Keyboard hell...

I think my first day at Pretty Simple went reasonably well, other than a few gaffes here and there. The biggest issue I had all day was my keyboard.  Err... keyboards!

I'll need a Mac computer on my desk (my project lead, Sebastian, laughed when I used the antiquated term "Macintosh" -- I think Apple stopped using that back in the 60's -- okay, maybe not that long ago, but I'm old and dates confuse me), but I'm not a Macintosh Mac guy, so I was kind of struggling with the OS, and even the keyboard.

Before coming to Pretty Simple I asked for an ergonomic (split) keyboard. They wanted to know if I preferred QWERTY style and I naively thought, "Of course, what other kinds of keyboards are there???" I was soon to learn that most models in France are AZERTY, which is similar to the ones we use in North America, but just different enough to be terribly aggravating.

Until a few months ago I wasn't aware of the AZERTY keyboard

Unfortunately, my new keyboard was German and not American. It wasn't AZERTY so no problem, right? Well get this, the Germans have an even different keyboard layout called QWERTZU. I had no idea...

A very friendly Australian programmer named Steve helped me modify the language from FR to EN but that only changed the mapping of some of the keys. (And it meant, for example, that I had to hit the "o" key every time I wanted an "m". Confusing.)

We are supposed to hear back about the apartment today so I was desperate to check my gmail account, but when I opened a browser window, instead of typing "https://gmail.com", I typed:

https://g?q...

Damn. Try it again.

https://gmail;/!co?

CRAP!

Thankfully, someone finally found me an English QWERTY keyboard and everything was right with the world again.

At least for a little while.