It’s more than a few years ago, when PCs are new, parts are expensive and this pilot fish is working as a PC tech for a school district.
“One day, I was called to fix a PC at a school library,” fish says. “After I fixed the PC, I noticed the keyboard was incredibly grimy due to many little fingers typing on it.
“I snapped the keys out, shook out crumbs and dust, cleaned each key and reassembled the keyboard.”
Next day, fish gets another call from the same school library. One of the library admins is complaining that her computer shows garbage on the screen when she types.
After asking a few questions, fish concludes that the PC has either a virus or a bad motherboard. He grabs a replacement PC and heads back to the school.
But as soon as he arrives at the admin’s desk, he does a double take: All the keys on her PC’s keyboard are arranged alphabetically!
“When I asked her who did that, she explained that she had observed me cleaning the keyboard and decided to do the same,” fish sighs. “Then she got the bright idea to arrange the keys so it would be easier to find them.
“I managed to convince her that it wouldn’t work. I plugged in the keyboard from the spare PC and kept the ‘alphabetic keyboard’ to display as a trophy in my work area.”
Arrange your true tale of IT life so it’s easy for Sharky to find. Send it to me at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.