Look, it's MacGyver! No, wait, it's Paul!

"Braver Than Most...Smarter Than the Rest"  

If you are of a certain age, you've heard of the t.v. show MacGyver, and perhaps even used the term "MacGyvered." I thought of that show yesterday when Paul told me how he'd made a literal band-aid repair to a laptop.

Wikipedia describes MacGyver as "a resourceful agent...able to solve complex problems with everyday materials he finds at hand, along with his ever-present duct tape and Swiss Army knife." Paul's been known to use duct tape as well, but in this particular case he used a band-aid. We sometimes talk of fixes being "just a band aid," but in this case, that was a good thing!

Monique's laptop keyboard, and also Jesse's, were acting very strangely. Here's Jesse's description: "About 50% of the time I press "e" on the keyboard I get "poiurewq". I also get "\;lkjfdsa" when I press on other letters I get "\; lkjfdsa". When I press "c" it activates the microphone and takes me to the previous browser page." How weird is that? Jesse, displaying some detective finesse of his own, sent us a link to a tech forum where others wrote about a "tape kit" you could order from Lenovo (the maker of our laptops).

The issue was this: The ribbon connecting the laptop keyboard to the laptop itself had a hole worn into it from rubbing against a sharp piece of metal protruding from the laptop frame, causing the keys to short out. The "tape kit" fix was a piece of adhesive material with some padding which you place over the sharp metal, preventing it from creating the hole.

Paul ordered the tape kit, but that would take 2-3 days to get here, so on Friday he went up to San Francisco, opened up Monique's laptop, and put a band-aid over the sharp metal. Who needs an official tape kit when you're MacGyver? Paul just snipped a band aid to size and -- voila! -- problem solved. He "MacGyvered" that thing!

There you go, "smarter than the rest," indeed