Ask Leo! #604 – Edge-ing out IE, Unsupported Software, Two-factor authentication, Password Managers, and more…

The question was 'What did you learn before you realized you learned it?'

In high school was were allowed a few elective courses, none of them all that interesting. But on a lark I chose typing figuring that it might come in handy some day. It was a mixed class of business bound kids, mostly girls heading for secretarial work and a few misfits like me who were heading for college. There were about a half dozen IBM Selectrics which were rotated through the class except for folks like me who weren't really going to get anything out of the class so why waste a precious resource on them. I didn't even have a machine at home on which to practice. I attended all the classes and achieved a speed of 20 words/minute by the end. Fair but I definitely wouldn't be getting any secretarial jobs in the future.

Time passed and even in my college work typing didn't loom large. I muddled through any papers required (engineers don't write many papers) and didn't make much effort to improve my typing skills. There was no such thing as a personal computer at the time. Fortran programming was done on a keypunch machine and you got one run a day.

Then the personal computer arrived and I got an early one; a Heath/Zenith. It seemed there was a lot of typing involved with these new computers. As time passed I noticed I was getting better and better and I didn't need white out. Without the fear of making a mistake which would bring my overall speed crashing down I could really go fast. Through my working career I flew on the key board always noticing my associates, who lacked my wisdom and didn't take any typing classes, hunting and pecking at their keyboards. Looking back I rank that typing class as one of the most important I've ever taken.

Now that I'm a (lot) older a little arthritis has set in and I have a crooked left little finger so the "a" is getting really hard to hit and my speed has fallen off. And I've placed a curse on all tablets and phones because you can't touch type on them.

I signed up for typing in high school first year. It was cancelled for lack of interest. (I went to an all-boys school.) So I've spend the last years learning by doing - many bad behaviors I'm sure. :-)

To keep things in perspective, the risk involved with using a hotel's wireless network is small. Remember, millions of people using public networks - at airports, libraries, coffee shops, hotels, etc. - every day and the vast majority suffer no adverse consequences. Additionally, the majority of sensitive online transactions - such as banking, purchases and even Facebook logins - are encrypted via HTTPS and so even if somebody were to be snooping, they'd be unable to see the data exchanges in transactions.