293 - Too Many Keyboards

We had a fire several years ago which caused the ceiling to come down in my studio, primarily due to all the water used to put out the fire in the attic. I’m not going to go into the details of what all was lost when so much was miraculously saved, but one of the final casualties was the keyboard I use with this iMac.

It was perfect size for my congested desktop, rectangular, lightweight and thin, but also slightly warped from the water damage. This never seemed to matter to it until just a few months ago when half the keys on two adjacent rows stopped working.

I kind of like old school keyboards that have deep, clacking keys, and wanted something to contrast with the really shallow action on the apple keyboard, so I’ve been trying several out, picking them up 2nd hand at thrift stores because I’m also cheap when it comes to this stuff.

So far I’m on my 4th and the problem is they typically either have a command key in the wrong place (usually labeled a “window” key), causing me to delete large swaths of material when I intend to copy, or the backspace and delete keys delete material to the right of the cursor instead of to the left, making my score worse instead of better. I like the feel of the one I’m using to set this music and text this, but it has both of those problems, plus, it uses a stupid dongle taking up one of my USB slots, so it looks like I’m going to have to try another one.