8 January 2005 ... Random

The other night I was sound asleep at 2am, and then Tegan the guinea pig chews LOUDLY on the coroplast to get my attention. I snap to, jump out of bed, check on her.

She's never gotten me out of bed at this hour... I check her, her house and look around my room, but everything seems to be normal? It may have been a case of "I can't sleep, so no one else is going to sleep either!"

But I was totally freaked out. I lie in bed for hours, wondering what she was trying to tell me. She has a headache, stomach ache, she needs a doctor?? She's saying there's poisonous gas in the apartment, there's a fire starting, there will be an earthquake??

ha... I still don't know. She seems fine and the apartment hasn't blown up yet, so I guess that's fine too. eh?

I've been having an off-on problem with typing in the past few months... I would occasionally "lose" a letter or two. I would press "b" on my keyboard, but nothing would show up. I would have to use my Character Map to copy and paste my lost letter.

It was okay when it was just one letter, but lately I've lost my "n" and "b" and "6". That's annoying. Those letters returned randomly. Then I lost my "r" and my "f", and they did not want to come back to me.

Fine! I'll fix it already!

First: figure out if it's a hardware or software problem. Did a few reboots, but the "r"/"f" problem seems to be permanent. Unplug and replug, still the problem replicates. Get out my old crappy keyboard and plug it in and type the alphabet. I've got all my letters, so there's something physically wrong with my good keyboard. humph.

Next: check the hardware. Went over the cord to check for breaks... there are a couple of guinea pig chews but the wires inside seem to be intact. So I get to take the keyboard apart.

Wow, that's neat! The circuit board is a clear plastic sheet with the circuits for each letter drawn in the plastic. When the keys are pressed, a rubber cup connects on the circuit board.

Of course, when I opened up the keyboard case, about ten of those loose rubber cups got bumped out of position. I knew that this is where my typing problem is coming from: Since I do my computing from the floor, sometimes my keyboard is not horizontal. I occasionally prop it up to get it out of the way. And thus, the little rubber cups move around and no longer connect with the circuit board.

eh. There was a little bit of cussing, trying to close the keyboard case while keeping all those loose rubber bits in their correct spot. But it was accomplished, and now I can type all my letters. And I know to keep my keyboard level!

<-- Remember this from the other day? I've been experimenting with the nature kaleidoscope my partner gave me for xmas...