My keyboarding skills suck. “How can that be?” you ask, “You practiced law all those years and now you are an IT consultant.” To understand how this travesty came about we need to go back to high school. Way back then there was no keyboarding class. It was called office skills and included typing classes and shorthand. Very few boys took typing. This was the stone age when a lot of girls aspired to be secretaries and office managers and the boys believed they would just dictate their correspondence.
“But what about college, you had all those papers to type?” Yes there were papers, but I had been given a very cool typewriter for a high school graduation present. No, I couldn’t use the typewriter but there were friends who could, and would use my typewriter to type both of our papers. Even if I didn’t have friends to type for me, there were services that charged to type papers. In law school there was no keyboarding either. There were a few who typed and lugged their IBM Selectrics around. After law school almost everything I did, except take notes, was dictated.
Even on the computer side very little I did required mastery of the keyboard. Doing computer programming while I was in law school was done on punch cards. You used these 80 column layout forms to write your statements, and then typed the cards on a punch machine. You had to be very careful not to make any mistakes. One extra space or forgotten period would result in an error in the batch run. Even after personal computers started making inroads I really didn’t have a lot of contact with keyboards outside of gaming until our firm got Westlaw. I became the go to researcher using this wonderful new tool. Still crafting Westlaw quires was not really keyboarding.
When I left law and started working in the IT field the path I chose was not one that put an emphasis on keyboarding skill. If I had become a programmer then I would have been required to improve my skills. Companies that hire programmers want them to be good coders, but they also want them to keyboard at a descent speed. It does little good to hire a programmer that is good at coding but types so slowly that productivity grinds to a halt. I, however, went into networking and server support. You need to use the keyboard but typing 40 wpm is not a job requirement.
So now I come to writing. Now I need good keyboard skills. If I am to compose at the computer I have to type at least as fast as I write and the faster the better to try to keep up with my brain. I can’t be distracted from the flow of my writing to look down at the keyboard and hunt and peck. What to do? I have years of bad keyboarding habits that I have to unlearn and relearn from the beginning how to do it correctly. Enter Typing Master Pro. Now I have tried typing tutors before, including the famous Mavis Beacon, but I seem to have clicked with Typing Master. Maybe it’s because I have developed more determination to get it right. So now each day I will take my typing lessons and when I have achieved a respectable net speed I will brag about it until the…*Where’s the damn N key grrrrr*
Book Review: The Killing Floor by Lee Child
I admit that this is the first Lee Child book I have read. For some reason I just wasn’t interested in stories about a wandering hero who hobos around the country stumbling into trouble. After much cajoling I picked up the first Jack Reacher novel, The Killing Floor. It is not a bad book; in fact I am hoping that the causes of my main criticisms will disappear in later Reacher novels.
The Killing Floor has some very strong points. Child does a masterful job of plotting. There are twists throughout the book and even a throw away subplot works its way into the story. I only have two issues with the plotting. First, the identity of the head villain is apparent too early in the book. The second is hard to explain without referencing events in the book and disclosing spoilers, but I'll try. There are certain events that would have even incompetent cops asking a very significant question about how these events could have occurred. Unbelievably, neither Reacher nor a detective with 20 years of experience in a big city police department ever asks the question.
Regarding criticisms, I have two major ones. The first is a lack of character development. The story is told in the first person from the perspective of Reacher. I understand this makes development of other characters harder to pull off. Even so, the main supporting characters come off as two dimensional. I found myself not really caring what happened to them.
The second criticism is Child not only goes into too much detail, but at times he does so in the middle of action sequences. This is supposed to be a page turning action thriller, yet in the middle of the culminating action scene Child has Reacher go off on a page of repetitive and excruciating detail about what he sees. Ruining the flow of that action scene alone is a reason not to give the book a great review.
I have a couple of other quibbles. First, Child has a habit of ending characters’ statements by tacking on the word “right” turning it into a question. The second quibble is Reacher will enter into a kind of Socratic teaching mode. He will learn something important; tell a character that he has learned something; then instead of telling them what he knows he asks questions trying to get the character to discover the information. This is so annoying I am surprised one of the characters didn’t pull out a gun and shoot him. It is also incredibly unrealistic as there is an impending deadline to solve the mystery and asking questions instead of just telling what you know is ridiculous.
Some have criticized the book for its preposterous coincidences and unbelievable plot, noting that if these events had really happened the place would be crawling with both federal and state law enforcement. To these criticisms I say, “So what.” This is fiction and Child has a literary license to tread into the unbelievable. Some readers constantly complain that a book is, “not realistic enough.” How much realism do they want? Cops' lives are full of boring detail and in real life events take much longer than most readers would be able to tolerate.
In summery The Killing Floor is a good, but flawed thriller. I give it 3 ½ stars.
The Killing Floor has some very strong points. Child does a masterful job of plotting. There are twists throughout the book and even a throw away subplot works its way into the story. I only have two issues with the plotting. First, the identity of the head villain is apparent too early in the book. The second is hard to explain without referencing events in the book and disclosing spoilers, but I'll try. There are certain events that would have even incompetent cops asking a very significant question about how these events could have occurred. Unbelievably, neither Reacher nor a detective with 20 years of experience in a big city police department ever asks the question.
Regarding criticisms, I have two major ones. The first is a lack of character development. The story is told in the first person from the perspective of Reacher. I understand this makes development of other characters harder to pull off. Even so, the main supporting characters come off as two dimensional. I found myself not really caring what happened to them.
The second criticism is Child not only goes into too much detail, but at times he does so in the middle of action sequences. This is supposed to be a page turning action thriller, yet in the middle of the culminating action scene Child has Reacher go off on a page of repetitive and excruciating detail about what he sees. Ruining the flow of that action scene alone is a reason not to give the book a great review.
I have a couple of other quibbles. First, Child has a habit of ending characters’ statements by tacking on the word “right” turning it into a question. The second quibble is Reacher will enter into a kind of Socratic teaching mode. He will learn something important; tell a character that he has learned something; then instead of telling them what he knows he asks questions trying to get the character to discover the information. This is so annoying I am surprised one of the characters didn’t pull out a gun and shoot him. It is also incredibly unrealistic as there is an impending deadline to solve the mystery and asking questions instead of just telling what you know is ridiculous.
Some have criticized the book for its preposterous coincidences and unbelievable plot, noting that if these events had really happened the place would be crawling with both federal and state law enforcement. To these criticisms I say, “So what.” This is fiction and Child has a literary license to tread into the unbelievable. Some readers constantly complain that a book is, “not realistic enough.” How much realism do they want? Cops' lives are full of boring detail and in real life events take much longer than most readers would be able to tolerate.
In summery The Killing Floor is a good, but flawed thriller. I give it 3 ½ stars.
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