i am a highly trained computer technician

Every single day, I work with people who make mistakes on the computer because they just don’t know better.  I have very little issue with this type of problem because nobody is born knowing everything about computers; it’s a learning process and hopefully the user won’t make the same mistake again next time.  I’d say about 95% of the people I talk to have simple issues that they just haven’t learned how to fix yet, and thus are exempt from my scorn and ridicule.

I have a few exceptions to this rule:

1. The person who calls in three times a week with the exact same problem. This person is refusing to tread upon the path of knowledge and should be mocked.

2. People who really should know better; if you’ve been hired as a network engineer, you should know how to fix a Page Cannot Be Displayed error.

This story falls into category number two, and stars myself as the idiot who really should have known better.

Last winter, I was building a new computer.  I had just finished and was hooking everything back up.  When I hooked up my old keyboard to my brand new shiny computer, it made me sad.  The keyboard had started life as beige, but had turned the corner to gray/yellow.  I’m not sure how all that crap builds up on mice and keyboards, but next time you’re at yours, just look closely and try not to dry heave.

I decided that a thorough keyboard cleaning was in order so that my shiny new computer would have a shiny keyboard to match it.  I’ve done this before in the past, and the only way to really do it right is to pop every key off, clean them all individually, and then pop them all back on, all without forgetting where the ALT and CTRL keys are.

This sounded like to much work.  Instead, I recalled an article I had read wherein the author had cleaned his keyboard by putting it in a dishwasher.  The article said that as long as the keyboard was fully dried out before you plugged it back in, it should function normally.  I don’t know what fully possessed me to trust this advice, but into the dishwasher it went.  I even remember to take it off of “Heat Dry” so that I wouldn’t slag it down.

Guess how well this went.

My keyboard never typed again, as any intelligent person would expect.  I had to get a new keyboard, and this one is never going in the dishwasher.

However, I did find a type of keyboard that you can do this with, and I’m tempted to get one just because it looks really cool.  The description of the item does not say if it’s hand-wash only or dishwasher safe, so err on the side of caution and tongue-bathe it.