Thursday, March 24, 2011

Typing and Shorthand

Ah...the good old days.


I was thinking the other day of how much longer it takes me to type something than it used to. i can type fast....real fast....but the brain can't keep up. i left the rest of this message un-edited so you can see what i mean. normally i would go back and fix all the red spots. for fun...today i left them.


In another life...and another time...far, far away....i was a great typist and shorthand person.

Those of you aold enough remember taking shorthand...right? i can still write shorthand...but not quickly. it drives my dh crazy if i write a knote using shorthand...usually it is comething i don't want him to know about. LOL  do bosses still give their secretaries letters to type up using shorthand? or is that a dead art?

I worked for a temporary agency for a few years and was sent to different places for various lengths of time to woek. they have you typing and shorthand tests. i remember having a pin that said i could take shorthand at 120 wpm (that's works per minute). and i could type almost 100 words per minute. and that's with the OLD typewriters....you were slinging that carriage bar over every line. electric typewriters made life a bit easier.

And there was no 'delete' key.....there was WhiteOut. and heaven help you if yuo wre making copies...that entailed carbon paper. try kaming copies with crbon paper without getting smudges. it's a wonder any of us survived that or ever got a raise at work. i don't remember...did we not have copy machines back then to make tohose stupid copies?

Todays kisd have no idea of the wonders of computers...delet e keys....backspace keys.....editing is soooo much easier.

And getting older doesn't help at all .... the barin takes much longer to get the message down to your fingers to hit the correct keys in the correct sequence.  and there are patches of fog in the brain that require you to stop and 'ermember' how to spell a word... like sequence.

Computers do come with their own set of problems, too. i do most of my banking online. to access the banks' website i have to insert a 12 digit number. i have remembered that number from day one...don't know why. it's not anything in sequence or easy to remember...i just do. my fingers just seem to input it automatically. but they make you change your password every 90 days...and you cannot use the same password that you used the last 3 times....or any variation of that passowrd. well, i cannot remember the damn passwords. if i can't use the same one for everyting i am just stuck. i have a little book that i keep next to the computer with site names and passwords. great security, huh?  i have had to call them numerous times when i try 3 times and fail and get locked out and they have to reset me. so embarrassing. the last time i wrote it in the book and STILL got it wrong. LOL

Ah, the good old days....i need my brain from the good old days.

2 comments:

Judy Whitehead said...

LOL Your post made me laugh out loud! That's what my "typing" would look like without using the backspace and delete keys in conjunction with spellcheck! And I've got the 120wpm award somewhere, along with the shorthand award....somewhere. Or they might have gotten lost over the last 30 years, I can't remember. LOL

Borderline Quilter said...

Yeh Shirley....you got the same model brain as me....and here's me thinking it was a limited edition....lol....!!!!

Search This Blog