Last night I was working from home, overseeing one end of a data migration. I run a screen share application on my laptop to operate my work computer, and it works out fairly well despite the occasional delay in screen refreshing.
That is, it worked well enough until everything went higgledy-piggledy after the export and I had to react quickly.
As I typed commands into my bash shell, the Mac search pop-up kept intruding. After much cursing and forceful typing, I worked out that my work computer was under the belief that whenever I hit the space bar I was also pressing the command key — a combo that triggers the global search box.
Reckoning that there was something goofy about the shared screen session, I disconnected and started up a new session.
Still with the searching.
More cursing and smashing of keys.
I discovered that hitting the space bar twice in rapid succession managed to trick the computer into producing a single space before popping up the infernal search. Progress, of a sort.
I fired off a few commands, typing space-space-esc (the escape dismissed the pop-up) between words. Then I waited anxiously for word that things were back under control. Eventually that came, and I disconnected from my computer and went to bed.
This morning I came in to work and saw that my screen was still active. It should have gone into sleep mode shortly after I had disconnected. I approached and saw that my chair had been pushed in, and one arm was resting on… the command key!
The cleaning staff had pushed my chair out of the way to get to my trash can. A high-tech problem caused by a low-tech solution.
Tonight, before I left, I set my trash can out in the open. Just in case.
Tales of the Atomic Zombie 