Okay people, here's the deal. I have almost completely handicapped myself in the interest of progress and under the goadings of a healthy dose of sudden peer pressure. I switched over to the dvorak keyboard layout a week ago. I've whymsied about doing it for a few years, but didn't have the gizzard for it until a couple friends plunged ahead and set about taunting me to action. In case you don't know, dvorak is a keyboard layout that is actually designed for typing as opposed to the qwerty layout that everybody uses and is a hundred year old Rev-A product that never made it out of beta testing. You don't need a new keyboard, you just have to fiddle with your control panel settings and strap on your seatbelt and helmet for the sudden messy collision with the looming brick wall of lost productivity. To which I said to myself, pffff how could I possibly be any less productive?
But it is stinging mightily. I've gone from 75 words per minute down to 14 and came to clearly appreciate something--My brain-to-keyboard efficiency level used to hover quite nicely around 90%. Now, compare that to my brain-to-mouth efficiency, which is probably more like a measley 40% with laughably sore hope of ever improving. Which means if I really want to muse on something, typing it out is one of the best ways for me to flesh it out. But not anymore buddy. I'm down to negative efficiancy numbers...if that's possible...which, I should know, since I'm the one making up the scale. Thoughts...aren't...flowing...freely......text...disjointed...
I'm counting on it getting better and being glad I suffered through this in the long run.
Bonus news: I finally fired a tranq dart into my no-test-result-mailing doctor's office today and found out that my cholesterol level had dropped in 6 weeks from 257 to 189...
BAM!!
And liver enzymes were back to normal levels for extra happiness.
So now I will rejoice by going to bed and tossling through tortuous typing dreams.
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
Peer pressure is fun! typing is not... :\
I blame *you* for this Brian!
Well, you and Matt.
Okay, and my stupid pipe-dreaming too.
aarrrrrrrgghhhh
But...why? Why bother learning Dvorak, especially since your keyboard is still (I presume) labeled in QWERTY? What benefit do you hope to derive?
Well, firstly, since I touch-type, it doesn't matter too much to me what's printed on the keys, although I wouldn't mind picking up a dvorak keyboard at some point because that couldn't help being anything but cool, and I totally hate my crummy home keyboard anyway.
Secondly, once my neurons wrap themselves around it, this layout is going to be wayyyy better; it feels like it's going to be lots easier to type. I can already tell I'm going to like the reduced finger-stretching. Nobody likes carpal tunnel syndrome, and I figure I'm investing in less wear and tear on my fingers and wrists over the long haul, while improving my typing speed so I can ramble on even more.
In the meantime, I'm just going to complain about it because right now it does suck...although not as bad as last week.