Your Keyboard Is What You Eat 

Eric Gunnerson over at Microsoft proposes the following test:

Lift up your keyboard, turn it over and shake.

Yuck.

This reminds me of a job I had in college. I worked at MSOE's Technical Support Center which, among many other things, maintained many of the computer labs on campus. One of the jobs I had during the summer, and between trimesters was to clean the lab computers.

That meant scrubbing down the cases (which people felt the need to write on) with industrial foaming cleaner, and also cleaning the keyboards. The keys would generally be black with grime and dirt by the end of a trimester. There would old soda, crumbs, hair, and other unrecognizable bits between the keys as well. As a result of this experience, I generally keep my keyboards incredibly clean. I don't eat over them, and am very careful with anything I drink around them. I also wash my hands (a skill many of my fellow students apparently never mastered) so that the keys don't get that layer of dirt they so often have.

I'm proud to report that nothing fell out of my keyboard this morning.