This whole process of having to replace the hard drive in my primary indexing computer has been most instructive–it’s served to make me assess and reassess what software is really necessary for a safe, happy, healthy work environment.

I haven’t reinstalled PawSense yet–and there’s a really good reason why not.  It was very efficient in teaching Frankie (the cat) to stay off the keyboard that I’ve not needed it. For either the laptop or the new (back-up, more portable) notebook, he now avoids the keyboard consistently.

This doesn’t mean that he stays away when I’m trying to work, just that he doesn’t step on the keyboard.  He learned to be very adept at finding all the places on the desk and the computer where he could (and does) step to put himself between me and the monitor, or to make the trackball unreachable, or otherwise do what cats normally do when your attention is focused on a particular spot.  But, after that, he gets down, into my lap, rather than lying on the keyboard. (I will reinstall it one of these days–just to be on the safe side.)

The other thing that I haven’t reinstalled on the laptop after the hard-drive failure (or just installed on the new computer) is my break-time software, WorkPace. That is probably going to be a necessary upgrade, though Frankie is doing a great job of enforcing breaks about every 50 or so minutes. Even with the complex terminology and some long entries for neuroanatomy, the auto-complete is working so well that I don’t seem to have missed the “microbreaks” that software made me take but prevention is better than rehabilitation.

After all this assessment of what software I really need, I suspect that I’m going to re-install Shorthand for PC, too–a text expander–because it allows such great control of dictionaries and works with any software.  But–more about that later.  It’s time to get back to learning editing commands and keyboard shortcuts.