Today has been a total comedy of errors, Helly-style. I go in to the office and am wildly productive for the first hour or so, paying many bills and producing a couple of Very Important Reports. Then I spilled my Diet Coke all over my keyboard. Quick as can be, I tipped the keyboard face down over the trash can, letting the liquid drip down off it. I swabbed it upside down with paper towels and let it sit for several minutes, continuing to wipe between keys, hoping that I'd kept the spill from screwing up the keyboard.

After a while, I replaced it on the keyboard lap-drawer-thingy and tried typing. All went well. Keys responded, letters appeared. For another hour and a half, I did more work while thinking to myself, "Merciful heavens - could this BE? Could it be that for once the worst did not happen? Can it be that a minor accident has transpired, yet more foul consequences have chosen to, just this once, pass me by???"

Heh heh - no.

Soon enough, bizarre things started to happen. My "O" disappeared. I dealt with that by opening a document, finding an "O" and copying it. Every time I needed an "O", I just hit CTRL-V and pasted one. I was scooting right along when my "Q" decided to add a tab to every q and even that didn't bother me until my backspace started to put about eleven ///'s in every time I backspaced to get rid of the tab. Even then, I was not totally stymied until my delete key started to replace whatever it deleted with a numeral 9. Bloody hell! All this started while The Boss was nagging me to get this printer dock thingy hooked up because he was on the way in with pictures to print off his digital camera for a marketing piece we're doing.

It kept getting worse: soon my "C" typed only "D"s, my "R" seemed to be the new escape key, various letters such as "T", "G" and "U" didn't do anything, "L" typed "L" plus a period and "W" opened Firefox's help menu even when you were in a different program (strange but true). I guess I wasn't explaining the problem very well, probably because I was aggravated after the false lull of 'all is well' because although The Boss is very smart, he couldn't seem to understand my difficulty. Once he got there, he asked again for an explanation, then shook his head and commanded, "Show me!"

For demonstration purposes, I typed "[Boss's Name] is a doodyhead" because I am very mature and also quite cognizant of the dignity afforded to my position in the company. I then highlighted "doodyhead" and pressed the delete key, which deleted "doodyhead" and replaced it with a "9" so that my sentence now read, "[Boss's Name] is a 9".

"That keyboard is BUSTED!" he declared, with more outrage and emotion than I felt was required, pointing at the offending object with a trembling digit.

"I know," I began.

"And what's more, that keyboard is a lying rat bastard!" he continued. "I am QUITE OBVIOUSLY a perfect ten! Get it replaced!"

I had formulated a plan of going to the nearest office supply megastore which, as it happens, isn't very near at all to the office. However, The Boss knew that our salesweasel was out and about on appointments and expected in to my office later on, so he hit upon the scheme of calling our salesweasel and asking him to pick up a replacement keyboard to save time. In the meanwhile, he'd take me to lunch since I couldn't get work done anyway. Our salesweasel was willing (he's the sweetest, nicest fellow) but of course, he should have known better because my involvement meant that it wouldn't be that simple at all, at all.

The poor little salesweasel went to three different places in search of a keyboard without finding one like I had before. I use what I thought was a very normal keyboard - Microsoft ergonomic, the ones that are sorta parabolic and have the keys angled up- and inward to prevent the onset of carpal-tunnel syndrome. I call them Salvadore Dali keyboards because they look kinda like the keyboard version of the soft watches to me. I had no idea it would be difficult to obtain. In response, The Boss insisted upon personally providing a very detailed description which included reading SKU numbers and model numbers off the bottom. Which I didn't understand because I thought the salesweasel knew quite well what to buy, just couldn't find it, but hey, he's The Boss.

At one point, The Boss decided it was taking too long, we'd call off the salesweasel and go together to the nearest office supply megastore (which is what I'd wanted to do in the first place) but when I called the salesweasel to tell him never mind, he was in line at CompUSA paying for the replacement he'd finally found. He reported that it wasn't quite like the one I'd poured Diet Coke upon but he thought it was an upgraded version of same, definitely ergonomic, although it was not sold alone but packaged with an upgraded spiffy mouse and therefore more expensive. The Boss told him to go ahead and buy it since three previous stores hadn't had one, my old mouse could just be a spare and so long as I had the ergonomic design, all was well. The Boss and I then left for a meeting with Pamela The Extremely Lovely and Important Banker.

When we got back, the salesweasel had been and gone. He'd left my spiffy new ergonomic keyboard, which did indeed include a new ergonomic mouse. Both wireless.

If you don't know, wireless mice and keyboards require batteries. Not included batteries.

So off The Boss and I go to this little convenience store located on the ground floor of the next building over to purchase batteries. I guess The Boss didn't trust me to buy the right batteries on my own, but since this whole mess was my fault I didn't really have grounds to argue.

Batteries in hand, we return to the office. We get everything set and realize that, thanks to Bill Gates, my new wireless accessories will not work without an installation CD, software and drivers. Yay. Well, guess what?

What with lunch and meetings and battery-buying expeditions, my screen saver is activated. Windows XP requires a password to exit the screen saver and get to the desktop and Windows proper. A password I can't enter, because I need a keyboard. Which doesn't work.

I try loading the installation disk anyway. It bypasses the screen saver and I see blue installation wizard screen. Oh frabjous day! Callou! Callay! But wait! What's this?

"Registration required. Enter name and thirty-eleven digit product key code from disk label".

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH! If you know me personally, you know that one of my major temper triggers is when something really simple, straightforward and normal is utterly impossible for me to accomplish.

On the bright side, The Boss let me go home early, I ate four truffles and now I'm blogging happily away on the wireless keyboard with the wireless mouse which works because they are Alan's and go with Alan's cute little wee Mac Mini.