A quick apology for my sparse blogging of late. Having a few crazy goings-on at the Lyons’ household that I think are beginning to slowly settle down. We’ve racked up another five or six skunks, bringing our total trapped to somewhere around 20 or so in barely a month.

Speaking of month, it’s been just under a full one since I committed to switching keyboard layouts. While I definitely experienced some muscle strain in my hands and arms, holding them stiffly and having to consciously think about each key before using it — unlike when typing QWERTY, which I learned — gasp — over 20 years ago — I have not experienced any disconcerting nerve sensation or intense pain, so I consider changing layouts to DVORAK to be a step in the right direction and I plan to type only with it in the future.

Initially, for a week or so, I used both layouts because Mr. Lyons’ computer has the traditional one and neither of us wanted to hassle with changing them around. Author Maura Anderson learned I was attempting the switch and kindly e-mailed with a few suggestions, most specifically not attempting to go back and forth, but instead commiting fully to DVORAK. She also shared the tip of printing a DVORAK keyboard/reference sheet and keeping that with me whenever I’m on another computer — and informed me that it’s not difficult to toggle between keyboard layouts on other computers. Her advice has proved very helpful, as it’s only been since completely stopping any QWERTY typing that my learning on the new one has picked up.

Here’s a great example:

On August 27th, only one day into my new DVORAK typing, I decided to time myself on those two common phrases (shown below) on both the new layout, as well as the very familiar QWERTY one. This was to give me a baseline for future comparisons. Here’s what I discovered–

Typing QWERTY, my speeds were:

Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. 14 seconds AND on The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. 9 seconds No typos or mistakes, either.

Typing those same sentences using DVORAK took me , respectively, 1 minute 16 seconds (with two mistakes) and on the fox sentence — 51 seconds and 4 mistakes.

Now keep in mind that I have not typed every day, nor even every other day necessarily. And when I do, I’m very careful not to overdo what my body can handle, which means probably typing somewhere between 1-3 paragraphs a day, if that, and it’s spread over a number of hours. But while I’m in bed at night, or occasionally while watching television, I’ll mentally run through the alphabet with my fingers pointing out where I know the DVORAK keys are. As of this moment, I can easily remember everything but those dratted X, J and Q keys, easily showing me which three I type least. But here’s the really cool part — for the first time since late August, I just typed those two sentences again and my typing speed and accuracy shows substantial improvement — 44 seconds on the first one with only one mistake — and I didn’t look at the keyboard once! 38 seconds on the Fox sentence, which, while it isn’t a huge improvement, I only had one mistake.

I’m confident that with time & more use I will eventually become just as fast — hopefully faster — as I was with the old standard keyboard. More importantly though, I can attest that typing is resulting in less pain which is the exact result I’d hoped for!

Currently reading: Most of what I posted last time and… Twilight by Stephanie Meyer, which both Alyssa and my sister have been bugging me to read forever! Though I did finish Nancy Butler’s Keeper of the Swans, one of the traditional Signet Regencies, and what a unique and touching story it is. I never knew baby swans were called cygnets…but it makes sense, doesn’t it, when one looks to the sky = Cygnus the Swan.