I feel like knowledge of a desktop QWERTY keyboard has little affect on your mobile usages, aside from knowing which direction your thumb should move towards. Given the fact that (most?) people use only their thumbs when using their cellphone keyboards, I would argue that's reason enough to design a new keyboard based around this type of usage. Right now I think QWERTY is just a crutch for mobile keyboards until someone really makes something stellar.
I find it very disappointing that, in trying to show how conceited the "whiney" white girl is, the author's own vanity comes to light. Don't get me wrong, I think Miss Weiss is totally off base in thinking that affirmative action had anything to do with the rejection of a person as egocentric as herself. But let's not play the "my life was harder than yours" game. It just makes you look self absorbed.
I too can attest to the extensive abilities of the Sage package. It's extremely powerful and easy to use given that it's based in Python. Even if you don't want to download it, give the notebook a try: http://www.sagenb.org/.
You should also consider the possibility that the type of neural network you chose is not capable of learning the rules of chess, but may be sufficient for OCR.
They describe the "novel environment" starting on page 3.