Here begins the "Lockout Lifestylez" section of P&T. Our first topic for discussion is typing. Most of us type every day, right? I'd bet that a lot of us type pretty much ALL day. I'm definitely a heavy typer, and I also consider typing to be one of my few talents (besides dog-petting, burping, and getting lost).
Jump!
My first interactions with a keyboard came at my grandparents' house when I was probably four or five. My grandpa used to let me climb the (terrifying) spiral stairs to his home office to "play" on his computer. All I really did was bang on the keyboard wildly while the machine was off. Occasionally, he'd turn on some word processing program and I'd actually try to spell out some words, though I vividly remember struggling with the fact that the keys weren't in alphabetical order. Sometimes he'd let me print out my work, and I'd end up with a manuscript telling the tale of "AADFS;ASDJL;ASDKFJLDSFJK" or something.
Later, my family got our own home computer. I don't remember doing much formal typing practice on it until fourth grade, around the time we started typing class at school (this was 1998). We'd get shuttled once a week to the "computers room" (always plural, presumably because there were a LOT of computers in there) where Mrs. Leo would plop our little meathooks on the "home row", slide halves of cardboard boxes over the keyboard, and give us an entire story to copy before we were allowed to play games. I don't remember how long it took me, but I got QUICK with the typing. I was also one of the few kids in my class who knew how to change fonts, so I'd change that shit to "Sand" and make it take up like four pages. Never "Webdings" or anything, though. I'm not a savage. Anyway, perhaps motivated by whatever games were on the agenda, I learned to type very quickly and I've considered myself a speedy typer ever since. In middle school, my computers teacher was a lady with a faint beard, and I think I won some typing competition that took place in that game where your typing controls the speed of a little guy running on a track (and when you make a typo, he falls down). It came up again a few weeks ago, when I was visiting my girlfriend at school. We got to talking about our respective typing skills, then we got to boasting, and then I and a bunch of her roommates found an online typing game and competed and charted our scores and stuff. It was really neat. Anyway, I open this up to y'all with some discussion topics/questions:
QUESTIONS
- First, how old are you (roughly)? With that in mind, when and how did you learn to type?
- Did you guys all learn to type starting on the "home row"? Do some of you not do that anymore? (One of my best friends "hunts and pecks"-- which was a borderline obscenity in Mrs. Leo's class-- with two fingers on each hand and does it REALLY fast).
- How many words would you estimate that you type a day, whether they get read/published somewhere or not?
- Spellcheck is trying to tell me that "typer" isn't a word, but I really don't want to say "typist", ya know? Also, spellcheck is telling me that "spellcheck" isn't a word, so I think it needs to figure out its own shit before it criticizes me.
- How early on do kids learn to type these days? Some of you must have kids, though I hope that a few of you don't and don't plan to.
- Do any of y'all live in countries with weird keyboards, or have you? How about just visiting? I found it fucking impossible to type when I was in Croatia over the summer, and their keyboard just had a few letters switched.
- Um...any good typing stories?
CHALLENGE
My best score on this is 123 words per minute, 613 points (I assume the points account for any errors). I invite everybody to give it a whirl or several and post your scores. I'm certain that some of you are faster than I am.
RELEVANT KNICKS CONTENT
Twitter gives you a pretty good sense of how folks go about typing, and it's shed some light on the typing/spelling skills of our Knicks. Shawne Williams, for instance, is not especially deft with his asdfs and such. (Also, he calls Carmelo Anthony "Smells"). Shelden Williams and Josh Harrellson, meanwhile, are pretty nice with the keyboard. Roger Mason doesn't count because he's a politician. Anyway, I'm not sure Twitter's a great measure. I bet Toney Douglas is the fastest typer on the Knicks.
RELEVANT VIDEO CONTENT
A personal favorite: