manuscreationis

Just like the title says

I'm curious to hear from others in the community who took the plunge from a relatively stable/secure job working for someone else, to striking out on your own.

I'd like to hear both the successes and the failures, and things you wish you had properly prepared for before starting out. Maybe keeping your finances in order to make tax season a lot simpler was an issue at first, maybe it was forcing yourself to "hustle" to get work. How to manage time, how to decide when to farm some work out to other freelancers, etc etc.

I'm looking for any and all information from HNers who have made this transition (even if you ultimately went back to "steady" employment).

Thanks in advance

This is kind of a dumb question, but I'd appreciate it if someone could fill me in here...

Is there a particular name for the way keyboards like these are laid out?

http://www.agamazone.com/products_k_k330.html http://www.agamazone.com/products_k_k220.html

The thing to notice is that the navigation keys are laid out vertically instead of horizontally, shortening the distance between the numpad and the enter key.

I'm looking at getting a new keyboard, but most of the ones I find have the navigation keys laid out horizontally, increasing the space. Because of how I like to set my keyboard up for certain tasks (particularly gaming), having the enter key closer to the numpad (discounting the fact that numpads come with an enter key on them) reduces stress on my finger joints.

The keyboard I currently have is manufactured by the same people who make the keyboard I linked to, but in my experience the quality of the keyboard is very suspect, thus why I'm looking to replace it with a similar layout from a more reliable manufacturer. I'm not trying to plug them in any way, those are just the only keyboards I can find with this particular layout at the moment.

Thanks for any help in advance