I have a certain fondness for keyboards. Starting when I learned to touch-type on a fully manual typewriter in the 7th grade, I've migrated to all kinds of keyboards, with different looks and feels, strokes and weights.

I've always found both my writing style and general computing attitude to be greatly affected by the keyboard I'm using. In this regard (and only this regard) I secretly identify with Greg Kinnear's typewriter-afficianado character in You've Got Mail.

I've probably owned more than a dozen keyboards since I learned to type, from the clickitty IBM PC keyboards to the membrane keyboard of the Odyssey II, to the tiny keyboard of my Duo 210 to the Stowaway folding keyboard for my Palm V to my Sidekick's thumb 'keyboard', just to name a few. Okay, make that two dozen.

Atop the highest pedestal in this tactile pantheon sits my Apple Extended Keyboard II, which I got in 1989, along with my Mac SE/30. I called it a 'deck,' massive yet graceful, seeming more suited to the bridge of the Enterprise (1701-D) than on a simple 1980s desktop ("Hello computer!"). (Here's a great photo of Apple keyboards and mice through the ages. The AEK II is the big one on the top left.)

The keys had a soft stroke, and bespoke quiet power when pressed. Even stroking my hand across the full sweep of the 105 keys (I remember that there were 105 keys) gave more a sense of art than doing the same over the 88 keys of a grand piano.

Truly a thing of beauty.

Okay, back to the point, and the present day. For the last six months I've been living off my powerbook, using its decent keyboard while away from my desk, and jacking in to the orphaned keyboard and mouse that came with my now stilled G4 Quicksilver desktop. A decent combination. Well, as the avid reader knows, I sold my desktop machine last week, and the buyer opted for the keyboard and mouse as well. No problem. I'd just buy another.

For the last two weeks, since pulling the keyboard for the eBay photos, I've been using my backup Happy Hacking Keyboard, a tool which, while admirable for its efficiency, compactness, and lack of a caps-lock key, is ultimately cramped and uninspiring. Pair that with a Wacom as my primary pointing device on a desk so cluttered to not have room for it, and my writing was quite literally cramped.

With my eBay money firmly in my paypal account, I've been doing a little spending. I intended to replace my keyboard with another just like it, but it turns out they don't sell the black keyboard separately, only the white model. I wasn't sure how I felt about this inversion, but I went ahead and bought it anyhow, and I don't know how much is in my head and how much in the keys, but it feels more like that vaunted Extended Keyboard II than any board I've had the pleasure of keystroking since. (108 keys. Tee-hee!)

Suddenly writing is a pleasure again. Heck, I've already written 590 words on a new keyboard (on a new keyboard)!

This is a preface to say that, like the new owner of a Strat, I'm learning my instrument, finding our shared voice, but so far she truly sounds sweet.

If you think I'm a freak now, just wait until my new mouse and speakers arrive. Hey, at least it's not an iGesture Pad. God those things look cool.

My kitty's four years old as of yesterday, and she still looks the same as when she was 2 (and not much changed from 1). I've been spending a lot more time with cats recently, and I can still definitely say that she's the bestest kitten, and I'm so looking forward to spending more time with her again when I'm back on the Left Coast!

(8 hours later) and now my friends are all emailing, "busted!" because I forgot to click 'submit' on this post. Argh.

Okay, three full days of stuff, and photos from each. I'll be doing a lot of writing, both on the blog, and corresponding, this evening, but I just couldn't stand the all-tan bar for another few hours, so I'm posting this. :-)

Going to the other side of Pennsylvania for a few days for a wedding. We're going to go on an Amish Buggy Ride along the way.

Have a great weekend everyone!

It's funny when you put your CD-R in to the mac at Kinko's and Avril Levegne starts blaring out the speaker.

It's less funny when you realize it's because you left the CD-R with your work on it at home.

And I wondered why I emailed myself a backup copy last night. Yay for webmail access!

I'm sure this one will spark a lively debate: Is pushing abstinence the wrong way to handle teen sex?

Mark Morford makes an interesting point about how the vast majority of the media pushes sex (TV, movies, advertisements, music), so how is pushing abstinence to teens anything more than another instrument in the cacophony?

A friend in high school's mom had a policy where she'd let her kids party and drink alcohol, on the condition that it happened at home, and under her supervision. The rationale was that if she didn't, they'd do it anyway, behind her back, and the main reasons why teens drinking alcohol is a bad thing are usually related to their lack of supervision, or efforts to hide their activity (drunk driving, fights, indiscriminate sex). Keeping it at home but keeping it accepted empowered the kids while keeping them safe.

Maybe if sex weren't vilified in the years when our biology is telling us to try it, we'd have less social problems as a whole later on.

Okay guys, have at it!

How funny is it that my staple diet for the past few days has been Capri Sun and Hot Pockets?

I'm at a parking meter, putting in more money while waiting for Kinko's to finish a job. I just put in a 'New York' quarter, and noticed that the slogan/moto on the back says "Gateway to Freedom".

Call me picky, but isn't that an oxymoron? How can freedom have a gateway? Doesn't that imply that it has a fence?

Top 750 High Schools, based on average number of AP courses per student and such, and excluding schools who select more than half their students via merit (grades, tests, etc.).

The scary thing is just how many of these high schools were right around me: North Hollywood High, Van Nuys, Taft, Westlake, Marshall (yay Mom and Dad (alumni)), L.A.C.E.S., S.O.C.E.S., Venice, and a bunch of others. There is a Grant in California on the list, but it says it's in 'Valley Green', a city not even yahoo Maps knows about. Is this my Grant, in Van Nuys, in the San Fernando Valley? Do I get validation?

My sister and my oldest friend each work at schools on the list, which seems highly skewed towards California, probably because they push AP tests harder there. Heck, I took seven... One of them for a subject I never even studied in school (US Government).

While I was in SF a couple weeks ago, I heard a NIN cover on the radio. I think the song was 'closer' or 'hurt' (I forget) but it was done in a completely different style, by a completely different artist you'd never expect to sing NIN. (I want to say John Denver, but of course it's not, his being dead and all.) Does anyone here know what I'm talking about? I kept expecting it to be a joke and stop after a few bars, but they wang the whole song. Very funny...