Shaky situation
So thusly I say (thee unto thou) that I don’t have much of a tremor, and even that is only an active tremor, usually when whatever arm muscles are tired from exertion. I also have a slight dyskinesia — well, it’s enough that it affects how I work, specifically my hands. I click the mouse when I didn’t intend to click the mouse; I double-click the mouse when I meant only one click. I click the second button, not intending to have clicked anything, which generally opens a list of options or commands associated with whatever thing I’m doing at the time, and it selects the option/command over which it (the mouse) is hovering at the time. It might run the option/command with the item currently selected.Often that is not a good thing. More than once I’ve somehow typed in the sequence:
<ctrl-A> <DEL>
That is: Select Everything in my, uh, Realm … and then DELETE it.
If you’re in a folder and you’ve selected a file, the sequence above will delete all the files in that folder. Of course, often these disasters can be undone. But, if you’re like me, you continue merrily typing along the way until you finish. At some point you’ll notice all your files are missing.
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It occurred to me the other day — something that should have occurred to me long ago — that I should seek some help in eliminating this particular issue. Now, it’s not a typing issue. I can type almost as fast as I used to, which was pretty darn fast. That’s on the old standard large size keyboards. On my laptop keyboard, I have to edit each word, one word at a time. The keys are simply too close together for my fingers to fit.
Anyway, I thought, “Okay, we’ll invent something to do this for us.” At least, that’s how we used to approach it in the old days. Well, thinking about it more … I suppose that upper management wanted to share technologies (or purchase other companies) instead of developing EVERY thing because buying can be a whole lot more efficient. It also is incentive to continue driving technology forward. In a Utopian world, the company would be transparent to the technology. Well, maybe. One could argue that the more transparent you are (in public, anyway), the less flavor / spice / value you add. And If you take it to the extreme, then the State takes over and Socialism / Communism / Progressive Liberalism wins. No free thought. No hope to advance one’s self. No opportunity to (drum roll please) make a difference for your employer, your world.
But that’s neither here nor there, whatever that means.
Anyway , back to software development … As a developer and/or line manager it’s a whole lot more exciting at the end of the day to be able to say, “I was part of this product on our machines,” than it is to say, “Hey , I was working on product X, but we decided to buy product X from another company because theirs is better.”
“Why is theirs better?”
“They support the -dsj option and we won’t.”
“What is the -dsj option?”
“Their product dices, slices, and does julienne fries.”
“But only ours can be used as a fishing lure.”