09 December 2010

Effin' "F" Key!

My son Big Bubba works in the audio-visual world. His work requires tons of bits and bytes, and he can't sit around and wait for things to happen. He therefore pretty much has to be out on the leading edge of things technical. In pursuit of the "latest and greatest" he buys a new laptop at least every couple years. I get the "hand-me-downs".

The last of these was a Dell Inspiron, on which I'm typing the note you are now reading. It has a 17 inch monitor and the most unbelievably loud, clear speakers I have ever heard on a laptop.
I love the thing, (except it's a pain when traveling).

Three months ago my fingers started catching on the F key. Now and then they'd catch solidly enough that that key would depart the keyboard. I'd curse under my breath, stop what I was doing, find the key and re-attach it by snapping it into place. About a month ago it popped off and wouldn't snap all the way home, meaning it stuck up and interfered with my fingers even more than usual. After the fourth time in one hour of chasing it down and snapping it (nearly) back in place I gave up and left it off. I'm amazed...
With it gone the keyboard looks weird, the spring and locking mechanism beneath the key are now exposed, but when I'm typing I notice absolutely NO difference!

I've begun to wonder though...
When passers-by notice my "F" key is missing, will they think I wore it out?!!
(And I guess the followup question is, did I?!!)

2 comments:

Rita said...

I had a Dell Inspiron for a few years and the hinge kinda broke, then the break caused the monitor casing to separate. I was gonna have it fixed, but then the keyboard started doing what you said.

So I bought a new laptop. When our repair guy showed up to help us get our wireless DVR hooked up to the internet and rewire our surround sound (it wasn't worth it to me to spend hours behind the cabinet figuring it out) he said replacing the keyboard on the Inspirons are just a few bucks and is easy to do. You might look into just replacing the keyboard.

And knowing your sensitivity to the F word, I'm pretty certain THAT is not what wore it out. BUT maybe Big Bubba likes to take out his frustrations on the keyboard that way.

Btw, did you read Rain's new post on her political site she had previously sworn off of? She's extremely unhappy with Obama. Amazing to me that anyone actually bought into all his campaign lies, but then again, I'm just a stupid hick, not some elistist that knows more than all those stupid Teapartiers.

CJ said...

All I could think about when I first read this was the missing 'w's off the White House keyboards...

And Rain, disappointed with Obama? Oh my. Wish I could take some sort of pleasure in that but I can't. There's too much at stake and we're all losers.

cjh