[conspire] CABAL housekeeping note: Keyboards and other parts

[Rick Moen]

Frequent CABAL people may remember that I have some garage cabinets with
semi-organised computer parts stored in them.  Both for my own purposes
and to be kind to visiting CABAL attendees, I have quite a lot, and
quite a variety, of PeeCee components in there:  mice and trackballs
(USB and PS/2), keyboards (ditto), 3.5" hard drives (single-ended SCSI,
PATA, and SATA), SCSI cables and terminators, PATA cables, SATA cables, 
all manner of bolts and other fasteners, optical drives, ATX power
supplies, RAM sticks of various sorts, PCMCIA cards, USB-connected
network port widgets, and a lot more.  

Eleven months out of a given year, the collection is a shamble, which is
something I have a medium-sided beef about:  I work hard to have everything
classified, grouped by category, bagged properly in ziplocks, and then a
CABAL meeting happens and apparently somebody just burrows through like
a raccoon and tosses stuff around.  My work keeping the collection
orderly gets destroyed.  And tends to remain that way for a long time
because re-doing the work takes quite a few hours.

This tends to piss me off, but the _other_, very specific, thing just
burns me up completely.  To which we will now turn.


Let's say you see my collection of about a dozen keyboards over in the
right-hand cabinet.  You either assume it's OK that you borrow one or
(better) ask me if it's OK, and I say 'Sure.'  You see what looks like
the one you want, about four down from the top of a pile.  Do you...

a) lift off in turn each of the four keyboards blocking access, putting
   them aside, expose the one you want and lift it out, and then place 
   the four you removed back, or

b) just yank out the keyboard you want, sideways?


Ah, maybe you see where I'm going with this.  One or more total fscking
moron has seemingly just yanked hard to free keyboards they want -- 
which, it turns out, over time breaks keyboards in the sense that
individual keys get knocked off.  If you're lucky, you re-find the key
and its mounting hardware isn't broken, so you can pop it back.  If not, 
keys are just gone, flown away somewhere and unfindable.


I don't love most of those keyboards, though I really have do tend to
lose it when I suffer loss through careless negligence.  (It's a family
history thing.  Ask me in person if you don't know why.)  But there are
specific keyboards I care about, particularly a few true-blue IBM Model
M keyboards, a legendary design that, if you have the right USB-PS/2
widget, you can keep using in the modern age.  Built like metphorical
tanks, but not indestrucible.

A few months ago, I noticed that one of my prized Model M keyboards in
that cabinet was missing several keys.  After exercising my supply of
vocabulary-enrichment terms for theology and biology, I went online and 
ordered replacements.  It's not the sort of expense that is going to
break the bank, but I resent having to do it at all.  

A week or so ago, I made another astonishing realisation.  I'm not sure
I can blame this one on a moron CABAL attendee, but it concerns me.  
Another of my IBM model M keyboards rests sideways leaning against the
table currently housing my linuxmafia.com server, and is the in-use
server keyboard on the running box.  To my astonishment, I've noticed
that the _space bar_ is now completely missing.  I'm perplexed about 
what form of goofball contact with my server -- which pretty much
everyone knows to stay the hell away from -- caused that damage.  
I have yet to order he replacement part.  Looking around the garage has
not turned up the (large) key, which is also perplexing.

Anyway, my assessment of the shambolic treatment of my parts cabinet 
and particularly my keyboards is inclining me to make two changes.

1.  Making sure everyone but me stays totally the hell out of my 
    garage cabinets.   No exceptions.

2.  What I actually should have done years ago:  After cleaning off
    each keyboard to get all the garage grit and dust off, wrap each
    keyboard individually with kitchen plastic wrap.

The plastic wrap would then serve two purposes.  It would protect each
keyboard against ambient dust and grit.  It would also make the
keyboards smoothly removable _even_ if some utter moron tries the
sideways-yanking move again.


I really cannot understand the contemptuous attitude, and the personal
incompetence, inherent in that sort of sideways keyboard-yanking that is
so _obviously_ likely to damage my property.  It's what I might expect
of a particularly dim kindergartner, but not of allegedly competent
adults.

I have been disappointed.  Again.