The Spilled Keyboard Blues
Art was inspired by life – as this weekend, my beloved Apple keyboard was the victim of a hot tea spill. Immediately, after realizing the horror in front of me, I unplugged the keyboard and turned it upside down. Then, I applied a dry towel to soak up the fluid. I then let it air dry in the Florida sun for a few hours before plugging it back in.
The keys still work, but now the spacebar feels “mushy”. Thankfully, I have another replacement to work with. I guess after 26 years of using computers, with nary an incident like that, I was overdue.
Enjoy the comics – and be careful when eating / drinking next to your keyboard! And if you have a beverage related tech horror story to share, post it below. The most interesting and unusual story will score an exclusive PC Weenies sticker!
-Krishna
These beautiful and intelligent people wrote
Tell me what you think!
Garrett Williams
March 18, 2013 at 1:22 amI spilled water on my surge protector last week. Thankfully there was no shocking. Not sure that any water ever got inside the sockets. It should be dry by now, but I’m still using the spare one I swapped it with.
Graham
March 18, 2013 at 6:06 amMany years ago, working in a local radio station late one night, I knocked my coffee over onto the main master control switcher. Of course, everything went quiet. I pulled the power plug, and threw a bottle of alcohol (used for cleaning audio heads) after it. I bypassed the switcher so we stayed on the air, and, with thoughts of my short career ending, pulled the top off to look at the damage. In the bottom of the tub was a congealed mess of coffee, Coca Cola, cigarette ash and “gunk”. I spent a couple of hours cleaning it all out, including all the switch contacts before putting it back together. It worked like a charm for many more years before it was finally decommissioned. PHEW!
tmcelmurry
March 18, 2013 at 9:16 amMany years back while working for the local government I got a call one cold morning from one of the receptionists. She told me she needed a new keyboard right away. Well being government and knowing such requests, even small would come out of my budget I decided I’ll fix it first. Well she wasn’t going to have any of that and told me “It just quit working so I threw it away!” You what? I told her I’d come take a look and she continued turning the offer down and finally just blatantly said “I’ll talk to my supervisor if I have to, just get me a new keyboard and don’t worry about the old one!” Well that got my suspicion up even more so I made a little trip to the front to see if I could get hers fixed and just end this back and forth on the phone. When I arrived sure enough there sat the keyboard in the trashcan, and there she sat with her head down. I asked to see the keyboard and she just sighed, she then told me that she had spilled a little bit of her hot chocolate on it and then it just stopped. I pulled the keyboard up and out poured easily a 1/2 cup of Hot Chocolate, definitely a bit more than just a little. To say the least I replaced the keyboard without telling her supervisor, but I gave her a hard time about it for a while after and joking called her Swiss Miss every time we passed.
qka
March 19, 2013 at 11:43 amMy worst experience was dumping a very large container of ice water on a Sun workstation keyboard. So not your average cheapo PC keyboard. Immediately drained it and wiped it dry, but it was working a little flakey. Fortunately it dried out by the end of the day and all was well.
It’s inevitable that keyboards collect crud. Take your keyboard, turn it upside down, and shake. You may be surprised how much dry crud comes out, even if you are the most fastidious of users.
emjay
March 19, 2013 at 4:38 pmI have a keyboard cover now on my Macbook to keep out the tons of hair that my ancient fur-child (aka The Cat) sheds at odd moments and would then accumulate between the keys: it was almost like pulling ingrown hairs from the keyboard with a tweezers: at least she is a domestic short hair.
Liquid-wise, the keyboard cover saved it from being saturated with a knocked-over wineglass (thanks to the aforementioned cat) with only a few drops on the cover, easily removed. Sadly, the bottom of the laptop is now permanently stained with blotches of maroon-purple, or as I call it, an upscale tie-dyed CabSauv/Syrah Rorschach Test. The cat now has a cleared personal space on the bookshelf so she can oversee my work for the day, and any beverages in the workroom now have a small table next to the desk but below desk height.