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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
My mother's cooking. Worst. Food. Evar.
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
This should be a poll.
Worst option: Cowboyneal.
Best option: Breasts!
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.
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.
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)
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
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!
Sperm! Everyone gets that over their keyboards, right?
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
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
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 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!
Well, you live anyway.
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
Indeed, why are you wasting your time reading this?
/. should probably have a Humour section (perhaps with Python-style cartoon banner instead of the usual logo) so you can disable it in your preferences, but personally, I'd much rather read this than another story about RFID, Google or Steve Jobs scratching his ass in a particular way.
/. for bringing a little smile to my Monday morning - trust me, some of us need the humour fix.
Lighten up, it's humour - granted,
You want serious 'News for Nerds'? There's plenty of other stories on the front page - you could try; - NASA's Plans for the Future,
- Open Source Java? or even
- ASIMO and Research Celebrated in Brussels -
hey, how about that?
Just because you don't want to read it doesn't mean others don't - some of us are slogging through the early hours of cube life and want a little comic relief about how Johnny Slashdotter once destroyed his computer with a kiwi fruit.
Shame on Slashdot for not having a humour section you can block in your Preferences, but shame on you for not only assuming that an article titled The Worst Foods to Eat Over a Keyboard was going to be an accurately-calculated technological critique, but for then wasting even more of your time by bothering to post a comment about "who cares?". I'm here, in a cube-farm, being bored to tears by the most tedious job you can possibly imagine and I'd like to thank
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
I've never heard of Rice Krispies, but Rice Bubbles are a very common breakfast cereal in Australia. They are exactly as the author describes them in the original story, so I suspect they're also available in the U.S.A.
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.
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."
How about a $2000 laptop? You wouldn't still care?
Ahh, is that what rice bubbles are supposed to be? If so, then I guess its for copyright reasons?
Rice Bubbles is also the name of a cereal in Australia, much the same as Rice Krispies. As the article is from ZDNet Australia, I'm inclined to think the article means those rather than anything else. Also, what the hell are flake bars? Sounds like a bar where people with dandruff hang out
A Flake bar is a Cadbury's confectionary consisting of a long stick of flaky chocolate that crumbles slightly when you bite into it (Flake bar on Wikipedia).
They're very popular here in Britain, and apparently in Australia too. You probably have something similar wherever you are, but they are beasts to get out of keyboards, especially if your keys are non-detachable.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
{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."
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.
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).
I suggest one of these.
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>
Do you know something we don't? Would you care to share it with us?
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
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
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.
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
Spaghetti Code is worse than spaghetti sauce.
No geeks or nerds should be eating anything with a GI of more than 50 over their keyboards.
Deleted
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...
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.
...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
You eat your own jizz. OK then.
Pedialyte.. once those grape-flavored elctrolytes get inbetween the plastic layers, they do wonderful things to a ps-2 bus.
meh
ejaculating accidentally isn't one of them!
No worries. By now I'd say I have about a glass of beer total sitting in my keyboard (spilled at VARIOUS occasions) and it still works, no problem. Beer seems to be harmless to keyboards.
Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
Not a food, but my gf spilled it over her keyboard and it essentially melted it.
Ever try washing your hands?
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.
goo that was earlier called breast milk. I was feeding my nephew with bottled breast milk and he spat it all over my keyboard. still smells.
Manojar - pronounced like Manager
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...
Definitely boogers.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
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.
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
You lot must be bored.
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
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.
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.
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.
Please see http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/tooth.asp
...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.
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...
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.
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.
...flaky, crumbly, AND sticky.
~~~
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This is exactly what happened to my keyboards. Fujitsu keyboards are built with the same mechanism.
The nice thing about it is that you can buy a pen at local electronic stores that will allow you to draw the circuits back in, thus recovering the keyboard.