a salad lad; a lass asks a sad dad

[mr_bad_example]

Both my high school and college offered typing classes, but I never took one. I was going to be a cop; why on earth would I need to know how to type? (That makes two wrong choices I made in my adolescence.)(Three if you count not asking the hot New Wave German exchange student to senior prom.) As I went through college I began spending more and more time online, and I developed my own weird system of pecking away at the keyboard, but I never actually learned how to touch-type. This is not nearly as hilarious as gismonda seems to think it is.

A couple of years ago, I bought a copy of Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing. I never got past the first couple of lessons; I found it patronizing. (That fucking caterpillar game...) I never owned a Dreamcast, so I never got to try The Typing of the Dead (as God is my witness, that is an actual game).

So, for the past couple of years I've just been sucking it up and dealing with the secret shame of being the only person in the software industry who never learned to type. Until this week. I had my first actual, real-live typing class.

So far, I've learned just enough to royally screw up my ability to enter text in any way, shape, or form.

Comments

[anterastilis.livejournal.com]

Mavis Beacon!!!

Whoa, what a blast from the past!!!!

Mavis Beacon taught me how to type. Honestly, taking that typing class in high school (and it still was a typing class...not a keyboarding/computer wrangling class) was the BEST thing I've ever done. That, and working as a waitress through high school.

My mother once told me that if a woman can type and if she can wait tables, then she can go anywhere in the world. She was right. I've fallen back on those two skills more times than I can count!

So thanks to Mavis Beacon, I'm the powerhouse that I am today.

[archangelsk.livejournal.com]

I totally hated the vim and vigor unit, but don't regret having taken the course (one semester in high school). Mavis Beacon is more fun when she lets me play the racing game or the space invaders one.

[somesuch.livejournal.com]

Just think, if you'd gone to the prom with the Hot New Wave German Exchange Student, you could be stuck in Augsburg today, forced to be efficient and listen to Kraftwerk twenty-two hours a day