Curiosity killed the geek
We geeks are curious people. That's probably what makes us smart -- we like to know how things work and learn in the process. it's this very quality that led me to conduct dangerous experiments with old household lamps, pieces of wood and live 200v sockets as a child. I often wonder how I survived into adulthood.
Today i had a good reminder of this trait of my personality which led me to think that maybe, just maybe the positive side effects of this adorable quirk do not quite out-measure the negative ones.
Someone mentioned "do not try to take the keys off of your a mac laptop, they're a pain to put back on".
A natural reaction, of course, was me snapping off the shift key on my powerbook. "Hey, how hard could it be!"
I can now say with much authority that powerbook keys are indeed, a bitch to put back on (if you think "bitch" is a bad word you should have been near me during the twenty minutes it took me to figure out how the damn pieces fit back together -- the damn, frail, plastic completely non-intuitive pieces).
I now have a working shift key again and a strong conviction that a natural curiosity is not always a good thing -- until the next time someone says something challenging, like "nuclear reactors are kind of tough to build".
Comments
At least you didn't bake your PowerBook: http://homepage.mac.com/aaronsteele/PhotoAlbum22.html
Now those keys. Those keys would have been a bitch to put back on. :-)
Posted by: david | October 14, 2004 08:35 PM
Nuclear reactors are easy:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/037550351X
(great read, btw, you should pick it up)
Posted by: Derek | October 14, 2004 09:44 PM
"Do not try to take the monitor off of your mac laptop, it's a pain to put back on".
Posted by: Dave | October 14, 2004 11:17 PM
I love that the guy who baked it, well, the thing still works. :-)
Posted by: Erik J. Barzeski | October 14, 2004 11:36 PM
Yeah but see the difference is now it is called a 'Thing' where before it was a 'PowerBook' ...
Posted by: Yashima | October 15, 2004 03:49 AM
So now you get to add Mac laptop keyboard service engineer to your résumé.
Hint: charge by the hour
Posted by: Bluesmoon | October 15, 2004 04:15 AM
The bake the powerbook story reminds me...
I have a XBox at home and one of the problems on the early ones or on cheap games disks is you would sometimes come across a disk that the XBox drive can't read. The error you get is the disk is dirty or damaged and you can look at the disk all you want and won't see a thing wrong with it.
One day I get a cheap sample disk and sure enough no matter how much I wiped the surface, I would get the dirty disk error. So I look at the Internet for a solution.
One of the solutions the I saw on some web sites was to boil the game disk. I told my wife and one day when I was at work she decided to give it a try. Boiled some water, stuck the disk in for 1 min and made sure the disk didn't touch the sides and stuck the disk on a paper towel to dry.
The disk has worked perfectly since. You never know until you try.
Posted by: pbw | October 15, 2004 12:49 PM
Once you've popped the keys off and on a few times, you'll actually find it pretty easy. The biggest issue is when the scissoring plastic bits pop apart, and you have to figure out how they go back together. Also, it helps to have a nice small pick or other pokey device to seat the scissor plastic bits back to the board.
Posted by: Joe Mullins | October 15, 2004 02:48 PM
I hear it's really hard to pay your mortgage when you send half of your paychecks to some guy one of your IMC Rush-fan buddies tried to set you up with.
Posted by: Paul | October 15, 2004 06:02 PM
Hey, I'd like to quote this post in a talk I'm giving at linux bangalore 2004. It will, of course, be attributed to you.
Posted by: Bluesmoon | November 11, 2004 02:32 PM