I'm having a weird intermittent problem - when I'm typing on my laptop, the following problems suddenly happen:
- all new letters typed are caps (without cap lock on)
- using the touchpad to reposition the cursor selects a paragraph around the current cursor placement, everything above or below
- the right mouse button stops working

Nothing I try can get rid of these annoying symptoms. If I switch to another application, the symptoms remain - for example, if I open Control Panel, using the touchpad selects multiple icons instead of just the one I am trying to open, which makes troubleshooting difficult. It might be happening because of some keystroke combination (such as hitting ctrl or brushing the touchpad) but I can't figure out what is the cause or how to reverse it. Anyone seen this or have suggestions?

If you happen to have the "Keyboard Status Applet" installed, it can cause such problems quite easily. Are you using KDE? If so, then the applet would show up as a series of squares, each with a different mark in it, somewhere in your KDE (access) Panel.