My Spayed Keyboard
September 2nd, 2007
Whenever I get a new keyboard or switch jobs, the first thing I do is tear off the "Caps Lock" and "Insert" keys, leaving two convenient "Crumb Gutters." It’s a great conversation starter for my co-workers who think the tech department, out of some random act of passive aggressiveness, has given me a keyboard they fished out of the dumpster.
However that is not the case, even though I wouldn’t put it past them.
If I may diverge for a minute, I always thought "Crumb Gutter" would be a cool name for a dog.
Our family dog would have fit the bill. She was stone-age version of the Roomba. She would glide under our feed during dinner and clean the floor with her single-action saliva brush. Not a single dropped crumb would escape her motion sensing ability.
If I may diverge again to assist in my attempt at making a humorous point, pet owners are generally encouraged to spay or neuter their pet. As opposed to allowing their floozy of a pet to prowl the night looking for some action.
The annoying whine of a female cat can manifest one of those "crazy-thoughts" to punt the animal which is performing an amazing moon-walk slowly on to your foot.
Another term use in conversation when regarding this procedure is "fix", as in "I need to get my annoying moon-walking cat fixed."
I was thinking of the use of that work and found it odd that we regard it as fixing the animal. I mean, technically we’re breaking it. It’s as if domestic animals where created by nature broken, and only by the divine hand of man can we "fix" these poor animals from ever procreating again.
Anyway back to my keyboard.
I have never used Caps Lock, since I don’t program in COBOL, and have never found a use for the Insert key. In addition to them being completely useless, they actually get in my way…
A lot…
In the middle of writing some code all of a sudden I’ll notice my awesome foreach clause becomes foreACH. I would have to guess a Cap Lock reduces my efficiency anywhere between 10% and 30%.
So I fix my keyboard In the same way we "fix" animals.
By breaking them.
