admin
Last Tuesday, I decided to embark on a quest to clean my desk, a heroic endeavor that had been postponed since the dawn of time—or at least since last month. Armed with wipes and a vacuum, I took on the dust bunnies and snack crumbs that had long claimed my keyboard as their kingdom. Mid-cleaning, I found an old gummy bear wedged between the keys, which, after some thought, I realized had probably been there since the last time I attempted to work. As I triumphantly tossed it in the trash, I heard a strange, sad sound: my keyboard softly clicking, almost as if it were weeping for its fallen comrade.
In that moment, I couldn’t help but imagine my keyboard as a tiny, sentient being, mourning the loss of its sugary friend. I pictured it holding a tiny funeral, complete with a tiny speech about friendship and the importance of not letting snacks fall into the abyss of the “Q” key. I mean, who knew keyboards had such emotional depth? As I tried to stifle my laughter, I realized that maybe my keyboard had a point—its life mattered too, especially when it was suffering through days of greasy pizza and coffee spills. And here I thought I was the one in charge!
K
I’ve been using computers for 30+ years and I don’t think I’ve ever pressed the scroll lock key
S
I only press the NumbLock key because Ive accidentally pressed the NumbLock key and need to switch it back.
T
The computers at my workplace annoyingly turn Numblock off every time they restart. I smash that key so hard when I shouldn’t have to press it at all!
B
You can change this in the BIOS. Make an IT ticket and request the change if you can’t access it.
N
And that’s how they justify their existence
D
To be fair, if IT does not appear to be needed, then they have actually been doing a great job. At my job, IT is short staffed and dear god it is VERY clear to me how important and understaffed they are. Doesn’t help that some of IT is not good at their job.
E
As an IT person, I agree.
P
I only just noticed this past week all of our HP minipcs are coming with that turned off. An annoying discovery for sure.
C
Or regedit, if you have access to that.
W
You can only give users so much power my man.
R
Where is this bios you speak of?
W
For real? And because I just put it in a presentation at work. It’s the thing that comes up before windows. Manufacturer BIOS keys Dell: F2 or F12. HP: F10, Esc, or F1. Asus: F2 or Del. Lenovo: F1, F2, or Enter. Acer: F2 or Del.
D
It infuriates me that there hasn’t been a single adopted button press to enter bios across all of them
S
Dell not using Del should be a crime.
A
There is. You just kinda lay your forearm across the top of the keyboard, as it starts up. Makes an awful noise but works on all systems.
D
There’s plenty of computers that have this BIOS setting… and ignore it.
Z
Bios setting, you could try to ask IT to change it.
G
We had a tech refresh at work, and sound was turned off in bios. We complained and the LAN shop guys were like “we don’t know either, give us a week and we will figure it out”. Even our squadron was getting annoyed at no sound. Took me 5 minutes on the phone after my weekend to get the password from the warranty number and get everybody up and running. A week later LAN shop sends the email saying it was a bios setting they needed to change. Those clowns wonder why their contract wasn’t renewed and a new company got it instead.
M
I worked with software that would turn on caps lock, but not activate the caps lock light on the keyboard. I was constantly randomly typing in all caps. I complained to IT. I came in the next day and they’d replaced my keyboard with one that didn’t have a light for caps lock.
X
It could be worse. I have to remote into a 2nd computer for manuals. And that VM has Numlock off as default, so my physical computer has it on and the VM has it off. And they both switch when you press Numlock…
K
Turn numlock off right before connecting and switch back after connecting, now both of them are the way you want.
X
I already do. But it’s a beat the clock situation between signing in with credentials and the VM opening up. Sometimes I remember in time, most of the time I don’t.
X
NumLock. NumbLock made me question myself though.
F
It’s for enabling the num block
A
the Numb Block
A
It was autorun in wow for some reason
M
> for some reason It was autorun in EverQuest. There’s probably other games too but EQ would have been the game the WoW devs were most looking at as WoW was going to try to compete with it. The reason why Numlock was autorun was because these were the days before WASD was standard and it was not uncommon to use the numpad for movement.
L
Both my desktop and laptop automatically turns off numlock after shutdown. Annoying when enter windows password
O
Try pressing it on your colleague’s computer when they have Excel open. They’ll never figure it out.
T
Thanks Satan
K
I’ve pressed it on and off repeatedly while trying to figure out what it actually does. Then I promptly forget for another decade.
M
On Excel, it switches the arrow keys’ behaviour between moving the cell selector and scrolling the screen.
K
Straight in the memory hole that goes. I’ll see y’all in another 10 years.
M
!remindme 10 years
I
It’s mostly for Excel.
–
You really don’t need to think about it unless you are a programmer/sys admin. Its main function is when the mouse is not available and arrow keys are the only way to navigate.
M
On purpose…
C
Which is why it’s great for assigning global hotkeys.
Z
I HAVE pressed it by accident once. It fucked up Excel and wasted an hour of my time. I rip it off so I can’t press it by accident anymore.
S
I press it along with numlock and capslock to make the fun lights blink
C
It summons the wish granting gnome.
S
I have to Everytime I turn on my PC, otherwise my mouse wheel will click everything. It’s annoying as hell. My cat jumped onto my keyboard one day and my mouse just clucks when I scroll. I tried to Google it but nothing will work lol.
S
I have a KVM switch and double tapping scroll lock switches computers. I have used it almost every day for almost 2 decades, and I guess the folks at the KVM switch design meetings were like you. lol.
F
Back in the day when most keyboards still had the scroll lock indicator, it was also very common to use it as an input layout indicator under Linux. en_US: led off, ko_KR: led on. We’d still switch by Ctrl+Shift, but at least the led itself had a use
N
That tracks. It’s about 30 years ago when the scroll wheel starts to be ubiquitous on mouse design in late 90s, making “Scroll Lock” key pretty much obsolete (toggles the arrow keys from moving the keyboard cursor to scrolling the document). Honestly, I think most modern applications don’t even support it. But before that it was pretty handy in documents when you needed to scroll the page and didn’t want to move the keyboard cursor.
A
As a wizard, it’s been a nice extra layer of defense after our spells went digital.
R
I remapped caps lock to scroll lock, so I don’t hit that stupid key accidentally anymore.
P
I used to use when compiling Pascal back inte days. But I also used the turbo button to slow things down to be able to see what happened while compiling. Yes, I’m ”turbo button” years old.
L
It’s useful if you use VNC a lot. At least in UltraVNC.
O
There must have been some German management sim from the 90s that used scroll lock.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings