In what might have been the most exciting moment of my weekend, a small spider came running across my desk. Not wanting to share my personal space with the tiny trespasser, I grabbed a slightly used napkin and attempted to squash him. My blow was blocked by the corner of my notepad he was skirting against, and his direction changed from west, to due south. With a flying leap he lept off the front my my desk and landed on my keyboard and immediately found cover under the #9 key.

In order to record this momentous moment in history I immediately tweeted about it.

A small spider just ran across my desk. When I tried to kill it it fell onto my keyboard and is hiding under my #9 key. That didn’t kill it.

With a scared arachnid now taking refuge in my computer peripheral I do what every sane person would do, and rush off to find my camera.

The spider is still moving around under the key and I come to the realization that I’m going to have to get it out of there. So I call up my trust friend Google who said it would be fairly easy.

So I took off the key, hoping and praying that a) I would not break my keyboard, and b) the spider would not strike out and attempt to kill me, now that I had tried unsuccessfully to kill it, twice.

I unplugged my keyboard and carefully removed the key. As the key popped out I discovered that the spider had been trapped in the scissors lever. By this time (with all the key movement) the spider was dead. I carefully removed the spider from the keyboard and threw him into the trash. I then carefully cleaned his remaining two legs out of the keyboard scissor lever thingy.

Pushing the key back into place my adventure came to an easy end.

Things to be learned from my adventure:

1. Spiders are small… well, they can be small. Very small.

2. Searching Apple.com support communities for “Spider in Keyboard” yields no useful results.

3. Keyboards are bad places to hide, especially if you are a bug.

Here are a few ideas for different clock designs I have had in the past:

This is a clock, disguised as a thermometer.
(Picture courtesy Morton Fox via flickr)

This is a clock, disguised as a compass.
(Picture courtesy Leo Reynolds via flickr)

This clock only has a second hand.
(Picture courtesy mag3737 via flickr)

How would you disguise a clock?

Q: My Mighty Mouse stopped scrolling down. Is there any easy way to fix this?

A: This is the most common defect that Apple’s Mighty Mouse has. While it is impossible to fix, many users just spin their mouse around, and live with the fact that they can’t scroll up.*

Q: My keyboard is all grimy and looks disgusting. What is the best way to clean it off?

A: Usually a dirty keyboard is not worth the cost of sending it to the Keyboard Cleaners. If you’re looking to get a few more months or years out of an old keyboard, I would suggest giving it a fresh coat of paint. Avoid spray paint, as it may not fully cover all the surfaces. Use a three inch brush; I recommend firetruck red.**

Q: You just ruined my computer…

A: Did you know that dry erase markers work wonderfully on glass? They do, and it comes off perfectly.*** This means you can take a dry erase marker and draw on your friend’s computer screen! Then when they get mad at you, you can just wipe it off!**** If you’re not sure if they have a glass screen or not, just make a small mark somewhere near the middle of the screen, then try to wipe it off.***** If it comes off, then the screen is glass and you can continue to draw. If it doesn’t come off, then the screen probably isn’t glass, and maybe you should look around for some new friends.*******

*It doesn’t actually work that way… sorry.
**I’m not responsible for keyboards ruined with paint… …but I might have to do a photo shoot sometime…
***This actually is true.
****This is potentially true, but I wouldn’t necessarily try it.
*****This is possibly the worst advice I have ever written on my blog.
******Provided you are still alive enough to make more friends.