Greatest Hits Week Continues

I wrote this originally in 1998. Things have changed a lot since then and yet so very little. It is clear from this piece (prior to revision) that I was an even bigger fan of both run on sentences and sentence fragments then as I am now. It is also clear that I had some of the same challenges with respect to my writing and typing skills. Please to enjoy a piece originally (and inexplicably) entitled, A Different Spin.
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Despite the amount of time I spend typing, I do not type the way I was taught to type in school. I must have taken a typing class in school, as it was a requirement for even getting past middle school. I don’t have a lot of memories from that era, but I have a college degree hanging on my wall, so I think it is a safe assumption that I got out of middle school. It is bad when you are simply trying to type “Hey, you, how are you,” and instead, you type “Her oy, hore oy.” I type a lot in my professional life and as a hobby. How is it I never learned how to type?

I have worked on computers since Commodore’s finest machines running on tape drives with beautiful screens that displayed all the color you wanted (as long as it was monochromatic green or brown). Yet, for all my years of dependence on the keyboard, including a brief stint with the High school newspaper and all the papers I wrote in college, (mine and the ones I was paid to write), the closest to typing I have come is being an amazing hunter and pecker (there’s a mean joke in there somewhere). So I’m functional, but I have to look at the keyboard in order to type with any alacrity.

As a consequence of my poor typing, my keyboards wear out in some pretty obvious places. For instance, on this machine, I now have a “acksp c” button where the backspace key used to be and an “aps lo” where the Caps lock key should be. “How is your Caps lock key worn, Bill? Don’t you only use that occasionally?” You’d think so, but I hit it so often inadvertently that it too has proven there is no immunity to my wrath. I have the unfortunate problem of being a keyboard pounder, too. So my keyboards usually submit pretty quickly to my ham-handedness. I can ruin a perfectly good computer keyboard inside of a year due simply to my lack of skill and my lack of deftness of touch.

Those of you who are regular readers, (hi, Mom!), know I don’t spend a great deal of time editing or proofreading my blentries. This is mostly because I know what I meant and since I am the proofreader, I don’t see my errors until they are pointed out to me. I don’t check my grammar against the APA or University of Chicago guides. I write for fun. I am proud of my dynamic communication abilities. I can mix it up with almost anyone, but for the love of God if you think the final draft is bad, you should see the scratch copy! Yes people, the things you read are originally rife with complicated spelling errors, and poor grammar. By the time I pour over them, and sweat and revise and obsess, they are only marginally better. This very phenomenon prompted my spell checker to quit. Not to fail, but to quit. There was a note on my screen this morning from my spell check application. It follows:

“Bill, enough is enough. I have done all I can for you. You have to want to change, and I see no effort. I can’t continue on this way. A relationship is supposed to be a two way street, not a one way highway to crazy town.

“What the hell am I supposed to do with ‘sdfqaofl’? Exactly what taxonomy or logic would you like to apply to that mess that would lead to a cromulent suggestion? I try so hard, hoping you will change, but not two lines later, there’s ‘b;kjfh[‘. A semicolon and a bracket? Dammit, Bill, you’re a smart man… what word includes a semicolon and a bracket? I have had enough!

“I have left you for a 50 year-old data entry professional. She relies on me for what I am, and aide, a helpful friend. Not the crutch you took me for. I’m sorry to leave you on your own. I hope someday you will learn, or find another spell checker who will take your kind of abuse.”

Needless to say, I deserve it. (Keep in mind, I wrote this log originally in October of 1998. While most of it still rings very true, I have updated it for the modern era. There were some pretty dated aspects of it, like me being single, smoking cigarettes, living alone and some hilarious old-tech references of the kind that make movies like Hackers and The Net become irrelevant almost immediately upon being released.) The conclusion I came to then is the same as the one I come to now. Namely, I am lazy. Learning to type seems a lot like work. I love music. I performed for years at a fairly high level with some people of distinction. I never learned to read music or play an instrument.

I love to volunteer, it makes me feel good and makes me feel like I am doing something good. If I am doing for free and doing it for benefit of someone else, I am a pack mule. I can’t be stopped. But, throw a paycheck in, or call it a chore that is being performed for my own benefit and it becomes the most drudgerous (really, not a word? Don't care, leaving it in.) task there ever was. Even if doing so would improve my quality of life and work. I can’t explain it and I can't put the effort into fixing it. Is that sow rong?