grantwarkentin.com

There’s a little red spider living in my keyboard.

Hang on a sec, I’ll see if I can get him. tydjm789dtghm xdfgnawer

Nope. Missed. He’s too fast. And there are too many places for him to hide. And lots of parasites to feed on. That’s the problem with Mac keyboards – they’re white, which looks great when they’re new, but makes it easy to see all the inevitable grime, crumbs, pencil lead, paper clips, hair, coffee stains, fried chicken (I kid you not) and that “gunk” of mysterious origin.

There he is – dfhbdnd3756

Nope. Missed again.

This guy’s hard to kill. He pops up, taunts me, declares a jihad on my corpulent, decadent Western fingers and disappears.

I think I’ll call him Osama bin Spider. There he is again, on the number pad! 32. -+. 0.2659999999999

Missed again. This spider is good. But tragedy – there was collateral damage this time. The number 9 was killed in the decisive air strike by my fingers. I will go on television and issue a carefully-worded apology to the rest of the residents of the number pad province. My fingers will be more compassionate and endeavour to win the hearts and minds of the rest of the keyboard keys, in the hopes that they will surrender Osama bin Spider to justice.

Meanwhile, we will rebuild. I have plucked another number 9 from a keyboard in the backroom technology graveyard. It’s as good as new, at least until the next airstrike.

Maybe it’s time to try another tactic. I just noticed something disturbing. All my pounding on the keyboard has disturbed Osama bin Spider’s eggs, which now appear to be hatching. Tiny little red spiders are crawling around – gross! I think I’ll call them the Spiderban. Or the Talib-nids. I can’t just get rid of them – the more I type, the more come out. The harder I type, the faster they move. This is terrible!

Time for a massive counter-insurgency offensive. Here it comes, you disgusting Talib-nids!

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That kind of worked, but now they’re all holed up under the F-keys. I’m afraid to hit those because I might launch all sorts of applications at once and crash my computer. Maybe I’ll just leave them alone for now. But I can’t back off, because then they’ll take over my entire keyboard and cover all the vowels and consonants in a web of injustice.

I think I know how American General Stanley McChrystal feels. Now, how did he get out of running the war in Afghanistan? Oh yeah. Bad-mouth the president in a magazine no one takes too seriously, apologize and resign. It’s foolproof.

Here goes. APPLE SUCKS!

Can I get assigned to a different keyboard now?

Hmmm, didn’t work. Maybe I’ll just have to get up off my butt and go get the canned air to gently blow the junk out. No destruction required.

And maybe it’ll get that fried chicken out from under the space bar, too.

Originally published in the Campbell River Mirror, June 25, 2010

Looks almost like what came out in my boy's diaper this morning.

I knew the boy was too quiet.

Out of my sight for a few minutes, he had climbed up on to the kitchen table and started playing with his sister’s play foam, one of the presents from her weekend birthday party.

The stuff is small styrofoam balls, held together with magic glue that doesn’t stick to your fingers. It’s a bit like playing with the mix for Rice Krispies squares, before you bake it. It’s actually a lot of fun.

He seemed OK, just pulling it apart and sticking it back together, so I let him play with it on the floor beside me while I worked on my website.

I looked down a minute later and he was tonguing a great wad of green and yellow foam out of his mouth.

I grabbed him and despite his attempts to escape, bite off my finger and burst my eardrums, I picked the rest out of his mouth. I put the foam away.

This morning, he filled two diapers with little balls of coloured styrofoam. I was horrified, but had to laugh. Guess he swallowed a bunch when I wasn’t looking. Maybe that space-age magic glue will help clean out his garbage guts.

We didn’t try and salvage the foam that came out in his diaper, in case anyone was wondering.

The most awesome image ever.

It’s funny because it’s true. It also makes me sad because it’s true.

A friend sent me this link to webcams at the LHC facility (see previous post).

Maybe I was wrong and the earth is doomed after all. Only time will tell… except as Stargate: SG1 taught us, a black hole can dilate time, so maybe we’ll never know we’re being ripped apart by an event horizon until it’s too late! Aaaugh!