sites.
Man those things are messy. The bread crumbles, the tiny shreads of lettace go everywhere. I always try to eat it over the wax paper they wrap it in.
...eat whatever the hell you want over them.
Evil is the money of root.
I have had coffee, coke, and beer spill into my keyboard more times than I care to admit.
I used to just buy a new keyboard, or take an old one out of the closet.
Several spills ago, I immediately took the keyboard outside and rinsed it out thoroughly with the hose. I then shook out all of the water I could, blew it out with a hair dryer on low heat, and let it dry overnight.
This method has worked three different times on two different keyboards, and hasn't ruined a keyboard yet.
Heck, I am thinking about cleaning the crumbs out of my keyboards this way too!!
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
I've done this TWICE! Shake slimfast, open my slimfast (I drink it for the meal replacement value, more than for it's weight loss properties), set aside while coding next line, go back to slimfast, shake slimfast, realize slimfast was already open, apologize to cube neighboors, clean everything, including keyboard.
All those sticky little bits of garlic, onion, and salt and whatever that just fly right off the bagel as soon as you bite into one ... real nasty for keyboards.
I had a laptop, which I bought for 1800 Punt (Irish) back in the 20th century. I had a flu. I made myself a glass of lemsip (hot lemon drink for flus) and continued working. My girlfriend, who I'm still with (despite the rest of this story) came up behind me, to give me a surprise hug. She knocked the lemsip all over the laptop, which was the end of that machine...
Soylent Red, on the other hand, is quite crisp in acidiy, with a bold body and mild tannins...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
Seriously. There's nothing like fish flying off your plate and breaking on impact all over your keyboard. Ramen is pretty bad too.
Sticky bread crumbs never come out.
m
...that if a phrase is used incorrectly enough, will that usage become correct?
If "bling" is a word then surely "bets the question" can be correct.
Salty or acidic liquids conduct electricity more and thus are the worst.
Salt, Potassium Chloride, Citric, Malic, Phosphoric, Tartaric Acid, etc will make any liquid that much more effective at shorting out stuff.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
*EVERY* time? You've done this more than once?
Go over to your buddies keyboard, turn it upside down, and shake it. You'll find out what he's been eating/doing.
I18N == Intergalacticization
I have had to replace my wife's MS Natural keyboard 3x due to water (2x) and granita spills.
The first time I decided to see why it didn't work, and upon opening it up I discovered that the (relatively) expensive keyboard used the cheapest possible method of construction: three sheets of mylar. Two on both sides of the one in the middle with the circuit printing. It was put together in just the right way to allow any liquid entering at the sides to funnel in by capillary action, right in between those layers, oxidize the circuits and short the board. Weak.
And then there's my old AST keyboard which has survived coffee, soda and a beer spill, countless crumbs and a paper clip or two.
I haven't taken it apart to clean it, but I am curious to know HOW it still manages to function.
R(k)
... which is apparently here [compaq.com].
Interesting chicken and the egg paradox. If the every key is next to the any key, but the any key is all the keys on the keyboard, and if every key is next to all of the any keys this means that the every key is the key next to... arrrgg!
My brain hurts. Time to go home.
Cheetos. You can never get rid of that unnatural, bright orange powder.
It's not technically food, but during my time at the computer tech shop, I can't tell you how many Seeds I pulled out of various defunct keyboards.
Of course they normally managed to get some in their case as well, but I don't know how.
Disagree. I spilt some beer on my keyboard and it went crazy. Tried to dry it, but still no good. Had to use 15$ on a new one.
Beer is at least as dangerous as coke.
Considering that you'd probably be eating this because you're too lazy to make any real food, let's assume you have no utensils to help you along with eating this cheese.
It's highly likely to drop to the keyboard as you grab finger fulls of it and shovel it quickly towards your mouth between reading and typing responses.
Now, being cheese and finely shredded at that, it's likely to melt and smell bad if left for any length of time. Not to mention that if it's had the time to warm up to room temperate, it will be nearly impossible to shake it loose or air blast it from its place between the keys. Eventually it would solidify and make it even harder to remove.
