How many IT professionals does it take to troubleshoot a mouse?

I got into work today, put all my stuff away and plugged in the old laptop. Everything was going great and it's Friday so that makes things even better! Next I logged into the hard disk encryption software, then windows started loading. I sipped some tea, cause this sometimes takes a few minutes. Then the windows login prompt came up and I assume the customary finger positions. Left hand - ring finger on Ctrl, index finger on Alt, right hand - middle finger on Delete (my daily salute to Gates) and then.....nothing. Ok, it's a Friday, I'm tired. I must have hit the wrong keys so I do it again. Nothing. Ok, this time I'm watching my fingers like a hawk to make doubly sure I'm hitting the right keys. Still nothing. Great, there's something wrong with the frickin' keyboard. But wait, the Num Lock light is on and I can toggle it on and off. So the keyboard IS responding. WTF?!?!? Now I'm getting irritated. I look at the connection in the back of the docking station. Nothing's loose. Grrr...

Then I sit down and look at the keyboard again. And noticed the scotch tape. On the left-hand Shift key. Holding it down. WTF is that doing there? So I take the tape off and voila! Ctrl+Alt+Delete magically works and I can log into Windows.

So now you know. If you hold down the Shift key while hitting Ctrl-Alt-Delete, nothing happens. No login box, nothing. I've been in the IT industry for 10 years now and I had no idea about this little trick. But I think I have a good idea who may have sabotaged my keyboard, so time to retaliate. With another piece of scotch tape. Under his mouse. Blocking the optical sensor. {evil grin} He he he.

So about an hour later he comes into work and I sit and wait to hear the tell-tale sounds of an IT professional troubleshooting a hardware issue. Gets up out of chair - moves docking station around - click, click, click - sits back down - moving the docking station again - an exasperated sigh...

That's when I decided to poke my head up and see what was going on. Convinced that his mouse isn't working, accused me of doing something (which I flatly denied as best I could) but admitted that he had no clue what I could have done to it. I was cracking up inside! Then he said that he'd have to call the help desk and ask for a new mouse. Ok - I thought - that was probably far enough. I decided to offer some "help". I asked him to pick up the mouse, make sure the optical thingy was still shining. Yup, then he put it back down. I told him he might want to look under there again. And that's when he saw the tape.

I feel vindicated! It took him 3x as long to figure out his mouse problem than it took me to figure out my keyboard problem. And now we're even. Until the next round...

I love my co-workers!