I Couldn't C For a While

No, I haven't gotten lazy writing, I wasn't blind or anything. My laptop's C key didn't work.

I never really though about how important almost every key in a computer keyboard is until today. Especially if you're spend a good portion of your day coding.

I first noticed it while trying to change directories in the Terminal. I typed the command "cd projects" only to have an error message sent back to me "-bash: d: command not found". d? Sure enough, I looked at what I typed and it said "d projets". From that moment, every time I hit the C key and nothing happened, a little part of me died. I restarted the computer a couple of times. Booted Windows. Booted Ubuntu again. It did not work.

Even if it was only a key, it felt horrible. Could this be just the begging followed by other parts of hardware failing? The hard drive? The memory? *gasp* The processor??? It's not a new laptop, but it is by no means that old. I bought it almost 3 years ago.

So naturally, I opened it up. The thought of finding the problem in plain sight was very present in my mind, you know how very little reason you can have when you're freaking out. I had never taken out the keyboard off of my laptop before, so I took off every piece of cover I could find trying to find a big label that said "take off keyboard here" or something like that. There was no such thing, of course. So I had to google it. After finally taking it off, I still believed the problem was going to be right in front of my eyes. It wasn't. The back of the keyboard was all covered up. All I could do was blow on it and clean it.... and amazingly, that did the trick.

Long story short, it wasn't hardware failure, it was probably just accumulated dust. But that was a horrible hour. I actually started thinking that I was going to need to take a separate keyboard with me everywhere I took my laptop.

Anyway... have a good day :D