Classmate brain burp.

[notalwaysright]

Not sure if better here or in Sightings.

So, I was in my class yesterday getting ready for a lab checkoff. For reference, this class is not a first year class. It has a stupid fancy name, Windows Server Network Infrastructure and Administration. Although it's not as complicated as the name would indicate, it is still a somewhat advanced class. One of my lab partners turns to me and says,

lab partner: you know what I just learned? When you hold the shift key down it capitilizes a letter!
Me: .......... *thinks he's kidding but he's not*

Me: So this whole time you've been using the caps lock key?
lab partner: Yeah. Maybe I should take a typing class.
Me: .............Maybe.

He's a really nice guy, and I guess we all have blind spots in life where we just miss something really basic. But my brain just died. Like when my friend in high school turned to me and said "hey, I just realized why it's called SeaTac, because it's near Seattle and Tacoma!"

[Orgaloth]

Most of the staff where I work use the caps lock instead of the shift key. It seems that (in my store at least) if you're around 30+ years old, you use shift everyone else (80% of the staff) use the caps lock.

And we use computers for everything. We're constantly on computers doing orders.

[EricKei]

Well, shift. o_O

That's a new one one on me, and I've had to explain the meaning of "right click" to clients over the phone more than once...

[AccountingDrone]

*blink blink* OK .....

I suppose, my generation took typing class and actually learned to type, we didn't grow up with a computer in the house. If we had access to a computer it was generally though school.

Hell, I learned PDP 11/38 basic, we learned to do basic language programming for it as our computer education [hell, honestly, learning that primitive form of basic seems to help you understand that computers are not smart, they are like a dog or 5 year old kid ... ] Computers are rarely like what you see on TV or in movies.

Hm, no wonder some of the people I have worked with over the years were amazed that I type/word process [whichever you want to consider it] 80+ words per minute with 95% accuracy and almost no going back to correct typing errors. [Actually, one thing ADT taught me was how to hold a conversation while typing it into a DOS editing field in a customer database. Have to LOVE being in a high volume call center with the phone rolling in a new call as soon as you hang up. Drove my State Farm co-workers nuts, I went from 200+ calls per shift to a center where if you did 30 calls a day you whined about the overwork +) I killed their metrics from the day I left training and went active. I had to tell my shift lead to take me out of the metric contests because I kept winning them.] I get complaints in MMORPGs because I don't use text or game speak shortcuts, I can be in a firefight and typing full grammatical sentences =)

I will say, the assistant to the prez of my first company was an amazing typist, she sounded like a teletype running off a tape input. She did over 100 words per minute with serious accuracy. The wonders of being a secretary for over 40 years!

[BearLeeBadenaugh]

I couldn't help but shake my head at a friends teen daughter. She hunt-n-pecks on the laptop keyboard at maybe 20 wpm but came in in the top 10 at a texting competition held at Summerfest.

[Argus]

He's a really nice guy, and I guess we all have blind spots in life where we just miss something really basic.

There was an XKCD about that phenomenon: http://xkcd.com/1053/

I've been on the "wrong" side of that sort of thing enough times that I try not to shame others over it.

[Valentinian]

I stunned a co-worker at one job when he came up to talk to me as I was typing (80+ wpm) and I turned my head to reply without stopping typing.

Oh, and a friend of mine ran into a mature age student in one of his classes who also did the caps lock thing to type single capital letters. He showed the guy how to use the shift key, and he tried, but he apparently couldn't coordinate more than one finger at a time. (He wasn't quite one finger hunt-and-peck level - he used the first two fingers on each hand and his speed wasn't terrible, but he had to stare at the keyboard the whole time.)

[AH85]

Wow. I took five keyboarding classes in school. FIVE. I thought it was overkill because I was proficient in typing by the second time I took keyboarding (roughly fifth grade, which would have been c. 1995). Keyboarding was a mandatory one-semester, 1/2 credit class my freshman year. By the time I was graduating high school in 2003, they were phasing out keyboarding as a mandatory credit because just about all the incoming high school students had taken at least 2-3 keyboarding classes prior to high school. Some of these people I'm reading about here could have benefitted from all the danged classes I was stuck taking!

[notalwaysright]

I think everyone was pretty nice to him about it. The teacher was the one to notice what he was doing and point out the purpose of the shift key. I know he was so amazed about it that he told at least one other person in the class, and he didn't give him a hard time or anything, the way people do sometimes. I just did a couple online typing tests, and I get anywhere between 55-65 wpm. Not as fast as you guys! You should see my mom do 10-key, people freak out when they see her.

I can't remember taking a specific typing class, or when the first computer class that I took was. At least 1997, because I remember writing about Princess Diana's death on a computer at school. I would have been 11. However, I loved playing Typing Tutor! It was that space invader's game that made it fun. My step-dad had a computer, not sure what kind. It ran the original Prince of Persia. Maybe an Amiga. It still works.

[DGoddessChardonnay]

I can't remember taking a specific typing class, or when the first computer class that I took was. At least 1997, because I remember writing about Princess Diana's death on a computer at school. I would have been 11. However, I loved playing Typing Tutor! It was that space invader's game that made it fun. My step-dad had a computer, not sure what kind. It ran the original Prince of Persia. Maybe an Amiga. It still works.

I had a copy of Typing Tutor IV that I bought for my Commodore 64C right after I got my first job out of high school. Played the Hell out of that disc.

As a matter of fact, TT has been around since approximately the mid 80's . . , I was introduced to it in Typing class back in HS (1987 or so) and if we finished our assignment and had time, we could hang out with one of the Apple IIe's in the back of the classroom and play away on the Letter Invaders.

Good times.

Now I can't find a decent app for Windows 10 that's similar.

[CorneliaMarieRocks]

how's this for a trip down memory lane?


Oregon Trail


Oregon Trail II (my fav)



Where In The USA Is Carmen Sandiego?

[Minflick]

Heh! My eldest came home from summer school one day and announced that she had died 3 times that day in the happiest POSSIBLE tone of voice! I asked what the heck she was talking about, and learned about Oregon Trail. Good time! She's 31 now....

[Cia]

I took a typing class and an office machines class in high school. Typing helped w/...well typing and office machines made it so I didn't always have to look at the calculator when operating it. I also learned how to use a mimeograph and how to type from taped dictation. IIRC dictation is what it was called - typing a letter while listening to some guy babble. There were probably other stuff but I don't remember what it was.