They're Coming for your Keys

Let's be honest:  lots of things in our day to day lives have been under attack for awhile now.  Why?  Well, there are various reasons, some I think fairly misguided but with good intent, but sometimes I can't even wrap my head around what could possibly be the gain.  Even better, it's hard to know the 'who' and the 'when' behind the attack, and so we're all basically becoming completely paranoid 100% of the time that some mystery person(s) is going to jump on us at any moment from anywhere and for any reason.  It's kind of akin to one of my cats that's always on guard, as if some mystery animal is going to fall from the sky, perhaps by parachute, at any given moment simply with the intent to scare the living hell out of her.  Yes, it's exactly like that, actually.

So, what now, right?  It's the CTRL key.  Yes, you read that correctly...the damn CTRL key, the one on the right side of your keyboard, to be specific.  If you're like me and aren't regularly subscribed to the latest keyboard related news (and why would you be...that's quite a question in itself), you won't learn of this bizarre attack until you purchase a new, say, laptop in particular, and you'll go to do something akin to a CTRL 'A'  or a CTRL 'C' and find, low and behold, there's no CTRL key to do this with.  Yes, that's right, it's been 'repurposed', now with that annoying little Microsoft CoPilot icon, their latest invention that they're pushing on us in every new version of Windows, um, without asking us, of course.

So, then, how do you do a CTRL 'C' exactly?  Well, I guess they expect you to stray from standard typing and do it all on one hand in 2 separate annoying keystrokes...OR...right click the mouse in about 3 keystrokes.  Makes sense, huh?!  Let's slow down all productivity so that we all have access to this annoying new 'feature' that at least most of us a) didn't ask for and b) are desperately trying to remove off of our taskbars in the first place.  Wow.  Yes, this IS the world we live in now, sad to say.  We've finally become a nation of "please, break everything that's currently working more than adequately".  Hmm.

Now, there are apparently work arounds, one being installing some new program called Microsoft PowerToys.  Yes, you read that correctly...PowerToys.  I know what you're thinking, and I know exactly what that name made me think of.  Hah hah.  I can only imagine this was the developer's personal inside joke, not unlike the old "Little Mermaid" phallic symbol on the VHS tape cover ploy by a disgruntled employee.  The bad news is that the PowerToys workaround is not working on my laptop, and did I mention that this is my work laptop?!  Yes, that makes it even worse considering I use the right CTRL button about a thousand times a day in my work life.  I mean, I use the left CTRL key way less than the right one...couldn't you guys at least take that one instead??  Can we at least negotiate which key on my keyboard you will needlessly hold hostage?!  That'll probably be next,  you know...where you'll have to pay a ransom fee to get access to the keys you're used to.

And so, the moral of the story is that truly nothing is apparently safe anymore, and my cat had the right idea all along, waiting for the mystery parachute animal to fall at any second.  I've always said you can learn a lot from animals...so there.