dsandler.org

(I’ve been exclusively making withdrawals from the First Lazyweb Bank of late, so here’s a deposit.)

About a week ago I opened up E’s mom’s laptop (a Dell Inspiron 2200) and began to enter a URL. Instead of www, it came out weweew. I soon found that a number of keys had all somehow become tied to their neighbors; pressing one would cause key events for both to be posted to the system, and both letters would appear. Trying to type w s x e d c might result in we sd xc ew ds cx, things like that. (Yes, I’m being extra-verbose here to try to help Google out.)

The keyboard was very clean; these keys were not physically stuck together, but rather electrically bound. Using the built-in hardware diagnostics (very handy; hold down fn while booting), I identified the following conjoined pairs of keys: 2 and 3; w and e; s and d; x and c; F1 and F2; and CAPS LOCK and F3.

I was afraid that a new keyboard would be required (which, fortunately, you can buy from Dell), but there was an easier fix. Some casting about the Dell support forums revealed that the keyboard connector ribbon has a predilection for coming loose underneath the keyboard, and that re-seating it can fix problems like these. Armed with Dell’s keyboard removal instructions, I pulled out the thin little ribbon, dusted it off, slid it carefully back in, and put the system back together.

And it now types www again.

Luigi the Car has posted an audio review (MP3, 1:40, 690K) of the new Pixar movie “Cars.”

(An explanation of this nonsense continues inside.)

Photo: My new niece

Back from Dallas. Wow.

Random notes from this (very busy) week:

We’ve rented a place up in town. It’s sort of Midtown South, or Museam District East, depending on how you look at it. If you drive past a nice old building with the word “GRANDA” on the front in tile, that’s us.

The apartment’s not big enough for all our stuff, of course (especially since we kept having to acquire more stuff to fill the house up enough to be attractive enough to sell). We’re starting to sell off our old furniture on Houston Craigslist (which is a lot more active than it was last year around this time). If you’re in H-town and want bookshelves or a beautiful drafting table, get in touch.

The first casualty: Our kitchen table and chairs, which we bought in Boston for our first apartment, in 1999 California for our second apartment, in 2000. [Update 4/22: E reminds me that in Boston we had a built-in banquette outside the kitchen, so we had no need for a table; when we got to California we had to break down and get one.] We sold it to a couple of nice Rice kids who appreciated the deep satisfaction I got from Tetris-ing the entire set into their Mazda 6.

E is up in Dallas this weekend visiting K, who is due some time next month. That means I have the weekend to catch up on Battlestar Galactica. (Which means I already blew through the remaining episodes of the season tonight. Good fracking stuff.)

So, there you go. Just so you know I didn’t fall in a hole, or something.