Junky keys
After spending an afternoon trying to find a “valid” keyboard among the odds and sods I keep around here, I am frustrated. Either the connector was the wrong type, or the batteries were kaput, or the blasted thing was simply intermittent. Doesn’t lead to much productivity.
Let me rewind. I have a mini Mac that will, one day, become my music studio machine. Already thought this through, about a year ago, and packed it away. Today, with all the wires reconnected, I realized that waving my arms and chanting imprecations would not get me past that login gate.
There are other keyboards around here; usually on a laptop, or else dedicated to real jobs. I finally found a small Bluetooth device that can be recognized, depending on the battery level, which means that the hours and hours of system updates are now underway. But… I want to leave a working keyboard in place, for the next time.
One of my PC cheapies works, but only by fits and starts. Call it useless. I decided to undo the sixteen screws, and reseat the layers of rubber inside (whatever happened to good old IBM boards that you could also use to drive small spikes in a jam?) Turns out that what works with most of the screw on the tabletop doesn’t when I put them back. Call it torque.
And so now I’m undecided. Do I drop less than $20 for something new (and equally junky), or do I put more time into finding the balance point with this one? A conundrum, complicated by the fact that I have no idea how to send such a thing to the provincial recycling depot.
