Monday Morning Coffee
By Billy Rainford
Did you take typing in high school? Is it even a thing anymore? I did not take it and I really wish I did. I’m currently going through an online typing class (free, of course) and I see a future when I can simply play a recorded interview and type it out as fast as the words come out of mouths. That is my utopia. What a world that would…er, WILL be. It helps to be positive in these situations.
So far, I’ve got the ‘home row’ mastered. So, if I ever call you for an interview, could you please work your answers to include only words with the letters A, S, D, F, G, H, J, K, L, or ;? Actually, we’ve worked E and I in, so that gives you a couple more vowel options. I’ll be sure to ask a lot of horse-related questions so you can say, “saddle” a lot…
Are you old enough to remember when you cashed out at the grocery store the cashier had to type in all the codes for the items? I can remember watching some of the better ones in awe as they went through them like a machine without looking at the numbers they were typing. It reminds me of a story…
Through my last year of high school and then throughout university, I worked for a trucking company after class. It was a pretty plum job that paid me $13/hour and only went from 4-8pm Monday to Friday. Pretty sweet. Yes, it was a long time ago. I was hired as a warehouseman which meant I would grab a clipboard with every item listed on a 45-foot truck and dive in to unload shipments from local businesses and transfer them to outgoing trucks to farther away places.
I must have shown ‘potential’ because during my time at CP Express and Transport I was trained and quite adept at every job in the entire company. I would do vacation coverage for other employees – everything from rating shipments, to accounts payable, to accounts receivable, to payroll and data entry. There it is…data entry.
The drivers would come in and drop off there bills of lading to the rate clerk. He would rate them and then send them over to me to enter into the system. At first, my 4-hour job would take me the full 4 hours to get everything entered and sent out to the workers in the huge warehouse. Eventually, I got so fast on the number keypad that I would have all my work done by 4:20.
At the end of the night, I would have to take all the shipments that had been placed on the now outgoing trucks and enter the numbers into the computer and then give the final lit to the specific drivers. I had no idea, but I guess my speed on the keypad became something of a spectacle across the business.
6-8 clipboards of weigh bills would sit on my desk as the drivers would have to wait for them to be entered before they could hit the road. Every night, some new driver I’d never seen before would stand over my shoulder and inevitably say, “Ohhh, YOU’RE the one they all talk about!”
I could enter a list of 50 -80 10-digit numbers (with a dash) faster than absolutely anyone could even read them. I have no idea how I did it. It was like I’d go into a trance and run my eyes over the sheet and the numbers would somehow go into the computer. Every night, one of the drivers would say, “There is NO WAY that is accurate!” So, for fun, I’d clear the list and start over again to get the exact same number at the end.
So, what I’m saying is, I expect to be setting typing world records by the end of this online typing class. By the way, I can’t even tell you how many words have been underlined in red as mistakes so far in this story. That’s going to change, and oh what a world it will be!
See you next year, SXSW! 163 WPM? Pfft.
Amsoil Arenacross – Tampa, Florida
Points
Next round is March 5th in Omaha, NE.
Dallas Supercross
Hey, do you like stats? Well, there are all kinds to be found over on the AMA Supercross website results page. For example, did anyone see the secret line Eli Tomac used on lap 6?
Did you notice the #471 of Logan Karnow out there Saturday night in Dallas? He qualified 37th on his Canadian PR-MX-backed Kawasaki 250F in the 450 class. Yes, a 250F in the 450 class. Actually, He was 1 of 3 250F’s listed in the results as making it to the 450 night show and 1 of 6 that tried.
We lose Canadian Cole Thompson for the Eastern Rounds of 250 SX but we pick up Julien Perrier‘s (you know what Evian is backwards, right?) team of 4 riders:
#471 Logan Karnow – 250E
#728 Hunter Mimms – 250E
#727 Dave Blanchet (Canadian) – 450
#466 Grant Ransdell – 450
Good luck, team. Jeff and I will see you this coming weekend in Atlanta!
Happy Birthday, Hayden Halstead. What did I get you? How about a return trip to front and centre of our Toronto Supercross Party poster?!
Happy Birthday, Hayden Halstead. See you at The Houston before and after the Toronto Supercross!
OK, since I am nowhere near my 164 words per minute typing goal, and I have a couple interesting interviews to type today, let’s call it quits here. Have a great work week and watch for Jeff and me covering all the action from Atlanta this week.
We caught up with Bobby Kiniry (shown here) and believe it or not, THIS is a big part of what he misses! We also caught up with Brock Leitner. Watch for those later on the site. Time to go type… – Bigwave photo