Yes, not only is shredded cheese a danger... it also fits in nicely with the current poll. ^.~
Here's how I clean my keyboard. It doesn't take long, and it gets it to at least a reasonable condition. (I admit the six foods listed in the article are outside my experience.)
Hold the keyboard upside down in the air, and bang it with a hand until bits stop falling out. (This is easier with two people, but you can hold it between hand and chest if you need to.) Wipe the desk when you've finished.
I've heard the rumors that the average toilet seat is cleaner than the average computer keyboard.
Twice since it was purchased new, in 1988, I've cleaned my IBM model M keyboard. The last cleaning was recent, just a few weeks ago.
I have to say that the rumor about toilet seats is not only correct, but should go further. The average toilet seat in a Juarez jail is probably cleaner than my keyboard was.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
to eat at your desk? It's so anti-social. Just like eating in front of the TV. Jesus, I sound like my Dad. But we shouldn't bitch about life when we're all afraid to talk to each other over a meal. My next company is going to have a real break room. That's my excuse.
I once spilled a 16 ounce cup of chili on my keyboard.. It still works fine, since I acted quickly and resorted to desperate measures to get the chili out from between the keys. Desperate measures in this case means using a straw to suck it all up. It was at least a pretty new keyboard, so I did not have to injest too much nasty stuff.
I would have hooked my keyboard up to a live electrical wire while not in use. At least then, if they don't learn their lesson, that's less food to put on the table.
"There are more important things than stopping terrorism. Upholding the Constitution is one of them." - Ars Forumer.
TRS-80 Model I's got HOT. And the heat would convect through the vent at the rear and rise up straight through the keyboard. What went through the back would reflect off the monitor and the desk, and you'd feel it on your face. After about 10 hours, it was unbearable. I'm sure it would cook cheese.
Yuck.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
According to the nutritional info, a cheeseburger has 480 calories and 27 grams of fat, while a double-double has 670 and 41, respectively. That means this monstrosity weighs in at 4090 calories and 293g fat!
Personally I want to see before and after photos of the proud owner (renter?).
And, no, you're not a parent...anymore.
I guess I'm the only geek that eats fruit. Watermelon (and to a lesser extent other mellons), causes little juicey splatters on the desk, in and around the keyboard, sometimes on the display. Making everything sticky, including dusty splatter marks.
The rage of the fatman! Calm down chubster, your blood pressure could easily kill you.
at many thrift stores, though they're getting rarer, in the mess of cheap lightweight keyboards. But I have what is surely a lifetime supply of M's both brown and blue logo, they'll surely last until voice or some other input device (a chorded keyboards?) becomes popular and the de facto standard. I've found a few of the earlier IBM AT keyboards as well, they appear to go for significant amounts on ebay. They're in a few ways a better standard, partly because of the larger return key.
I put model M's on all my machines, but it's the Internet machine kbd that gets by far the most abused by food and drink. I've had a couple of them actually stop working because of spilt fluids (diet cola and/or coffee), when that happens, or the keys start sticking and aren't conveniently cleanable, I just pull another Ken off the Barbie...
Obligatory:
"In Soviet Russia, computer keyboard feeds YOU!
Tag lost or not installed.
I'm not familiar with "Carl's Jr." at all, but here in the midwest, I've seen a number of fast food places play games with the labels, as some sort of marketing strategy.
... but the "small" is what I think the majority of people would expect a sub shop to serve as the "regular" size. (You can sort of tell this is the case by looking at the pricing though. The "regular" and "large" sandwiches get awfully pricy for "fast food"!)
EG. Penn Station subs has a small, regular, and large size sandwich
It's not necessarily that most Americans are eating such large meals that we define "medium" differently than you would in Canada. It may just be a place trying to avoid using labels like "super size" or "jumbo size", so they can sell bigger, more costly meals to people without them avoiding them due to a guilt factor. (Gee, I don't want to look like a pig in front of my friends, ordering something with JUMBO written all over the wrapper and cup.)
I'm sitting here reading this while eating chicken soup and toast. Should I be worried about anything?
"Ad infinitem et ultra!" - Buzz Lightyear
I'm a lesbian, you insensitive clod!
