The curious case of ‘4’

There are times in your life where you think of this :

‘Things happen for no reason at all’

It all started on a precarious day where I wanted to get things done really quickly. Even when the entire county was shut-down amid a pandemic, there was optimism flowing through my veins to get my daily work done. I am not a religious person but I do have a deja-vu when the universe sends me a sign.

I turned on my laptop, authenticated the mac with a tip of my finger — And then it began — When I opened slack to read through channel conversations, the magic number started to appear on the screen — ‘4’

Did I Press ‘4’? Of course not. Why would a grown individual seeping with confidence press ‘4’ as the first thing in the morning for no reason at all?

My tester brain got into work. Following thoughts came to my mind:

1. Did I press ‘4’?
2. Is there a locked key syndrome on the Keyboard?
3. Did I press any other weird combination on a mac which types ‘4’?
4. Did I turn on ‘Sticky Keys’?

The answer was ‘Hell No’ to all from what I remembered. Then it happened again — wherever I clicked, I saw ‘4’

I was like:

I tried to attend a zoom meeting, where i could hear the ‘dud’ ‘dud’ sound of a key being pressed while on the window.

Now I am pretty sure the key was being pressed. So I inspected the ‘4’ key on my laptop from all angles. I poked it a bit. It looked alright.

So where is this phantom ‘4’ coming from?? Grrr…

As 4 minutes passed, I was clicking randomly all over with my mouse to stop the 4 being printed all over, I ran out of options and decided to go with a universal solution thinking it might be a keyboard driver problem:

But No — I couldn't leave this mystery unsolved. I should get to the bottom of this. The Heart seeks what it wants — All these thoughts while any text field where my cursor was placed became ‘4’.

I researched about the Phantom key problems on my phone. Apparently this is very common in windows operating systems but no helpful references to mac.

I was thinking, thinking, thinking — How is a key being pressed without a connection?

blink..blink..

Then it dawned on me — ..Wire..less..key..board..my lips uttered.

I searched for my wireless Keyboard and found that my wife had cleared my workstation desk and placed my keyboard on the furniture with a set of unopened coax cables that I ordered from Comcast. I looked at where these cables were placed:

I was at a loss four words. It was a feast four the eyes.

Do you want to guess? Of course, my mind-numbing phantom ‘4’ was caused by a misplaced useless cable on top of my Bluetooth keyboard Numpad which I didn't realize was on.

It's funny but this is what I wished four right? Apparently I have fallen four this simple problem. Four a change I shouldn't think too much about it.

So food four thought — Do not leave your wireless keyboard on with a weight on top and fourget where you placed it.

Enough with the Puns. Hope this made you smile. Have a fun day!