6.29

     I almost got the last 2 minutes of my piece today.  I got them at 94.3% accuracy.  So close.  Thanks to the Phoenix drill book, I have Norge in my dictionary if it ever comes up.  Also, despite what Carol says, I’ve decided that it’s okay to tuck the "G" on words that end in "R."  The only example she gives of why it’s not okay is burg/burring, and really, I don’t think burring is going to come up enough for it to be a problem. I couldn't think of anything else where it has been or would be a problem, either, so I’m just going to go ahead and do it.  I already deleted anything I had like that, though.

6.25

     I got up to 300 wpm on my minute yesterday.  I had no idea I was going that fast, though.  It felt exactly the same as when I was only going at 175 wpm.  Today I got up to 300 twice, and one of those times was when I wrote the entire minute, at 95% accuracy!  It took me exactly one week to get it, which is about how long it’s supposed to take me to get a new minute at practice speed.  The minute had 223 words, too, so it’s not like it was a slow part of the piece or anything.

     I decided that now was the best time to go back and figure out which drill I missed.  For some reason I thought I couldn’t do the KN- drill, so I knew which one that was, and I noticed I was on the wrong number about 19 drills later, so that’s only 20 drills I have to do over again.  I’ve done eight so far, and I’ve improved on all of them, although not enough to help my average.  After a week of re-doing drills, I’ve only gone from 115 to 116.

6.22

     I got up to 250 on the new minute a few times today. With my current setup, I don't have anything under the LS - no case, no paper, nothing. I hope it stays that way when I get something permanent down. I felt like it was worth noting that when I do the Phoenix drills, anything I misstroke for the first time counts as a mistake, and I don't get to move on to the next speed. If it's already in my dictionary because I misstroked it last time, I don't count it as a misstroke. I decided today that if Translation Magic translates it properly even though it's a first-time misstroke, I'm not going to count that as a misstroke, either.

     I moved up to 60 wpm on SKW (from 45), and 70 WPM on SHR (from 50), which I was happy with. I was not happy that it took me over half an hour to do it, but I'm committing to doing two drills every day. After I made it through all 107 drills (actually, I somehow missed a couple somewhere before #66, and I have no idea which ones, so I need to figure that out someday), my average speed was exactly 115 wpm. It was down to 110 before I got to the "strength-building drills," so I was happy enough to see it go back up to 115. Now after re-doing 3 drills, it's up to 116. Not exactly impressive, but I'll get there.

6.21

     My new minute seems easy, but they always do. I got up to 214 at the end already, though. I wound up having to go down a speed on both of my drills today. One of them was SHR. StenEd says to do, for example, SH/RED for such things, but I picked up the idea of SWR from depoman. Of course, then I never actually learned it, so in order to write all five columns perfectly today, I had to drop down to 50 wpm. It felt good to get them at any speed, though.

     I more or less learned to do consonant + OE for suffixes, and consonant + O for prefixes. So "audio" would be AUD/YOE, and "audiophile" would be AUD/YO/FAOIL. Today I went through about 70 OE entries I had added asterisks to and got rid of the asterisks. The VITAC book suggests using STK for Z instead of S*, which I think is a great idea since I actually have had a few conflicts come up, with "s" words that I wanted to capitalize with an asterisk but couldn’t because that made a "z" word, and whatnot. As I was going through my O*E words, I changed a few "z" words, too. Then I changed all my "-zy" words to STKEU, and then I went ahead and just changed all the "z" words in the entire dictionary, which was only about 150.

     I don’t have the foggiest idea what "katzenjammer" means, but apparently I’ve got two ways to write it if it ever comes up.

6.20

     I’ve made things difficult for myself with the Report-It again. I realized that in the new position, I was focusing on keeping my shoulders down so I wouldn’t have tension in them. But that was a kind of tension, too, and I wasn’t completely relaxed in that position, either. So I needed to find a place to put the Report-It where my shoulders would be completely relaxed, and now that’s been driving me crazy again.

     You know how sometimes, your machine just isn’t quite in the right spot, and you have to slightly adjust your own positioning to account for it, and really fight to get down every word, because you can’t stop to move the machine? I’ve been writing every word like that for the past month. It’s going to be good when I get it right though, I know it is.

     I finally got something right today. It was a horrible day for practice. I spent the first 2 hours messing with the Report-It. I didn’t record how long I spent on the drill book, but it was a long time. I finally made it all the way through yesterday, and I also went back and re-did an exercise for the first time. Each day I’m going to do the two that I have the slowest currently recorded speeds for. My worst speed, which was only on one exercise thankfully (the FR one), was 50 wpm.

