![\"\"](\"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/IMG_0631-e1276227389534.jpg\" "\\"Any")
<\/a><\/p>\nYes, it’s grubby. And yes, this keyboard really is old enough to not have Windows keys. Actually, it’s about twice that old. Twenty years ago I needed a new keyboard, so I bought a cheap one. (Back then, $200 or more was cheap for a keyboard.) I’m not really sure what I’m going to do when it expires because I’ve never used a keyboard since that I liked. They don’t make keyboards like this any more, with discrete key switches and a distinct tactile click when the key goes down. (Well, they do, but they’re big heavy IBM keyboards that are so noisy they can be heard three blocks away.)<\/p>\n
And yes, that key between the Ctrl and Alt keys is labelled “Any”.<\/p>\n
The true irony of this is that this key doesn’t actually do anything. No key-code is generated when you press it, so pressing the “Any” key in response to “Press any key to continue” will result in a distinct lack of continuation.<\/p>\n
We all have our favourite tech support stories, the “my cup holder is broken” cases, the “it works better if you plug it in” cases. So I wonder how many of us have actually had someone ask where the Any key was?<\/p>\n
Once I got called out to look at a printer that apparently wasn’t working. The data plug was upside down. It was a D-shell plug, and they only go in one way, but there it was.<\/p>\n
I turned it over and it worked fine.<\/p>\n
I know you don’t believe me. I wouldn’t believe me. But it did happen – the male plug was a wee bit bigger than it should have been, and only had a few pins installed which in turn were a bit loose, and the combination of these faults meant it actually went together and seated tightly.<\/p>\n
Many, many moons ago, back in the days of serial terminals and multiplexors, the boss came by, saying, “I just had a call from the Auckland office. They say all their terminals are down.” I muttered something unprintable, and wandered into the comms room.<\/p>\n
Looking at the multiplexor, I noted the “RA” light flashing. Remote Alarm, meaning the mux couldn’t see the mux at the other end. Probably a comms fault, hardly the first time. Moving up the rack, the NTU on the data circuit to Auckland indicated that it couldn’t see its partner at the other end.<\/p>\n
That could just about explain it.<\/p>\n
So I ambled off in the direction of the technicians’ office. Back then the telco stuff was handled by the people who looked after the phones, and that meant the techs. So I told Evans, the head tech of my findings, and he picked up the phone to put through a fault call.<\/p>\n
Later that day, I ran into Evans in the corridor. “What’s up with that Auckland circuit?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Oh the fault man went out there. There’s no power.”<\/p>\n
“What, to the NTU?”<\/p>\n
“Nah, to the building.”\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is a picture of my keyboard: Yes, it’s grubby. And yes, this keyboard really is old enough to not have Windows keys. Actually, it’s about twice that old. Twenty years ago I needed a new keyboard, so I bought a cheap one. (Back then, $200 or more was cheap for a keyboard.) I’m not […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17,21,31],"class_list":["post-76","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perversity","tag-hardware","tag-murphys-law","tag-tech-support"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/don.nz.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}