Adventures in Editing

One of my work-at-home gigs is editing articles. Generally, the articles aren't too bad-just minor changes or adding a few words here and there to get close enough to the required word count. This batch was pretty bad, though, so it took me longer than usual to edit.

I have had issues with my netbook for some time. Specifically, it gets hot and the fan won't kick in. This may or may not be due to the fact that a child knocked a can of Mountain Dew onto it. Mr. Snarky tried to clean it out with electronic cleaner, which seemed to work fairly well. Until. The space bar stopped working. I obviously cannot edit without a space bar.

So Mr. Snarky takes the space bar key off. He finds that a piece underneath the space bar has shifted out of position. The technical name for this piece is "tiny cone shaped doohickey" or TCSD. It is very small and looks like an earring back, sort of. As he readjusted it and prepared to put the space bar back on, the TCSD flew up into the air. And promptly disappeared. FAIL!

After digging through the carpet with a flashlight, muttering words that should have made the carpet pile stand straight up, neither of us came up with the TCSD. Together, we made the decision that since I never use the right-hand ALT key, we would remove the TCSD from underneath it and put it under the space bar. Worked like a charm. We still haven't found the lost TCSD. I don't know where it went. Maybe to the land of missing socks.

Then I had to finish the editing batch, which I did just a little late. At 4:30 AM. God, I was so tired and my brain was fried. Adventures in editing. Yay!