     Unfortunately, I couldn’t best that speed yesterday. But today, I doubled it! I got the words at 100 wpm. I decided that if I have a misstroke already defined in my dictionary, and I write the word that way, it counts as being correct. It doesn’t matter if I’m training myself to write it incorrectly as long as it translates and doesn’t conflict with anything. That took a long time though, writing all 65 words enough times to double the speed, and then I had to do my next-slowest exercise. SKW, 55 wpm. I couldn’t even do it at 55 though. I had to drop it down to 50.

     It was well past my normal homework time by the time I started speedbuilding in earnest (8 hours past, in fact) and I wasn’t expecting much out of it since I never really got the Report-It where I wanted it. But then, I wrote my piece (or at least the last two minutes, which is all I’m counting for accuracy) all the way through, and it was at 95% accuracy! After writing the same 4 minutes over and over for the past month, I finally get to move on to..the last minute on this piece!

     I know what you’re thinking: if you could write 2 minutes individually at 95% accuracy, and it took you a month to be able to write them together at 95% (with 2 minutes in front of them), maybe that speed is too high. But I maintain that it would’ve happened a lot faster if I hadn’t been struggling with the Report-It the entire time.

     StenEd teaches that "any" is NI and "-ny" is N*I. That’s a little weird, though. None of the other –y suffixes have asterisks, so why not just make "any" N*I or something? I was just going to leave it, even though the VITAC book says “-ny” should be NI, but I decided I’d rather go for consistency, so I changed all 176 dictionary entries that had the N*I. Now I have to learn to write "any" as NE. That’s what the book suggested, and I liked the idea of leaving N*I open for other things. I also found a few dozen entries that started with "OR," which I can’t have because that’s my stroke for the word "or," so I fixed those.

6.15

     I am starting to show some progress on my piece again, although I don’t really feel any better about it.  I'm consistently getting to 250 wpm at the end, and I have even hit six strokes per minute a couple of times.  Both times were when I was trying very hard to go as slowly and write as cleanly as possible.  It’s so weird how I always wind up going fastest when I’m trying to write the slowest, and I write the slowest when I’m trying to go faster.

     I had time for about two more hours of dictionary maintenance today. I started by going back to the suffixes.  The general consensus on depoman was that I should have as many prefixes and suffixes as I could use, but I decided that I hadn’t done all of that work in vain.  I finished weeding out all the suffixes that needed to keep their asterisks, like the ones that are just words like "woods,"  and also ones that included –th and –v. I put all of those back in my dictionary.  Then I deleted all of the suffixes that started with DL- that I made when I went through the NJCaptions list.

     Then, I went through all 780 suffixes that were left and took the asterisks out of them.  Then I had about 800 suffixes that needed to be reintroduced into my dictionary, now sans asterisks.  As I put them back in, if there were any conflicts I mostly just didn’t enter the suffix.  I know a lot of them came from Mark’s dictionary, and those aren’t exactly vital for me to have.
     My plan now is that after I go through the VITAC book, I’ll go back through the NJCaptions list again and make suffixes and prefixes again, because I’ll probably want to make them differently than the first time around.  After I’ve done that I’ll have to go through the big list of conflict-finding sentences on the Phoenix site.

     After that I went through my dictionary and found all of the words that start with RI or TI or anything like that and either changed them or got rid of them.  The one problem I didn’t fix was that fact that StenEd teaches that DI should be used for di- and –dy, which doesn’t seem like a good idea.  But I’m not going to worry about that for now.

     Then I discovered that I don’t have to worry about the next four concepts in the VITAC book, because they’re already accounted for in my theory.  The last concept halfway was.  Since I use EN to start words, I’m not supposed to use it in the middle of words, but I do, so I had to go through about 250 entries that were in my dictionary and either delete them because I wouldn’t write them that way anyway, or change the EN to just N.
     The next thing I had to fix was the fact that I both started and ended words with EL, so I had to fix/delete 113 entries for that. I didn't have to worry about the next concept, but the last one in the "word boundary errors" section is a doozy. The book says to use ER for -er and -or, and to that end, gives you a list of 268 -or words that you should make sure translate properly in your dictionary. Based on how I break up words, it turns out most of these would involve a tucked R - activator, for example, is just ACT/VAIRT.
      Now that I think about it, actually, I'll probably just come back to the list another time. I want to go through the book and figure out what things I need to change in my writing before I go back to just dictionary-building. So that's the first section of the book "done." It took me 6 hours, and I still have 8 sections left.

