Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer

The photo above is of my office this morning, not quite ready to be repainted. I've temporarily moved into Jeff's office for now, sharing his workspace. Many thanks to Scott Murray (a.k.a. "Frank") for helping move out my desk! As you can imagine, things are a little bit chaotic right now. If you haven't gotten any reply to your e-mail to me recently, I humbly beg your patience, thanks.

The FilKONtario Web site has been updated to include the fact that Michelle's the Special Author Guest next year. Woohoo, can't wait! As I mentioned before, her husband Tom (who was the one to introduce me to filk in the first place) says he'll likely be there as well.





Yesterday I challenged Blatherings readers to guess the purpose of the object above. Here are some of the guesses:

"Re: the office thingmy, I note in the zoomed picture that it has IBM embossed on it. It looks like it has something to do with rollers. Other than that, no idea. I was probably in grade school then... [ducks whatever Debbie throws] ;)" - Bryan Fullerton

"That whacky doofladget's a post-modern (WTHTM) Bat Signal!" - David Barker

"It's one of those late 1950s 'modern' design kitchen forks. The spoon for that set is even weirder." - Dave Weingart

"Going for the mundane answer I'd say it looks like a slightly oddball staple remover to me." - Lissa Allcock

"That little plastic item is hideously familiar in an I-can't-quite-remember sort of way. Something to do with 3480/3590 tape cartridges, I think... It's going to be niggling away in an irritating manner in the back of my mind until I remember, you know. ...or maybe it was to do with half-inch self-loading reel-to-reel computer tapes..." - Rick Hewett

"The mystery item is obviously half the casing of a taser. Note the fluted handgrip and one spine (the other spine would be on the other half, along with the control stud or whatever)." - Zander Nyrond

"I think I saw an IBM logo on it. I'm guessing it's a type of tool used to free jammed punchcards from card readers or keypunch machines. (We used flexible saws on ours.) Or it could be some type of shim that holds PC components apart from each other. Or it's the dreaded Ronco Fishkiller. Stick it in the fish's mouth, turn, pull, and you have yourself a perfectly filled fish." - Jim Poltrone

"It's a Klingon Dh'ebi, a concealable weapon for use by special operations teams.
Designed to look like a piece of incomprehensible office equipment, the plastic construction is immune to detection by all security scans, even those employing focused technobabblon beams. Whilst the double-bladed edge is lethal in the hands of a trained warrior.
As an added bonus, it's blunt so it hurts more..." - Phil Allcock

"It's a handy-dandy, never-go-anywhere-without-it, clip-on handle. That's right folks! With this little beauty, you'll always, literally, be able to get a handle on things. No pot holders in range? Clip! out come those brownies. Don't want to actually touch something filthy? Clip! Move it where you want it (and this baby is completely dishwasher safe!). Husband not cooperating? Clip! Dangle him out the window for a while. He'll come around! Don't wait! Act now! Operators are standing by! (Actual color, style, name, functionality, and any resemblance whatsoever with the included photo may vary.)" - Paul Kwinn

"It's a special tool for extracting jammed sample plates from a matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometer. Either that, or it's used to clean an espresso maker." - Michael Pereckas

The answer:

It's a tool for removing keys from a computer keyboard (even my technonerdboy husband Jeff didn't guess this), acquired during my first fulltime office job: programmer/analyst at the Toronto-Dominion Bank, Head Office. As far a I can recall, I used it only once: to switch keys around on my cubicle mate's keyboard as a joke (we both did it to each other, but I can't remember who came up with the idea first). The trick was to only switch two keys so that the change wasn't noticeable right away, prompting just a vague awareness for the first minutes of typing that something wasn't quite right. Ah, good times...

Other ancient tech artifacts discovered during my office purge:

- Flowchart template. Anyone out there still remember flowcharts? More significantly, how many of you still have a template or two kicking around somewhere?

- Special ruler for counting characters on the old-style computer printout.

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