After a time, you may find that having is not so nearly pleasing a thing as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.
Spock, Amok Time
Back to Typing Tutor
I’ve been thinking about getting one of these keyboards, a Microsoft Natural 4000. It’s a pretty slick design with decent key feel, although a little chunky. Plus it’s got lots of buttons, and it’s hard for me to pass up a gadget with lots of buttons.
I’ve used ergo keyboards in the past and liked them a lot, but one of the things that’s always bothered me about them is that the 6 and B keys are placed on the left side (for the left index finger to hit). My problem is that when I learned to touch type, I use my right index finger for those keys so my typing tends to come to a jarring halt when I go for those keys and hit nothing but air. Well, nothing a little bit of retraining won’t take care of. Touch typing habits die hard though.
Hotness continues
It was really hot last month. This week it’s been really, really hot. 8AM and it’s already 30 freaking degrees °C outside. 38°C for a forecast high with a heat index well into the 40s.
If it wasn’t for air conditioning, I’d have moved back home years ago.
I don’t know why people around here say they hope for some rain to cool things down because rain never really does cool anything down here. You just get a warm rain (sometimes a warm downpour), and all it ever seems to do is jack up the humidity even higher.
Well, take the good with the bad I suppose.
Maybe not so convenient
This interesting article over on ScienceDaily came to me over the GoogleReader feed.
‘Convenience’ Foods Save Little Time For Working Families At Dinner
In connection with a larger study, CELF researchers videotaped four days in the home lives of 32 working families in Los Angeles, including their dinner routines, between early 2002 and 2005.
The results about how people cook and what they use to make dinner are interesting. The difference in cook-to-plate time for meals prepared from scratch and those prepared using ‘convenience items’ wasn’t significant, not a lot of cookbooks involved or recipes from magazines/newspapers, and little participation by the kids. Many parents in the study also made separate meals for the kids too, rather than cajole them into eating the same food the parents ate (like our parents did to us).
Of the 64 weeknight dinners Beck observed, 70 percent were completely home-cooked, meaning they were prepared at home, although not necessarily from scratch.
“People don’t spend any less time overall on dinner when they use so-called convenience foods,” Beck said. “Families seem to spend a certain amount of time cooking regardless. When commercial items are involved, they just ramp up how elaborate it gets.”
“Some people don’t fight the fight of getting the kids to eat what’s being served for dinner,” she said. “The kids frequently got entirely separate entrees or separate items from the adults, so that adds to the overall complexity of the meal.”
So does this mean that the next generation’s concept of fine dining will be determined by how many boxes or cans it was prepared from?
Wii me
A friend of mine got himself a Nintendo Wii over the weekend, so yesterday I stopped by to check it out, and we spent a couple hours playing different Wii games.
The sports games that come with the Wii are surprisingly fun to play, and working with the controller is pretty cool. Takes a little bit to get a feel for it, but it’s pretty cool.
I might consider getting myself one, but I hardly have time to play the games I have for the computer. The thought is very tempting though.