6.13

     I am getting really good at fingerspelling "mastectomy."  I’ve got it defined 16 different ways in my dictionary.  I’ve done about 4 hours of dictionary maintenance today.  First I went through and fixed all the "-y" suffixes that had asterisks in them, like –ty, -ly, etc.  That was 2500 entries.  There were another 1200 I didn’t have to fix because I never got around to adding the asterisks to them in the first place.  That took up most of the time.  I was going to delete all the asterisks I added, but I couldn’t figure out a way to find them for anything else, so I guess I’ll just have to do those as I find them.

     Then I decided I ought to get the rest of my prefixes and suffixes in order before I went through more of the book.  According to the book, you’re only supposed to have "true" prefixes and suffixes defined as such, that is, ones that attach to root words that can stand alone.  Using the example from the book, stuff like "URE" isn’t supposed to get defined as a suffix because it's really just a word part and it might mess up other stuff. 
     I decided I should delete all those extra prefixes and suffixes I have in there.  I spent about an hour and a half going through the suffixes.  I decided to keep all the ones that are words, like "field" and "land" and whatnot, because that's how I make compound words, by adding asterisks to them, and I’m going to keep doing that.  That’s how I’ve always done it.

     I also decided to keep my special alphabets. I have a different way to write –by, -bi, -bee, -be, -bey, etc. for all the consonants.  That'll help with proper names and whatnot.  So, after I got through about 1300 of the suffixes, it occurred to me that I really do use a lot of those "word parts," and I think real captioners do, too, so despite what the VITAC book says, I might want to leave them in.  And I might have just wasted all of that time.
     Ever since one of my theory classes, I’ve had a table of 50 briefs I want to learn that I practice every day, either to memorize them (which usually doesn’t take long) or to get the fingering down.  For a while now, I haven’t been adding any new ones to the list because I wanted to incorporate the ways I’ve been changing my writing into the table so I could start actually learning them.
    I guess it’s a good thing I never got around to it, since I decided to unlearn that stuff anyaway.  Today I finally added a couple of of the "-y" suffixes to it: ten words each from –dy and –ry.  Then I remembered that I wanted to put the Phoenix-inspired changes I made to integrated endings in there first, so I had to figure out what to put in.  I wound up doing ten words each that end with –ling and –ned, since I have to remember to stroke the endings on those separately now.

Operation Delete All Asterisks

     I also had time to actually start on the VITAC book.  The very first thing it talks about is distinguishing starting, middle, and ending sounds.  For example, with the long E, it says you should do RE to start, no matter what the spelling is, RAOE in the middle, and RI at the end.  That’s actually what I already did when I learned StenEd, but then I added an asterisk to RI, because I thought it would conflict with things like ridiculous, which I wrote with RI.

     I did a horrible job recording what I changed, with StenoMaster and my asterisks and suffixes and everything, so I decided that with the VITAC book, I was going to make a list of everything I changed and actually practice and learn all of it.  I realized, though, that I never fully, 100% committed to and learned the asterisk in all of the -y endings -- -ty, -ry, -ly, etc.  So I had to put them on the list of things I needed to practice and learn. 

     And then I thought, since I never really learned this asterisk business in the first place, and since the VITAC book is going to have a different solution for any possible conflict I would have had that I was trying to avoid by using the asterisks…why keep trying to learn the asterisks?  Why not just go back to writing everything the StenEd way, and only make changes from the VITAC book?

     It was an incredibly freeing thought.  I haven’t made any progress at all in my writing for the past ten months because in September, I started with the StenoMaster, and in January I gave up on that and started with the asterisks, and somewhere in there I added all of these suffixes. I literally have 2000 suffixes and 500 prefixes. All of that pretty much destroyed my writing altogether. 

     Of course, now it’s going to be hard to unlearn what I have trained myself to do with the asterisks, but I think it will be for the best.  There are a few suffixes I’m going to have to remember to do with asterisks.  I looked through the entire VITAC book last night to see just how many there were.  It only took about half an hour, and I discovered that there aren’t many.

     I think giving up on these asterisks, and all the extra prefixes and suffixes that I never learned anyway, is the most exciting thing in steno since I learned about StenoMaster, which I was quite excited about.  The VITAC book actually does suggest one StenoMaster principle, which is using F instead of S/K, so BAFK instead of BAS/K.  That's still a hard one for me, but I've never stopped trying to use it.

