One of the major hazards of smoking at the computer is the early death of many keyboards. The ashtray sits above the slide-out mouse and keyboard level, so cigarettes that are left sitting to burn out often tip over and fall down to where the inputs are at.

That’s fine though, I’ve become resigned to the fact that I have to go out and get a new $20 keyboard every few months.

What isn’t OK is this Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. As soon as I plug in and sit down, I realize that I can’t even type out my own name or other addresses of websites I own.

Wait a minute, how am I supposed to actually write content for a half dozen blogs if I’m learning how to type all over again? I’m used to typing 50-60 words a minute, just as fast as I can think them up for the most part. You never really appreciate how natural and unconscious typing is until you try to do it on an instrument shaped in a slightly different way.

I’ll call this situation extremely frustrating, but I’m being generous. I’m actually half tempted to drive right back to Wal-mart and demand a refund. But the lines there were ten people long and no one was working the service counter.

Why did I even buy this one? Well, they had two kinds of keyboards and the other one was the same exact kind as the one that had broken quicker than usual.

Now that I’ve been typing on it for a while, I know that I’ll probably be used to it within a few more blog posts. After 250 words in to this one, I am only consistently messing up on Cs, Vs, Bs, Fs, and Gs. It seems that the B and N keys are way too oversized, and they push everything else on the bottom left further than you’d intuitively expect it to be.

Eben staying vonsvious og this gavt, I van’t seem to vompensate. [sic]