Okay, the only music suitable for an announcement of this magnitude is Thus Spake Zarathustra from the 2001:A Space Odyssey soundtrack.

Are you sitting down?

My new keyboard came in today.

Oh, go ahead, laugh all you want. You neonates may think a keyboard is a keyboard is a keyboard but YOU WOULD BE SO WRONG.

I have my standards.

I am a woman who learned how to type on a machine that had BALLS, not some wimpy machine. I'm talking your IBM Selectric typewriter.

Yes, I learned to type on equipment that now resides in a museum. I am that old. It actually had little type balls, that's how you changed the typeface. We used to take the little type balls out of the machine and throw them at marauding dinosaurs all the time.

Really.

But I digress ...

For thirteen years I have been typing on my beloved Northgate keyboard, the Holy Grail of computer keyboards. Not only does it have wonderfully springy keys which gives touch typists the feedback they so desperately crave, BUT it is completely programmable.

Yes, you read that right, completely programmable.

For thirteen years my Ctrl key has been above my left shift key, which is where God intended it to be. My Alt key is below the left shift key which is where any right thinking person who can actually type would put it. And the Caps Lock key is just to the left of the space bar because ... well just because you almost never use that key, you don't need to reach it quickly with your baby finger.

And then ... then, after thirteen years, having outlived five different computers, the unthinkable happened. After thirteen years of unspeakably hard use my beloved keyboard finally began to falter. First it was the "e" key randomly sticking ... then the shift bar began to fail.

"No sweat," I thought. "I'll just call up the Northgate people and order a new one."

The only problem with that is Northgate is out of business.

It took days for me to stop trembling from the shock of that piece of news. If I was a drinking woman, it would have been binge city.

You can get used Northgate keyboards on e-Bay, but most of them are the same vintage as mine, which means their lifespan is problematic.

I had almost resigned myself to the barren wasteland of a *shudder* Microsoft keyboard when one night I started a random search on the words Northgate keyboard.

And I saw the light and it was good.

It appears I'm not the only person who loved the Northgate keyboard with a hard, hot love. Nosiree bob, I'm not. There is a small cult of us, enough that a company bought the Northgate keyboard rights and now produces it under the Avant name.

I unplugged my beloved Northgate keyboard for the last time today. I used to joke that when I died I wanted to be buried clutching it, but now we've opted for the bucket o' extra crispy route (cremation) so that's not an option.

Maybe I'll just get them to toss it in the hole with me, anyhow ... if I'm wrong and there IS an afterlife, I can't face it without a decent keyboard, eh.