I AM NOT A SMART MAN.

My hands sweat a lot. As a consequence, my laptop is often covered in an unpleasant, sticky dirt-sweat skin. So before I started working this morning, I decided to do something about it. I'm in Portland, staying at the Embassy Suites, so I don't have my normal electronic cleaning spray. Instead, in some sort of early morning fog, I took some napkins, wet them down and then added some of the nearest cleaning solution I could find. Shampoo.

Now, at the time, my brain was telling me that shampoo is the same as soap, which is the same as whatever that blue stuff is that I usually use to clean my computer. So I scrub off the laptop, then go at it again with a wet napkin--sans shampoo-- before drying it with yet another napkin. Not the most sophisticated of cleaning techniques, but I thought it would be sufficient for clearing my computer of my dirty hand-slime.

What it actually did was break my touch pad. I'm not sure if the shampoo washed something off the touch pad, formed a protective film over the touch pad or if I simply used too much water, thus drowning the touch pad. But one thing was certain, touching the touch pad no longer caused the arrow to move on the screen.

While this was terrible and kept me from doing the work I needed to do, there was something worse: the prospect of having to go to IT and tell them that I broke my computer. How? By washing it off. With what? With shampoo. Yes, ladies and gentleman, my brain told me that my hair and my computer were of a similar enough build that I could use the same substance to wash them both.

A few hours later, I guess after the shampoo dried off, the touch pad began working again. Thank lord.