control-freak

Yesterday, I spilled a limited amount of water on my wireless keyboard. The keyboard seemed fully functional after a quick "upside-down shake" to relive the keyboard of the water. However, over night, the board lost it's "control" keys. Yes, keys. Neither control key presently functions, nor does the "caps lock" key... Which doesn't make any sense!!

The water was only spilled on the right side of the keyboard, keys like B N M < >, H J K L : " Enter and Shift got hit with the water. However, for some unclear reason, the left and right control keys as well as the caps lock key are now not functional. It's quite confusing!!

Since I lost my CTRL key, I've started to notice how often I use it... CTRL + T for a new tab, CTRL + F for find. CTRL + A for select all, CTRL + F# (in linux) for the TTY sessions, CTRL + Backspace to delete entire words instead of individual characters, CTRL + PgUP/PgDWN for moving between the different tabs! I couldn't even lock my computer this morning (CTRL + L in linux) nor log into my Windows box (requires CTRL + ALT + DEL to access the log on prompt). ~sigh, a sad life it is for the IT pro who can't use the control key. I even thought about looking through linux to see if I could find a mapping program to make something like the Windows key map to the CTRL key, at least until I can get a new keyboard, but I'm holding off on doing that, just because of the trouble it can cause.

My wireless keyboard, a logitech itouch, is quite old, I purchased it back when I was still in high school, using it sparingly until I got well into college, around 2004 I believe. And now it's finally starting to kick the bucket it seems. I've found a decently cheap and decently workable keyboard/mouse combo at NewEgg/Walmart, so I'll be looking into that later this week. The problem is that it is only available online... No "in-store inventory" was found based on the info from either website. It seems that I'll have to purchase a new one online to drop by staples/walmart to see what they have laying around. ~sigh.

For now, I think I can deal with out a CTRL and Caps Lock key... At least for a few days. With wet electronics, it's quite possible the system will come back to me tomorrow! Besides, ensuring that a new keyboard and mouse will work correctly with linux (via wireless over a usb wireless receiver) can be quite a pain and all too frequently involves returns. ~sigh. According to several websites however, they are indicating the EX110 Logitech Cordless Desktop works just fine over USB in Linux.