In a similar vein -- my daughter knocked a glass of orange juice over our laptop keyboard.

Soon after, we thought my wife had a virus that was deleting all her email messages. Subsequently discovered that the 'Del' key was sticking :-(

Fortunately nothing too important was lost.

Take care out there.

marks

When I first got a machine with XP Pro installed, I was playing with it after I got evreything hooked up. Really enjoying it as an upgrade from WIN98. Then, I started to write a letter to a friend and all of a suddent it started typing garbled things, even when I wasn't typing. I rebooted and went back to the letter and the same thing happened. After an hour or two of troubleshooting, I discovered that the speech recognition was turned on and it was picking up the TV audio from the next room! Did I feel like an idiot or what?

A neighbor asked me to look at his computer system because he was having problems with his mouse. I walked over to his house found that he was trying his best to move the cursor around to select something. He told me that since this morning the mouse seemed to be moving exactly opposite of what he wanted to click on. He tried re-booting but that didn't help. Well, it turned out that he had a new wireless mouse with graceful little curves that fit your hand very well -- even if you are holding it backwards...

One problem solved -- one very embarrassed neighbor ;-)

Many years ago I worked in a computershop in Copenhagen, and we had just sold this brand new PC with all bells and wistels to a guy a friday afternoon.
The next morning he came with it and was really upset. He had tried to put a 31/2" floppy in the drive and it would not go in !?! He was really mad and asked for an on the spot repair. I said that I would of course check the problem and change the floppy drive to a new one, so I took the PC out in the back.

I dismounted the floppy drive just to discover that there was a cookie inside that was stuck. I took both the drive and the cookie to the man and showed it to him. He then remembered the childring having thoose cookies the night before and that one of them apparently had put one in the floppy drive. He was all calm and embaresed now :-)

/Ulf

Hmmph, I've never had any of that happen, so I can't post anything.

I was working as a sound mixer last year for the PBS show NOVA Science Now, and had to do .mp3 timecode transcriptions of the interviews and upload them every night. One channel was boom/lav mixed, and the other was timecode. A day or two after the gig was finished I noticed one of the channels on my computer wasn't working. I figured the audio card had gone bad and pulled it out and tried the motherboard audio. Same problem. Then I realized I had panned the audio to the right channel to not have to listen to the timecode when I was checking my .mp3s on the Nova gig. Felt really stupid. Just glad it was my internet computer rather than the NLE that I dismantled.

David

I dismounted the floppy drive just to discover that there was a cookie inside that was stuck.

At least they didn't put the cookie in the cup holder (a.k.a. CD-ROM drive)...

What a great bunch of stories...

but seriously - these crazy things are truly a part of any media manipulators' story. It's because we are ALL Pioneers in the greatest media revolution in the history of mankind.
Yeah... we're sorta like the guys and gals in those wooden wheeled covered wagons.
Nothing is standardized, except to the widest of interpretations.
Everything any damn good is BRAND NEW!!
And that's weird to someone who grew up in the age of "Planned Obsolescence". Yes kiddees - there was actually a period of such little change and growth, that manufaturers spent money and time figuring out ways to MAKE us upgrade.
Today - it's upgrade or fail -

So these are the flames that forge the survivors.
These are the trials that separate the "men from the boys" ("and women from the chicks")
They're awfully funny to tell once they are over... but the roads are filled with glass and are painful to walk.

...oh... and BudWzr -- yer in denial -

best to all - I'm feeling much better now - everything is up and running - new footage to show, soon.

there is a fine line between a mouse and a rat..Yours just crossed that line..get a new mouse

About 4 years ago I added a server fan to cool my rig, I removed the rear plate ( you know the plate that you remove to install your graphcs card?) A real mouse got inside during Winter to warm and to nest. He pee'd on my first 60 GB SATA drive's controller board and when I switched on the next day the mixed smell of acrid urine and burned electronics fill my nostrils. A small trickle of sweat ran down my back when ALL my drives failed to boot up. After disconecting the SATA drive the PC booted. The SATA drive had ALL my family photo's and vids and completed projects as well as ALL my movie audio media on it. The little trickle turned to lots of trickles. I removed the controller board from the HD and drove from PC shop to PC shop looking for an "old" SATA drive. SATA drives were newish so not many lying around. I eventually found one and replaced it and got all my data back.

So my story has a happy ending which reminds me, I need to make backups soon ;)

...get a new mouse

That's what I ended up having to do yesterday after scratching my head for almost an hour when my mouse started acting goofy.
I couldn't even drag desktop icons around.
After downloading the latest drivers for it and not fixing the problem, I smacked myself in the head, swapped it with a spare (sorry kids!!) and was back in business :-)

Mike

A couple of weekends ago I got a frantic call from the station that a computer that controls our on-air playout automation system had gone nuts, and data entered into boxes was being modified or wiped out on its own. This computer is controlled by remote access from a central operating location elsewhere. The operator was trying to reboot the machine to try to gain control of it, but could not even do that.

When I got in, I first tried the obvious, like looking at the equipment that interfaced the computer to the remote access equipment, but it appeared to be OK. I manually hit the power button, and the computer shut down gracefully. When I powered it back up, it came up with all kinds of errors in POST - something about memory overflow and keyboard errors.

Without a long explanation of our setup, let me just say that the computer also had a keyboard and mouse in another room on a longview. I tried resetting both ends of the longview without any success. Then I did what I should have done to begin with - inspect that keyboard and mouse.

Someone had come by and dropped a station operating log RIGHT ON TOP of the keyboard, and the space key was being constantly pressed by the weight of the weekend and Monday logs! No wonder the poor control operator 200 miles away couldn't control anything!

So, don't feel bad - it happens to all of us.

Great story! Thanks for sharing.

Years ago at a radio station where I used to work there a morning man who heated up his sandwich in a warm part of some electrical equipment in master control.
No microwaves in those days.
After his shift each day he would sign off and grab his warm morning snack.
And every morning at that time the station would go off the air momentarily.
Turns out he had to open a door which in tern disconnected the power for safety reasons and cut off the feed to the transmitter.
True story.

Like the day all my remotes in the living room stopped working.... It drove me nuts until I found a remote control under a book I had carelessly put down on the couch. The book activated a button and the continuous signal just blocked all others.

Do garage door remotes count here?

Like the kind that, if your wife keeps hers in the console between the 2 front seats, along with more crap than you can ever imagine, it eventually gets its momentary-switch button pushed in and jammed so each time you pick up your remote to open or close the door, the door starts going the other way as soon as you let go of your button?

And it takes you several teeth-grinding, hair-pulling days to stumble on the answer by wondering if her remote has the same problem as yours?

That should count here, right?

A few years ago in SA while everyone turned over to a prime time soapy on SABC in the middle of a dramatic scene they were treated to an eye ball of hard core porn
Apparently someone decided to make a copy of his favorite porn tape during the broadcast and pushed the wrong button

When ever I goof up I think of that guy and say OK I didn’t do so bad

Today (in Australia) one of the TV networks crossed live to a major Bank's trading room for a stock report during the News; in the background was another trader checking out some porn on his monitor - brilliant!