Three and a half years. 1,000,000 words in 2009 alone, not counting blogs, e-mails, posts, and instant messages. Nearly 350,000 words so far in 2010, again not counting blogs and such. God only knows how many cats have wandered across it, slept on it, batted at it, or otherwise abused it.
And this, my loyal blog minions, is what all of that does to a laptop keyboard:
Your eyes don't deceive you. (Though that mark on the left half of the space bar is actually a reflection of my fat forehead while I was snapping the picture.) I couldn't quite photographically documentalize just how much my thumb has beaten a groove into the space bar, but you can kind of see it just right of center. For that matter, you should see the marks in my forearms from resting on the edge of my laptop for hours on end...haven't been able to get pictures of that yet.Since I type by touch, the missing letters aren't really an issue. However, when the shift key suddenly goes careening off the keyboard...again...it does tend to interrupt my train of thought. Ditto when the Ctrl key rebels and decides to either stick, not work, or both. Considering how often I use the shift and Ctrl keys, this is a royal pain in the ass. Now, theoretically I could just start using the shift and Ctrl keys on the right side of the keyboard, since they are so untouched they're almost virginal.
You would think I could do this.
You would be wrong.
I type using like four or five fingers total. 95 words per minute, but I only use...hell, I'm not even sure. Whenever I try to pay attention to which fingers I'm using, I can't type. I know I use both ring fingers and my left middle finger, plus my pinky to hit the now-rebellious shift and Ctrl keys, then my thumb to smack the crap out of the space bar. I have a really, really bizarre method of typing, and I'm pretty sure my right pinky doesn't even know the shift and Ctrl keys exist. My left pinky, on the other hand, has beaten the royal bejeezus out of the ones on the left, hence my current problem. Habits and bizarre methods being what they are, shifting (so to speak) to the keys on the other side would require changing the steps to this strange little dance of the digits, and we just can't have that.
So, anyway, now you've seen just how badly I abuse my office equipment in order to bring you dirty books and profound, insightful blog entries about mancandy, life in Japanistan, and James Purefoy's smirk. I hope you're all grateful.
Now. Off to bed, and tomorrow I go hunting for the elusive Perfect Keyboard (tm).
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You are not alone in the plight of the indented & worn keyboard. The one thing I can say is that I can tell that you're not a gamer, or your Q would be missing too. I draw the line when things start falling off, and that's when I replace them (obnoxiously priced though they may be.) I also do not seem to be able to grasp the concept of right hand shift/ctrl/alt. I think there's something in the setup that just accommodates the left strikes so much better.
ReplyDeleteVirginal keys, funny!
ReplyDeleteI got a new laptop a while back, and I have a habit of eating greasy foods and typing at the same time. Not fun to clean. I dropped my laptop and had to have basically the whole thing replaced, but we'll see how long this one lasts. Good luck finding a new one.