June 6th 2021

Today I have the most boring work-place injury to report on:

My wrist hurts and it’s all because of mango chutney.

It all started a few weeks ago when I was eating a meal deal at my desk. I’m not the kind of person who gets a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar with my meal deal, you see. So on this occasion I got an Indian Snack Selection. Bhaji. Samosa. Mango chutney dipping sauce.

(If you’re interested, the sandwich was chicken salad and the drink was an innocent smoothie. A solid 7/10 meal deal)

Anyway, maybe you can see where this is going. Maybe you’re wondering why it’s going there at all. Same.

So yeah I spilled some mango chutney on my keyboard. That’s the start of this story.

After I spilled the mango chutney, most of my keys stopped working. They were all stuck together, as you can imagine. So for some reason I decided to clean it off with a wet wipe.

No, making electronics wet is usually not a good idea.

No, I am not a smart man.

So I wiped all the mango chutney off, but then the keys still didn’t work because they were all wet and frazzled. And then they short circuited so that somehow I was always pressing both alt and shift, and so any time I pressed escape my laptop turned off.

After a few days, most of the keys returned to full use. Except one.

The only key on my keyboard that doesn’t work now is the V key.

I should have mentioned before now that it is my Bluetooth keyboard on which I spilled the chutney. My laptop is in the dock to the side of my desk. The V key on my laptop keyboard still works.

And so that means that any time I am typing a word that contains the letter V, I have to type up until that point, then reach over my desk to the other keyboard, and press the letter V.

V is not a common letter. But it’s not super uncommon either. It’s a four point scrabble word. So it’s not common like an E (1 point), or rare like a Q (10 points). It exists in quite a few common words. Like “have” and, uhhhhh… “haven’t”, and…. well now that you’ve put me under pressure I can’t think of any.

You’ve!!! I just used one by accident. Although I guess that’s still just “have”. Never mind.

Never!! I did it again!!!

Anyway.

The worst part about losing the letter V is that I can’t Ctrl + V to paste anything. So I spend a lot of time right clicking my mouse to paste things instead.

And so, a combination of the increased right clicks, and the leaning across my desk to type on the alternative keyboard, has given me some RSI-feels in my right wrist.

Until tomorrow, and that, I’d imagine, is the most boring story you’ve ever read.

Jacn