Am I the only one to this date who still doesn't feel comfortable using the NumPad? I always have the NumLock key turned off and people who borrow my computer get annoyed by that. I've always typed numbers using the row above the letters. Typing numbers on the NumPad is very slow and unnatural to me. Is someone else out there feeling the same?

I have a live example. Some smart colleague decided today would be a great day to bring a toddler to the office. Too bad we sit in an open landscape type of office. Now everyone can hear how lovely she/he/it is

Doing personal online shopping whilst waiting for code to compile (took about 10-15 min every time, just for the smallest code change).
This was a really slow Adobe Flex system which I hated. Actually glad I left because no sane company uses Flash, even in 2012.

I learned coding the best way: While getting paid. I was an Excel junkie (still consider myself as one) and a colleague taught me PHP. This gave me the skills to apply for real programming jobs. Eventually I was hired at a company as a PHP developer who would need to be flexible enough to transition into a C# developer within the next 6 months. It wasn't easy, but after about 8 months and a 1-week course later I was programming in C# .NET with grace. Not looking back at PHP now at all. Naturally, today I can apply for a whole bunch of different jobs that I definitely could not three years ago.

I have the dearth of good programmers to thank for this of course and I am grateful every moment when I understand how lucky I've been.