Date: 2009-01-01 14:32 Subject: New Keyboard and Part D Security: Public Mood: cold

Pharmacists are preparing for the annual onslaught of confused elders.  Medicare Part D has reached its annual reset and this will confuse a large portion of their clients.  To summarize one pharmacist:  We have created the most complex insurance policy possible and imposed it on the population least able to understand it.  To further confuse matters, the elders are provided with inaccurate insurance cards and incorrect summary descriptions in the mail.  This all must be explained (for free) by harried pharmacists and pharmacy clerks while dispensing prescriptions to their confused clients. 

This new keyboard is definitely improving my touch typing.  It is more comfortable.  It's not half broken (like the one it replaces).  I'm gradually getting used to it.  The transition is definitely one to do when not in a crunch mode with a lot of text to prepared.  I found that the transition for typing text that had already been written (either from their exercises or drafts that I had written long hand) went much more quickly.  I'm still slow and more error prone when composing directly from the keyboard.  The "think word->finger motion" is not yet fully subconscious.  When it is "see word -> move fingers" I've reached subconscious.

I expect my typing will gradually become much better than before at home.  I don't expect improvement on laptops.  It already feels a little bit odd typing on the Mac keyboard.  The keys are not quite in comfortable positions any more.  This will likely get worse.

It's probably much better for my joints.  The better position feeling is already clear.

It also does highlight fatigue more.  I had to rest my arms for an hour after shoveling before doing much typing.  The fatigue induced positioning errors were much worse than with the old keyboard.  It's not just more mistakes.  It's mistakes at the nearly unreadable level.