Sometimes I forget to engage my PawSense software, and the cat gets
one over on me. The other day I came home from lunch and found she had
renamed one of my Outlook folders with an extraordinarily long string of
the letter "P", plus the magification on the active window
was set so high I could see a few giant letters and the window close
button.
Of course this led me to consider other solutions.
I use — and adore — the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard. It uses
a wireless transceiver to communicate with my laptop. The transceiver is a
teeny tiny USB dongle. I briefly considered simply unplugging it and putting
it in my pocket when I leave my desk for long periods, but the unit is so
tiny that it could easily fall out of my pocket when, say, getting my keys
out or something, and I'd never know it. Plus, the transceiver and keyboard
are paired by some means below the software level; one can't just buy a
replacement transceiver and pair it to the keyboard. So any solution involving
arresting the keyboard must exclude removal of the device.
Why not just lock my keyboard? Doing that engages the screen saver or
background, too. Certainly a very good idea — good enough to be SOP
at an office where prying eyes are about. But I'm working from home, and
want to leave certain communication software up and visible. I know how
nitpicky this is. But not everybody uses only one machine or one location
for everything.
My ideal answer came in the form of a USB hub my daughter had bought
from Amazon. Made by a company called Sabrent,
it is a four-port USB hub with the added feature of a button above each port.
Push the button in to engage the port beneath it. This allows me to
disconnect the transceiver from the keyboard with the touch of a button, and without
physically separating the transceiver from the port. AWESOME!
It's probably the next best thing to a switch directly on the keyboard
to turn it off (which I wish the Sculpt actually had).
Now my cat can sit her fat butt on my keyboard while I'm not around and
no input will be passed into the laptop. It's SUCH a beautiful thing.
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