Like most enlightened geeks, I love freeze spray. Err, canned air. The stuff you use to blow dust out of your computer’s fan. It’s very handy in that use.

But turn it up side down and you’re blowing something cold enough to give you frostbite. This is the off-label use, and it probably accounts for a three-quarters of what freeze spray–canned air, I mean–is used for. You can harass friends (this is actually pretty dangerous), or deal with misbehaving components. My external hard drive, which has been acting flaky, is running extremely warm, to the point that I worry I might burn myself if I touch it again. So I hit it with some freeze spray. (This is probably not sound practice: I have a feeling hard drives don’t like going from 110+ degrees to -30 in a second’s time. But then again, a short blast of freeze spray doesn’t do much but lower the temperature slightly.

The real problem, though, is inhalant abuse. I’m really not sure why people would do this, as it’s so incredibly useful that you’d have to already be high to think it was a good idea to waste it. But companies have started adding a “bitterant.” I know for two reasons. The first is that they mention it on the label. The second is that the bitterant floats around the room. After cooling down the hard drive, I had a disgusting bitter taste in my mouth. So now, as a legitimate user of their product, I’m trying to find ways to get it without bitterant. Because it leaves me disgusted every time I use it.