What a Dork

I am the BIGGEST dork.

The other night I had a problem with my monitor. All the USB ports stopped working. I spent the better part of three hours trying to fix it, and luckily I did. (Thank you, Dell forums, even though you didn't answer my question I'm good at intuiting stuff.)

So tonight I'm working along, and all of a sudden, my spacebar goes nuts. It's constantly spacing. Won't let me switch programs. Won't shut down, because the spacing is holding it at "Stand By."

I shook the keyboard upside down. Popped off the space button. TOOK OUT THE BATTERIES. Nothing worked.

I shut the machine down and powered it back up, and it worked okay for a while. Then my IMs s t ar t e d l oo k i n g like t hi s.

So I shut down again. Then I realized, and I felt SOO STOOPID.

I have an Alphasmart. It was plugged in.

Those of you who are writers or in the education profession know exactly where this is going. For those who aren't, an Alphasmart is a word processor. You type your text into it, then connect it to your computer via a USB cable and hit SEND and it "types" all your words into your document or e-mail or whatever.

The thing is, when you connect the Alphasmart, it has a message on its screen that says, "Attached to PC, emulating keyboard."

Uh, yeah. Emulating keyboard. As in, you can use it as a keyboard. As in, if you type on it, what you type will appear in your document.

As in, if a heavy folder is resting on the space bar, it's gonna screw you up.

Sheesh, I'm a dork.