I was out of my room for a while this morning, and when I came back, the door was hard to open. This is bad, because it can only mean one thing--a ferret has gotten out, and played under the mat inside the door.
So, I got to put a lot of things back in their proper places, put the ferret back in his cage, and figure out why my computer was emitting an extended, repeated beeping.
Then, I noticed that the cup of water that had been on my desk was now on the floor, and its contents were in my keyboard. Hence, there was a short circuit somewhere, and the computer thought keys were being pressed. So, I took the keyboard apart, dried everything off, cleaned out under/around all the keys (pretty nasty after 5 years, lemme tell you), and now I'm quite familiar with the inner workings of my keyboard.
Unfortunately, on plugging it back in, while most of the keys worked fine, a few did not. Tab, A, and Space, for example. So apart it came again, noted discoloration along several circuit paths, cleaned all contact and path surfaces with alcohol as best I could, reassembled, same problem.
So now I'm on an old Packard Bell keyboard I happened to have lying around. I don't like it as much--noisier, \ key moved, no Windows key, beige instead of black--but as all of its keys work, I suppose it'll have to do until I can replace or figure out how to fix the other one.