Yesterday, I had a keyboard malfunction. Actually, it was a variation of the Pepsi Syndrome -- from the old SNL sketch about the guys who spilled a Pepsi on a keyboard at the nuclear power plant and set the klaxons hooting. We were out of drinking glasses -- all in the dishwasher after Thanksgiving -- so I had my water in a coffee cup and managed to slosh it onto my computer's keyboard.
Crap!
Quickly, I flipped the board over and shook it, and got some of the water out, but not enough. I didn't get any hissing or sparks, not enough juice for that, but the circuit boards got wet enough so half the keys didn't work and I got that buzzing, clicking repeat. More, I managed to pull the chord hard enough to unplug something and the board went totally dead.
Okay, okay, fine. I need instructions in how to operate a wheelbarrow, and probably it would dry out, but the wires weren't going to re-connect themselves, so I reached for the screwdriver.
Long as I was going to take it apart, I figured I might as well pull the keys off and clean under them, too.
So, armed with tweezers, cotton swabs, alcohol, some Dust Off canned air -- well, it's not just air, but compressed gases that include #1-1-difluroethane, a refrigerant, so you don't want to be breathing it and risking death and all -- I went into anal retentive mode and took apart, cleaned, and dried out the sucker.
Works fine now, as you can see, but I got enough dog hair out of it to make a rat terrier. Amazing. I can see how a computer tower with a cooling fan would gather hair and dust, but I never saw any dog hair land on the keyboard, so how it worked its way underneath the keys?
It's like how the car seatbelt buckle sometimes gets twisted. You know, the insert somehow winds up facing the wrong way, and it's an absolute bitch to saw it up and down the strap and get it turned back around. If it takes that much effort, how did it somehow spontaneously get reversed in the first place?
Never a dull moment.