Reconstructive Surgery

or Taking a keyboard apart, washing it and then putting it back together again.


Yes folks, this is one of the things I had to do today. It comes from not paying attention to my own snippets. I left an almost full pint glass of milk on my desk earlier, it was pushed well out of grasping range, but not out of slipper throwing range (my slipper that is). I was just leaving the room when I heard the fateful 'clonk' and rushed back in to see a flood of milk streaming across my desk and creating a lovely waterfall effect onto the carpet below.

Fortunately nothing was ruined, and the only thing that got soaked and needed a good clean was my keyboard, and as someone who did a Computer Science degree back in the day, it's not the first time I've had to clean out a keyboard.

I did struggle a little getting it apart because they had cunningly hidden two of the screws underneath the little sticky rubber feet at the front, and I managed to rip one corner apart with the screw still in place before I realised. Then I had to pop all the keys out of the casing and take them and the casing into the kitchen for a good scrub down, and then left them to dry.

I've just spent about half an hour putting it all back together again. This isn't actually as easy as it sounds. Think about it, if you had to, could you say where all the keys go? The letters shouldn't be too much of a struggle, and the numbers slot in quite nicely, escape key, function keys, all ok. How about Shift, Ctrl, Caps Lock, Tab, Alt, the stupid windows keys that you never use? The arithmetic function keys on the numeric keypad, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page up and down? It gets trickier doesn't it. How about Scroll Lock? I've just checked and I've got that in the wrong place. Not that it matters too mcuh, I never use it, however it also means I've got the Print Screen button in the wrong place and I do use that.

I think I'll worry about that in the morning.