[ale] Today I put the keys back in order

[Jeff Lightner]

Back in the dawn of time (a/k/a my high school years) I ended up with a
free period so chose typing just for the hell of it.  (Back then they
were actual typewriters.  The only keyboards for computers were on
keypunch machines and I didn't see one of those until college.)  I was
horrible at it and only did about 30 WPM by the end of the semester. 

However, once I started working on PCs (actual IBM PCs mind you as well
as an Adam at home) the typing put me ahead of many others and these
days I type rather rapidly.  Amazing what 20+ years of practice does for
one.  

What I've noticed though is more and more I do weird things like add "d"
to the end of words that end in "e" (as if they were all past tensed
er... tense) and also have a tendency to type the first word that fits
the sound such as "their" when I mean "there" or "to" when I mean "two".
What aggravates me is the grammar checkers will let that kind of stuff
through with no complaint but then try to force me to change sentences
with perfectly good syntax.

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of
Richard Bronosky
Sent: Friday, July 31, 2009 8:28 AM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts - Yes! We run Linux!
Subject: [ale] Today I put the keys back in order

After typing incorrectly for 25 years I finally got serious about
touch typing. I took my favorite orthopedic keyboard (from datadesk)
and sanded the ink off of the keys. It was the most miserable 2 weeks
of my career, but I learned very quickly. In the following years I
noticed that my performance on company issued laptops was terrible. I
switch to a regular keyboard (which I also sanded) at my desk and
found that I still had my speed. (I also found that I wasn't nearly as
uncomfortable since learning to type correctly, so I've kept it.) The
problem was the temptation to look at the keys on the laptop. I
couldn't fight it. I couldn't sand them. I tried stickers, then
white-out, but they failed. The solution was to pull the keys off,
scramble them and pop then back on. You just have to make sure you
transpose the F and J keys because of the nubs. I did that for a year
and think I'm ready to try the temptress again. I'd suggest this
exercise to anytone you know who REALLY wants to be an elite hacker.

-- 
Sent from my mobile device

.!# RichardBronosky #!.
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