things that break

Today I learned how to put keys back on my Dell Latitude laptop. The trick is that when you knock these keys off by dropping a bowl of non-runny food on them, you can see these little white framework parts stuck to the back of the key. The right way to get a key back on is to pull those off carefully, put them in their catches on the deck of the keyboard, and then smush the key back in its spot. I tried mashing a key back in place with the little white parts still attached a couple of days ago when my husband accidentally pried one off with a screwdriver (heaven knows you can't properly blow crumbs out of a laptop without removing the keyboard), and that one doesn't quite work right.

So if you drop runny food, you're on your own. I haven't done that yet.

Also, if Vista eats your user account, and you call your brother in Tucson for help fixing it, it helps if you can tell the difference between a ; and a :. And Vista eats people's accounts with some regularity, so I guess I'm glad that's all I know about Vista.