It was when someone else had to type something at his desk, and refused to do so.

Sometimes the conditions exist just to prevent someone from messing with their stuff. "Hah, Co-Worker X won't appropriate my work space now."

Share my pain! The keyboard in question.

I've seen quite a few like that, unfortunately. Luckily, we can surplus ours and then it's someone else's problem.

I got my first upgrade to my equipment this year; everything else came when I was hired into the current job four years ago. I thought about keeping my keyboard, but then I actually looked at it, saw how dirty it had become in four years, tried to clean it (popping off keys even), then finally gave up after an hour. Again, it was going to surplus anyway, so some poor schmuck in this state has to deal with the dirt on the keys, not me.

Apparently he'd been trying to clean his laptop keyboard, and it didn't end well.

Apparently he'd also been trying to learn something about flammable materials in chemistry class, and that obviously didn't end well, either.

Acetone? Hair dryer? That sounds like a cheap flame thrower to me.

My favorite people were the ones who claimed their house had been struck by lightning and zotzed the laptop, and when we got them in, the laptops had tire tread marks

Heh. We had one user who ran "forgot" his laptop on top of his car and "accidentally" ran it over. We think he was hoping to get a new laptop. Instead he ended up stuck with a crappy desktop for two years after that because his manager felt he wasn't responsible enough to have a laptop. Oops.

We had another user who thoroughly thrashed his laptop and then blamed it on airport security. We were all like "Right, airport security took a hammer to your laptop." Unfortunately, he was an exec so he got a replacement anyway.

TV season is just getting in full swing, so why's this board deader than dead today? You people are forcing me to be productive.

Wolfram, becasue the wednesdays are kind of dead and crappy if you don't count Veronica Mars -- and even that was kind of average for most parts.

Tom, the keyboard. How does the rest of the workplace look around this person? No, on second thought I don't -- really really don't -- want to know.

I feel better about my keyboard now. My fluff is all lint, not growing stuff. And there's certainly no slime.

But I will shake it out, just in case.

Drive in wasn't bad. But I'm the only one in my department in so far. I took some pictures of the plume of smoke with my phone, but due to a conflation of strange tech issues, I probably can't post them until lunch.

That is DISGUSTING!!! I hope someone has notified his boss about his extreme NASTINESS. EW EW EW EW EW. Not enough EW in the world.

Hey, Erika: An interview with The Man Who Is Omar.

Apparently he'd also been trying to learn something about flammable materials in chemistry class, and that obviously didn't end well, either.

It definitely was one of those moments when you want to ring up a user and ask them, "Did you know that you were almost a Darwin Award?"