insert expletives here

I have a new laptop with WinXP. It does not want to play nicely with my old keyboard with the split alphanumeric pad and sundry other ergonomic features. It demonstrates this by every so often deciding that the Shift key is glued down, or developing a stammer, or thinking that the mouse has the left button held down permanently. This morning the random weirdnesses got too much for me to bear, and I swapped over to the USB keyboard that was included with my desktop purchased five years ago. Five years ago it was snarled at for not being an ergonomic keyboard and tossed into the bits cupboard, where it has been ever since. I plugged it in intending to use it as a stopgap until I can get to Fry's for some serious keyboard trialling, and to double-check that the problem is indeed the fact that the old keyboard, henceforth to be known as Preciousss, is so old that it needs an adaptor to plug into a PS/2 port, never mind a USB port. As has been noted in the past, I have RSI and Preciousss suited my hands so well that it was very definitely a case of "You will have to pry it from my cold dead hands."

I hate this keyboard. This keyboard doth suck galaxies through a straw. This isn't just "using a strange keyboard" syndrome. This is not just the keys being in the wrong place (and let us not mention the fact that it is a US keyboard, and thus does indeed have the keys in the wrong place). This is lack of the misnamed "wrist rest".

In fact, what I rest on the wrist rest is the base of my palms. Not while I'm actually typing, you understand, but in all those brief little pauses while I think about what to type next. Often for only half a second or so, but it's amazing the difference it makes. It gives the damaged tendons in my arms a brief rest from supporting the weight of my forearms, and it means that if I'm sensible I can type all day without problems. Just typing this entry without a wrist rest has been enough to give me early warning signs.

Preciousss has a built in rest wrist that was the ideal height, width and slope for me, but I can use a decent flat keyboard with the right wrist rest--that was the setup I had at work. But this is not a decent flat keyboard, because it assumes that the only possible adjustment that anyone would want to make to the slope of the keyboard is to raise the back so that it looks more like a typewriter. Bzzt. Wrong. If anything, I want it to be slightly lower at the back than at the front. That gives me less trouble. Preciousss actually had adjustable feet at front and rear, allowing either variation to be selected, and in several different height combinations.

I can't do any serious typing on this thing as is without risking losing the rest of the week to RSI. So it's probably back to random weirdness and rebooting every so often until I can get to the toyshop. :-(

testing, testing...

I have a new keyboard--a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000. It isn't quite the same shape as Preciousss, so I get to learn all over again exactly why the unimpaired don't really like split-and-angled keyboards. (I do remember my first encounter with a split keyboard. It was... interesting.) It's also a US keyboard, which I'm not entirely enamoured of. But it has a built-in palm rest and it's definitely more comfortable than the flat keyboard. It's also significantly quieter than Preciousss, which was always a noisy brute and was getting decidedly clacky in its old age. There were complaints from Other Half about clacky noise, so I suppose someone will be pleased.

I'm trying it with supports installed and a chair cushion, and without both, and neither is entirely satisfactory, so I can see the next wodge of cash being spent on the long-threatened but never purchased wheelie chair with height adjustment. That or a thinner cushion for the dining room chair currently pressed into service as a computer chair.

This beastie's not cheap, but it's money well spent if it suits my hands. And the old keyboard isn't going anywhere but the bits shelf - it's mechanically sound and still works perfectly well with the desktop, and I may have need of it at some point.

It has a number of interesting toys as well, like a zoom key. I'm not sure how much of this stuff I'll actually use, as there were fancy keys on the old one and I never strayed outside the standard ones in nine years of using the thing. (Yes, it is that old.) Expect further incoherent ranting as I get used to it...

wordage and Baycon con report

About 500 words on the travel tale today, and the Baycon report has reached 1700 words total, so at least 1000 words written today in spite of keyboard angst, probably more. I'm trying to get the con report done while I can still remember stuff, but it's inevitably going to be patchy. Taking notes was more than I was capable of during the weekend, even though I got the sinus congestion and migraine under control fairly rapidly. Will finish it tomorrow with any luck.