Several months ago, I spilled $beverage on the keyboard of my laptop, and it has become progressively more gummy. This week, while at a customer site, one of my cow-orkers showed me how to remove the keyboard from my laptop without breaking anything.

This morning, I removed it, cleaned under it with a damp cloth, and it is much much better, although not perfect. Of course, the speakers still don’t work, but I expect I destroyed that pretty well.

So, for the record, and for the general benefit of the internet (I searched for this information earlier, and came up blank) here’s the goods.

Compaq Evo N600c, although I imagine this is true for any Compaq laptop during certain eras.

Step 1: Flip over, unscrew the screw in the center of the laptop. It’s in a recessed hole, and has a picture of a keyboard and an arrow pointing to it.

Step 2: With a something, slide back the 4 thingies that clip the keyboard down. They are between the esc and F1, between F4 and F5, between F8 and F9, and between F12 and delete.

Step 3: Gently pry at one corner, and the entire keyboard should lift out.

Step 4: There are two places where cables attach the keyboard to the computer. They are weird. It’s just a ribbon cable. There’s no kind of plug on the end. The ribbon slides into a grooved track and somehow magically makes contact. When you pull them out, you will be sure that you have detached the cable from the plug, but it’s ok, that’s supposed to happen.

At this point, you can clean gum from the underside of the keyboard, or replace the keyboard, or whatever it is that you wanted to do.

I’m listening to a recording of Strauss Waltzes, performed by the Vienna Festival Orchestra, Rudolph Langer conducting. I don’t know the year of this recording, but I think it’s reasonable to assume it was at least 40 years ago, perhaps more, and that this particular LP has not been played in at least the last 15 years.

I’m not able to find this recording anywhere online. It’s by Camelot, but there’s no copyright information on it at all.

Anyways, I’ve converted it to CD, and it sounds absolutely wonderful. This is my first big success in converting LPs to CD. Prior to this, they always sounded washed out, or distorted, or unpleasant in some other way. This time I think I got the settings just right on both ends of the transaction, and it is great. (Yes, I’m sure that people with better hearing than I would notice that it’s not quite perfect. They don’t have to listen to it. It sounds absolutely wonderful to me.)

To the folks that said I could obtain MP3s of songs elsewhere, well, it’s LPs like this that I’m really interested in. Out of print, probably completely unavailable at any price, and totally worth the effort.

I’ve wasted an inordinate amount of time this morning looking for a turn table.

Me: Do you carry any turntables?
Sales Guy: Perhaps you should check in furniture.
Me: — blank stare —
Me: You’re kidding, right?
S.G.: — blank stare —
S.G.: For setting a TV on, right?
Me: A turntable. LPs. Vinyl. Records.
S.G.: (Smirking) You want to play records?
Me: Yes. I’m looking for an audio turntable. To play records.
S.G.: Uh. No. We don’t carry those.

*sigh*

Last night I watched Distorted Morality which is a talk given by Noam Chomsky, given at Harvard University. I did not watch the question and answer session, but perhaps I will do so later.

The premise of the talk is that it is logically inconsistent to speak of a war on terrorism, when that “war” itself consists almost entirely of things which fit the US Government definition of the term terrorism. He talks at great length about the acts committed by the United States Government, in 1985 and in the months following September 11, 2001, which satisfy the US Government definition of terrorism, but were ostensibly done in order to combat terrorism. He also takes pains to accept the government’s definition of terms, so that these events would not instead be termed “aggression” by the UN definition, and thus be subject to the kind of trials held in Nuremburg.

This is fascinating stuff, and is accessible to pretty much anyone – by which I mean that he doesn’t use convoluted arguments or philosophies, but just presents the facts as any literate person can access them in the historical record, and applies the US Government’s own definitions to those facts.

*HIGHLY* recommended viewing. Only an hour. Well worth any time that you might otherwise spend watching CSI or Survivor.

“The ringtone market is worth between $1.5bn and $3.5bn a year.”

In the name of all that’s sane, why?

People are spending 3 BILLION dollars on making their phone make a different sound when it rings, but we can’t seem to fund the arts in schools.

Really, though, it’s stats like this that make me look at my life and wonder what trivial worthless things I’m spending my money on where I probably shouldn’t. These things add up.

I find it profoundly irritating when places have websites that are utterly devoid of useful information. Like location and hours of business, for example. “Call for more information” is *not* something that I want to see on a website.

Yes, I know that at least one of mine says that. Well, I find that profoundly irritating too.

I rear-ended a Chevy Silverado on the way back to the office after lunch. 🙁 Looked away for a moment, and bang. I’m really irritated at myself. One second of carelessness, and I’ll pay higher insurance premiums for who knows how many years.

On the bright side, they were nice people, and we had a friendly chat while waiting for Da Law.

Just very annoyed at my stupidity.

Oh, and I scratched my Paraguay license plate. Bah.

Now I’m in a really bad mood.

Since a number of people have responded with “I didn’t know there was one”, I thought I’d give some more information.

On Saturday, we went to the Aviation Museum of Kentucky. Yes, the website is annoying and lacking in information. In particular, how to get to it (heading west on Man O War, take the last left before the main entrance to the airport), what their hours are (Monday through Saturday, 10am to 5pm) or what’s there (about 15 modern and antique airplanes, and various exhibits about Kentucky pilots from the various wars). We particularly liked the helicopter which you could climb into and monkey with the controls, and I learned more about how helicopters work in the 10 minutes of playing with the controls than in all I’ve read about them.

Oh, they also have a couple “flight simulators” that the kids can get in and fly around. That was very cool.

I mentioned that Morbus had started a game.

Well, somehow, he persuaded me to play the game, and it’s oddly … odd. But also very fun.

One of the things that I enjoy the most about writing fiction is how it seems every so slightly out of your control. That is, when you write fiction, unexpected things happen. With collaborative fiction, this is amplified a little bit. With Ghyll, it’s utter anarchy. And a *ton* of fun. Completely unexpected things are happening all the time, and the story really seems to take on a life of its own quite apart from the authors.

I’m really looking forward to how it’s going to turn out.

Shane has an amusing, but oddly nostalgic (for me, that is), summary of his life thus far. So apparently I’m going to be an OLD MAN pretty soon here too. Next month, in fact. While I don’t really think of myself as an OLD MAN just yet, I have myself been thinking more about the events of the past, and thinking I might write about some of them before I’m too old and feeble to open the Geritol bottle. Darned kids these days.