My phone rings.
No caller ID.
Grr.
Probably Barb, that happens.
Me: What?
Her: Is your computer OK?
Me: You mean the internet - I dunno, I've been
typing in a local editor for the last hour.
Hold on.

Pointy/clicky/browsy...

Me: Internet's fine, what the matter?
Her: I need you to come here.
Me: I don't support Windows, wait for Ben
to come home.
Her: JUST COME HERE!!!!
Me: Do I gotta?
Her: Yes!
Me: Fine, coming...

I walk into her office, she starts saying something about
strange typing.

Me: Did you reboot before calling me?

Her: Yes. (starts to babble about the symptoms).

Me: Shhhh! Move, let me sit down.
Her: (as she gets up) Ok, but I just want to
Me: Shhhh! I don't wanna hear it. Just give
me a second.

Alt-Tab does not work. No Alt-anything works.
Control-Escape goes to Windows menu.
Notepad executes, but immediately jumbs to menus
and dialog boxes as I type regular keys.

Barb's a smoker. And she eats by the computer. In
a dark room. And her overflowing ashtray is next to
the keyboard.

Her keyboard is one of my good IBMs. Or WAS.
And it has a LOT of ashes embedded under the keys.
And who knows what else.

We swap it out with a crappy Compaq.
It works.
She whines - THIS KEYBOARD SUCKS!

Me: Yup - That's what you get when you destroy the good
ones. Not like I've gonna give you another one to kill.
You can clean the old one - it should work.