It’s a poor craftsman that blames his tools.
That’s how the saying goes, at least, but you know what?
“It” being the conspicuous lack of a goddamn “R” in every other goddamn word I type from my goddamn laptop.
I may or may not have mentioned it before, but I don’t write on my desktop. Too many distractions. I have to get away from my desk and get someplace with as few bright and shinys as possible. That means grabbing the laptop and doing all my writing at the kitchen table or out on the back deck. I’m too prone to slacking off otherwise.
This has worked out well for me over the years. Since 2009, eight books have my name on them, either solo or with others, and a gazillion or so articles have spilled out of my little fingers and caused tiny little checks to appear in the mail.
So that’s good.
DEAD KEYS ON MY KEYBOARD ARE NOT!
A few weeks back, my laptop spacebar started to go. No big deal, I guess. But two days ago, the “R” key decided to play hard to get. Two or three presses just to get a letter to appear? You bet. It has doubled the time it takes me to write something. That sucks. Sometimes I feel like a cat chasing a red pointer light thingee, except unlike the cat, I know I’m being screwed with.
It also means that when I put time into a post like this one only to discover that “breweries” is spelled “beweries” in the headline AFTER it has already been blasted out to social media, I get to enjoy a few mortified moments of seeing my goof rightly mocked.
It’s not my fault. Lando’s people told me they fixed the keyboard. It’s not my fault!
A bit of good-natured Facebook mockery is one thing, though. Letting a similar blunder go out to one of my clients? That’s quite another. Totally unacceptable. I (try to) pay my bills with a delicate balancing act I call “not screwing up too badly,” and submitting an article with only 25 letters in it would work against that goal.
That means I need to either fix this somehow or invest in a new laptop ASAP, because I can’t run the risk of delivering bad copy. Not even if it costs me a chunk of change I do not have.
All over a stupid damn “R” key.
This is the worst ever thing that’s ever happened to me ever, including that time I was gored by a bull.
Geez, get you shite together.
Mothefucke.
Way to go, Eric. Make me feel bad for teasing you.
Way to go, Eric. Make me feel bad for teasing you.
You SHOULD feel bad. All of you. In perpetuity.
I know what you are trying to imply and your purpose does make sense however that I can’t say
I completely concur with you. You see, there could
be some complications in regards to the problems you
have said. But I appreciate the time you invested in explaining your view.
I’m interested in this subject and will definitely dig deeper into
the issue, although it will require me to spend some
time searching for current data and reading scholar posts.