das keyboard – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

Pictured above: my original, loyal Das Keyboard, which provided me with seven years of service before something underneath the left half of the keyboard cracked while I was trying to fish a piece of debris out of it. Underneath: its replacement, which arrived today and is effectively the 2022 model of the same keyboard, except specific for my Mac and also featuring Cherry MX Brown switches instead of the Blues that were in the original keyboard. While I am a big fan of clicky keyboards, and Blue switches are the clickiest keys currently on the market, the fact that my wife and I are still frequently in the office together when one or both of us is in a meeting means that my preferred kind of keyboard is actually kinda rude compared to the standards of way back when I purchased it.

(Discovers, accidentally, that the crescent moon button in the upper right actually puts the computer to sleep. Whoops?)

Anyway, the media stuff has been moved to the top right there, away from the function keys, and I think I actually prefer the volume wheel, and the top layer of the keyboard is actually aluminum instead of plastic, and the riser that lifts the keyboard up to a proper angle is magnetic and has a ruler molded into it for some reason, but other than that, it’s still a keyboard! I’ve only typed the words you’re seeing on the screen right now with it, so it’s not like I’ve put the thing through its paces, but it’s not like it takes a lot of breaking in to decide if you like a keyboard. Mechanical keyboards are still the way to go for me, and I hate wireless keyboards– this one also has a USB 3 hub built into it, so that’s an improvement too, but it means the wire is required– but the key travel and bounce are both pretty damn good and the sound, while not as loud, is still pretty pleasing, and I don’t feel like I’m making a lot of errors while I’m typing, so everything’s doing what my fingers expect them to be doing. I just took a couple of typing tests and they came out at 85 and 91 wpm, which is a trifle slower than I’m used to, but it’ll do.

It is possible that I have made my last student loan payment. Not guaranteed yet, mind you, but possible. My loans have officially been consolidated, meaning that the current worst case scenario is that my payments are eventually around $330 a month instead of the $545 I’ve been paying since 2005. Since the government has my loans now, I’m automatically part of the suspension of payments program that’s been going on for the duration of the pandemic, so I won’t have to make that first payment at the new amount until May.

However, my application to have my loans forgiven through PSLF has already been submitted, too, and that’s supposed to take no more than 90 days for the full review, and once that review happens they’ll find that I’ve made well more than the 100 required qualifying payments. Loan payments start back up on May 22 (assuming that the program isn’t extended again) and that’s more than 90 days away. So while on paper I still owe a shitton of money, I’ll be saving those payments for the next couple of months (and putting them toward my car, which I expect to have paid off very soon) and the loans may very well be officially gone before I actually hit the day where I’d have to start paying the reduced amount.

This … is a real big deal. Real, real big.

Juuuuust in case you’re somehow not aware of it yet, I’ve got this little streaming the video games thing going over on YouTube, and I just started this cool little game called Dandara: Trials of Fear, so if you haven’t checked the channel out you have an exclusive chance to click on this link and then go be my 115th subscriber. C’mon, you know you want to. Even if you don’t really use YouTube all that often. Hell, especially if you don’t use YouTube all that often, because then it doesn’t even throw annoying videos you don’t want into the feed you’re not looking at. Go check it out.

It’s the keyboard. The new hotness is the keyboard. The rest of this is just my usual mess. I managed to black out my name where it shows up on the main monitor, but feel free to examine everything carefully for clues about my lifestyle.

This is my primary workstation; I do a lot of work on my laptop but I brain better sitting at a desk than I do on the couch or at my dining room table or whatever, especially when my family is home. I’ve had this computer for, what, two and a half or three years now, and while I upgraded the keyboard from the wireless, silly little thing that actually ships with an iMac, the Mac wired keyboard is still a teeny aluminum chicklet keyboard that doesn’t make nearly enough noise when you pound on it. I like my keyboards clicky. Really clicky.

Plus the keys were white, and after three years of tapping on white keys they were starting to look a little… we’ll say funky.

Thus: Das Keyboard. I know the picture’s crappy; here’s one from their website:

On one hand, it’s a keyboard, so it does exactly the same things that the other keyboard did only it’s a lot louder about it. This is the Das Keyboard Professional Model S with Cherry MX Blue switches in it. It is awesome. Don’t know what Cherry MX Blue switches are? Neither did I, until I started researching mechanical keyboards. Twitter brought me this article, which is interesting enough that I’ve read it for fun a few times.

Fun thing about this keyboard: the Backspace key makes a distinctly different clicking sound than the others, meaning that if you were listening to me carefully you’d be able to tell how often I screwed up. That entertains me, even though I’m pretty sure that no one will ever be carefully listening to me type. I just hope the boy can sleep through the noise; his room is next door to my office, and I’m not shitting you: this thing is loud.

I love mechanical keyboards.