    Unfortunately, now I have to go through my dictionary and delete all the things I put in with asterisks, which is going to be quite a project indeed.

6.10

     It’s really nice not to have to spend half of my practice time playing with the Report-It.  In all of the terrible positions I had it in, I couldn’t even write for 4 minutes without feeling horribly fatigued, and now at least from a fatigue standpoint, I’m completely back to normal.  I haven’t gotten used to the position yet, but I’m working on it.

       Today I measured the speed of my piece when I write it for control, at the end of my practice session. I’m almost completely comfortable writing it at that speed, and I don’t think I would want to go much faster.  It turns out that it’s only 180 wpm.  That seems awfully disappointing. I was also able to figure out how many words were in the 4 minutes that I write at the normal speed.  I know it starts out at 230 and finishes at 215.  According to RTC, it’s supposed to be 220, and actually, if you average all 4 minutes, it is 222.

     The other day I had time for some dictionary maintenance, so I finished fixing every thing I wanted to in terms of integrated endings.  I deleted 333 LG words, 122 NG words, and 46 RG words.  I also fixed anything where I had BG as in ribbing, because that conflicts with things like Rick, and anything were I had RBG, for things like crashing, because that conflicts with things like cracker.  Remembering not to write all of those is going to be a different story. 

     I deleted some entries with the long A sound and D, like swayed, which interferes with suede.  Carol says you shouldn’t attach D to any vowel sounds, but I think I’ve accounted for any problems aside from the long A. I also finally added my attaching alphabet, that attaches lowercase letters to the last word.

6.8

     I have not given up on the Report-It.  I spent a couple of days not using it, just because it was driving me crazy and I felt like I had to get some actual practice in. I still felt like I could benefit from it after that, though, so I had a friend walk me through the process outlined in the manual and make sure I was doing everything at the proper angles.  I tried to use it that way, I really did, but it just wasn’t comfortable.  Then I realized that I always write with my shoulders rasied up.  So, I tried really hard to force them down and hold them there and put the Report-It in a position that would be comfortable like that.  It’s only one spacer lower than where it was before, actually.  I haven’t gotten the kinks worked out of that yet, either, but for the first time my right arm doesn’t hurt.

     My right arm was always the one that hurt no matter what, and now my left arm hurts instead.  I ordered some leather key tabs from Depobook on April 24^th, and for various reasons, they didn’t arrive until yesterday.  I put some on the right lower bank to test it out, and I realized I was going to have to put them on the upper bank, too.  They’re pretty cool.  At first I thought they felt weird, but then today I did all of my practice with them on, just on the right side, and I could really tell a difference.  The keys on the left all of a sudden felt very hard and painful, and the key tabs were nice and soft.  It seems to help with knowing where the keys are, too.
     For some reason I don’t feel like I have to press as hard on those keys.  I guess because as soon as I feel the tabs, I know I’ve touched key and it’s going to register.  I also noticed that if I put the tab a little bit beyond where the key actually is, the space between the banks doesn’t bother me as much.  For some reason, ever since I got the LS, it seemed like the spaces between the banks were too big and it bothered me, even though I think they’re supposed to be exactly the same as on any other machine.  If I hang the tab a little bit over into that space, it still registers as pressing both keys, which is awesome.  I have to experiment with how much space I want to have there now.  I just put tabs on the left side, and I didn’t leave any space at all.  I figured I know by now where the keys are so that shouldn’t bother me, but I think I am getting some instances of both keys registering when I only meant to stroke one.

     The great thing about these tabs is that they're so easy to remove that you don’t have to do anything besides just pull them right off, and then you can re-attach them.  That's one of the reasons I got this kind of key tab, although I didn’t know they would be that easy to take off.  I was also pleasantly surprised to find out that I won’t have to adjust the sensitivity of my keys at all.  I thought that might be a problem, but as far as I can tell, everything still registers just fine.

     Of course, I haven’t made any progress on my piece at all, which is depressing, but I hit 260 at the end of it today, which hasn’t happened in quite a while. I found out the other day that the word "rind" wasn’t in my dictionary, which I thought was weird.

6.1

     I am still making adjustments to the placement of the Report-It (closer, farther, straighter, more angled, narrower, wider; the only thing I don’t have to adjust anymore is the height), which means I’m still making adjustments to the position of the machine, and writing feels like an epic struggle.  I’m determined to get it to work.  Last night I actually had some spare time to do some dictionary maintenance.  I went through my dictionary and deleted all of the entries for words that end in R, N, or L that I added an -ed to.  There were 144, 136, and 300, respectively.