Pilot fish is setting up a new laptop for a client to take home and thinks it would be nice if he could find a mouse to send home with the client as well. So he roots around in the server room, where there are piles of unused equipment, and is pleased when he finds what looks like a new wireless mouse, made by a company that shall remain nameless but that’s big in software. The thing even has batteries, so he’s pretty happy as he plugs the dongle in and continues to set the laptop up.

But whenever he hits an input box, the laptop inserts a continuous string of the character “9.” He tries backspacing, but the computer is faster than he is. Thinking it’s a temporary problem with the keyboard, fish reboots. No help. He fiddles with the two “9” keys on the keypad, but that doesn’t help either.

A desperate fish heads back to the server room, where he finds a new-looking keyboard from the same company. He’s ready to give anything a try, so he gives the laptop a whirl with both the wireless keyboard and mouse. Hey presto! No more sticky keys.

Sharky vaguely recalls some promises for improved interoperability from the very company in question, but he figures it must have been just talking about software.

Sharky is platform-agnostic, so send me your true tale of IT life at sharky@computerworld.com. You can also subscribe to the Daily Shark Newsletter and read some great old tales in the Sharkives.