8.02.2005

Foiled No More!

When I type, my fingers move like those of Lewis Black: spastically, of their own free will, and not in the direction they were told to go. Because of this, the natural extension of my 'home row' is the Backspace key. The Backspace key is my friend. (It was not always my friend; on the typewriter in high school typing class, it activated the auto-Wite-Out process and ended up costing me more time and points. But in the modern age, we are chums.)

The Backspace key has a Homer Simpson of a neighbor: the Insert key. It just sits there, drunk, waiting to screw up your whole train of thought and forcing you to punch it so you can undo the damage it did. (As far as I can tell, this key ceased to have any useful function at about the same time as the mouse was invented. I think they just keep it there for symmetry.)

Because of my previously-described inept fingers, this whole frustrating scenario happens about 10 or so times a week. This afternoon, however, I used the phone-a-friend lifeline and called THE INTERNET. In 0.33 seconds, it told me how to disable the key using a macro (geeks: www.annoyances.org/exec/show/article08-105). Wonderful. I am happy. No more growling.


As I am thinking about my concluding paragraph, I realize that others will probably not find the point (being: you could mess with people pretty significantly by setting their keys to do crazy things) nearly as funny as I did when I thought of it 30 minutes ago and decided to blog about it.

So if you read all this and are not laughing or thinking deviously, my sincerest apologies.