So I bought a stenographer keyboard recently, intending to pick it up as a hobby. Maybe eventually get to the point of live transcribing streams or something, who knows. The thing is with these keyboards is that since amateur steno is an incredibly niche hobby supplied by a bunch of guys with 3D printers working out of their basement, it's a crap-shoot to actually get what you pay for. I bought this fucking thing 6 months ago, the guy hemmed and hawed and took a long ass time to even get the thing built, much less sent.
It FINALLY gets here? The fucking backplate is on upside down. There are buttons I need to access underneath this backplate, which will allow me to flash default steno firmware to this thing (because god forbid the guy actually flash default fucking firmware to the thing he sells). Normally there are access holes for these buttons: they're in the wrong place, because
upside down. I can't even practice with the normal steno software in the meantime because I run Ubuntu and steno software doesn't play nice with Wayland. There are workarounds, but they're all a pain in the ass and introduce bugs that I would have to chase down. I'm not going to switch to X11 either: I use Wayland for a reason, it is MUCH better for my gaming applications and my GPU is happier when I use it.
Now I get to immediately take apart my new keyboard, because I know for a FACT the seller will not honor a straight up return, and a fix will either not happen or take a year. I don't often fuck around with this kind of project, so I don't have any precision tools on hand to work on it. So I'm going to have to buy still more shit to open it up, and pray that nothing else is upside down or fucked up on the inside. And that I can get it put back together properly. And that the guy actually built it intending for it to be possible to work on, because if I get this board partially taken apart and it turns out something in there is riveted to the plate I am going to explode into a pink mist.
But hey, if all that goes well I will FINALLY get to start on a new hobby. Which I'm sure I will actually stick with all the way through. There is
no chance this will be a project that sits around and gathers dust while I sit around and watch v-tubers to relax after 10 hour work days.
Surely.
So yeah, be very very wary if you ever decide to try out amateur stenography for whatever reason. It's not as easy to get started with as the online community for it would have you believe.