It's the purest form of nutrition food!
If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
Here are the items I've personally found are the messiest:
pretzels (specifically the large, hard sourdough ones, but they all suffice): if not crumbs, then salt will fall between the keys. This is definately the worst, as they're my favorite snack and the salt and crumbs really interfere with mechanical functionality.
potato chips: same as above.
anything liquid in an open-top container: you'll probably spill it inadvertantly.
wraps with any liquid or juices: it will dribble out the bottom
finger foods in general: things that leave residue on your fingers = sticky/messy keyboard surfaces.
soups/stews and/or ramen: splatter galore.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Yeah, one of my favorite sugar overloads... there I was lying on the floor eating a bowl of Frosted Flakes and milk as I'm typing on the keyboard. Then I got up to get something to drink. Woops! sweet sugary thick milk goes into the keyboard. They keys got all stuck and the milk/sugar mixture dried in there and destroyed any chances of that crappy membrane based keyboard working again.
Deltron 3030 - Virus (music video)
My favourite was the big ps2 sgi keyboard. The later o2/octane era kbs got smaller and crappier. I think mine came with the Indy, but I'm not sure. Like the IBM model M, it seemed indestructible, but my then-months-old son destroyed it with a stream of piss. I dried it, cleaned it, did everything, but it never worked again.
mY kybard s wrking fin ee3rrwe fine in spit eof evrythingi'veeaten in f r o n t of it. Nope, o problms h3r.e
It must be Windows. It needs half a gig of RAM and a hardware-accelerated graphics card just to run Solitaire.
When any of my or my family's keyboards get too dirty, I just put it in the dish washer, in my experience about 1 in 5 of the basic non-wireless with no wizzy electronics variety don't object to this treatment and earn a special place in my heart as a keeper.
In order to save our freedom it was necessary to destroy it.
To spoil a desktop keyboard is bad, but damaging a laptop or notebook keyboard is even more bad, because often it's not that easy to get their keyboards out for a serious cleaning. Here are some take apart instructions for laptops and notebooks including pictures. There are tips and tricks for keyboard cleaning. Or just in case you need to re-paint it, there are appropriate HOWTOs.
n/t
------ The only greater hazard to your liberty than n politicians is n+1 politicians.
About 4 months ago, I acquired a . I was looking for a keyboard that was nice to type on, and would take the brutalizing that my last keyboard died from after less than a year. Once I tried my hand at one of these for 30 seconds in the store, I knew that I found what I was looking for.
Like the Model M, it has a clean tactile feedback that doesn't feel mushy at all. Unlike the Model M, it's pretty quiet. It also has a light touch, and a shorter key throw that lets me type at least 15 WPM faster than on any other keyboard I've ever owned. Just as important, it doesn't go for the gimmicky crap "features" that glut the market today. Its only concession is a row of 6 shortcut keys that are unobtrusive. The | key is even in the *right* place, with the same layout as the Model M. In fact, I like this keyboard so much, I bought a second one for work. When I leave this job, my keyboard comes with me.
*This* is the keyboard *I* will be buried with. And mine does USB.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
Carl's Jr I find is very similar to Burger King. Their big thing is you order the food and then go sit down and they will bring it to you. You may be right about sizing though as the price was similar to what we pay in Canada for a Medium combo (~$4) but in American coinage. I would have been expecting cheaper.
:(. Although I made up for it when I went to Alberta and saved $60 on a bottle of Oban and Dalwhinnie.
Off topic but one thing I noticed when I was in Colorado was that premium alcohol was no cheaper and in some cases more expensive than what I get in Ontario. Most of the time the prices were exactly the same as in Canada i.e $70CDN and $70 US.
I didn't look at beer prices as I was looking for good prices on Scotch but none to be found
Sheeeeez!! .. I got modded down for being off-topic for real? Will the flamebait who modded me down please mod the rest of these folks down as well? :P
... OK so the 'danger part' is not danger to the keyboard, but rather danger to the keyboard operator ...
... I've been a karma-whore most of my /. life ... this little mod'ing incident won't hurt much!
... mod this one down too!
Besides, I say we're still on topic
Oh well
Go 'head
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]