After 10 Years

I'm typing this on my first, and essentially only keyboard that I've ever owned. I bought it when I assembled my first PC back when Cyrix was making a run against Intel. It's an ergonomic keyboard, and it has a built in touchpad. For both of those reasons I bought it, and for both of those reasons people who use my keyboard hate it.

But lately it had been having trouble with the space bar. Kind of an issuewhenyoursentenceslook like this. So I opened it up, and I should have taken a picture, but let me say I never want to dig up dead people. Seeing 10 year old hair and skin/ dust/ food crumbs was super gross. So I brushed that out, gave the main keys a bath in the sink, and pulled off the back. I found that my keyboard was pretty advanced, not a cheap printed circuit board like I'm accustomed to finding, no, inside was three layers of plastic (Mylar) and a different layer of the circuit was printed on each sheet. The magic happens when you press a key, the middle layer acts as an insulator, and doesn't conduct very well, but when the three layers are pinched under the pressure of a key, the top layer makes a connection with the bottom, and viola! key press action.

While I was in there, I made sure to realign the layers under the space bar. Screwed it all together, put the keys back on, and magically my space bar works again! So tonight I raise my glass to the best keyboard a guy could ask for, here's to 10 more years, cheers!