I was feeling pretty confident about things after the CCP/CBC exam, and I decided I couldn't wait around anymore for my arm to feel better. I applied to about 15 CART companies trying to drum up some real work. I got promising responses from a few. It's three weeks later now, and I've only actually done any work for one, and that's only been a couple of hours. I'm hopeful about getting some classes from another next semester, but I'm not sure it'll be a full schedule.
I'm starting to have serious doubts about my ability to make a career out of CART. I don't like having downtime. I'd rather be working. Like it or not, I'm about to have an entire month off. I may actually have to invest in captioning. The good thing about that is I can start any time; it's not dependent on semester schedules.
I've been having a problem where I keep writng -fy as FAOI, even though that's "fie" and -fy should be FEU. I had SUR as Sur for some reason instead of sur-, which caused a problem somewhere, so I fixed that. I wrote that Frozen was a "prison success movie," which was just weird. I guess it's good that it translated that way, but I certainly didn't remember that I'm supposed to write "princess" as PRIN/S*ES. Maybe I should change prison to PR*IN.
Jill posted a brilliant idea on depoman. Instead of just having "-ville" and "-borough" and whatnot just attach, she has them defined to cap the previous word *and* attach to it! I updated a few pertinent entries of my own to do that, and it's totally awesome.
I also joined the Eclipse group on FB, where I've learned some great tricks. You can use ALT + S/ALT + A to add a single word to your spelling dictionary instead of having to run a spellcheck which pushes you down to the next misspelled word whether you wanted to go anywhere or not, which is a lifesaver. There's a command to bring up your steno notes if they're not showing up on a transcript.
The most important thing I saw was a reminder to upgrade to Version 6.0.0.12. I was on .9, and I don't even think I knew there was another update. If I did, I didn't know it was a stable one. I upgraded, and it turns out they fixed the auto-brief window so it works in keyboard macro output! They fixed it around the start of the semester. I *so* wish I had known that! It would've been amazing. I've got it going now, but there's only one week left in the semester.
I haven't had time for dictionary maintenence for a while, but there was a period where I was making good progress on it. I decided it made more sense for ya'll to be YAL and -ial to be Y*AL, so I changed 961 entries. I was really used to doing -ial as YAL, though, and it's not going over so well in my writing yet. -cade needed to be KA*ID to avoid conflicting with Cade, but there weren't many of those. Similarly, -tate (141 entries) got updated to TA*IT to avoid conflicting with Tate.
-gate (162) had to be GA*ET, for obvious reasons. I was writing -ality as ALT and it wasn't translating, so I did 434 of those. Latin was defined as LANT, which made sense. I'm not sure I actually even write it that way, but I updated 86 -lant entries to be LA*NT. -rate words (465) weren't working as RA*T, although I thought I fixed that already. I went ahead and did 84 -fied words as FAOID and FID, so that should work no matter which way I do it.
BER is ber-, so I updated -ber (208) as B*ER. "-zation" words (273) weren't coming out properly. I think I decided they should be fine as STKAIGS, but I defined them all as STKA*IGS for some reason. I wanted my para- prefix (232) to be PA*R, but it wasn't defined. -cate (238) wasn't working as K*AT. YOR is yore, so -ior (84) had to be Y*OR. I'd probably write yore as YOER, though, so I'm not sure I really needed to do that one.
I'm down to only 13 more problems to fix, so maybe I can get them done over winter break.
Undiagnosable
I had the Botox injections in my neck and chest about a month ago. They didn't help at all. I thought they even made it worse for about a week, but it might've just been the way I was sitting. I called the doctor, and he said give it a few more days, so I did and called again. He was supposed to call back, but he didn't. I didn't follow up because it didn't seem like he had any other suggestions. The Botox was super expensive, and I wasn't planning to do that again.
Instead, I started going to a chiropractor. He said that he could definitely help me, and my spine was out of alignment and pushing on nerves that were affecting my arm. He said my neck didn't have enough backwards curve, so my head is too far forward, and that's throwing the curve in the small of my back out of alignment, too. He wanted me to do two visits a week for four weeks, then one visit a week for two weeks, and then see where we go from there.
I've had five adjustments now, and it hasn't made a bit of difference. The chiro says he's not seeing any problems in the area that would usually affect that part of my arm. He's confident I'm going to see results if I keep going. I'm not so sure, but I might as well go through the entire course of treatment. This chiropractor won't be in network for my insurance next year, and my last appointment falls in January, so I probably won't go to that one if I'm not feeling any better.
I stopped doing the exercises from physical therapy. I did them for three months without any improvement, so I think that's a good enough try. I'm doing a few now that the chiro suggested. I'm also using a Denneroll pillow/pad/thing under my neck to try to restore the proper curvature.
I'm about at my wits' end with this thing. It's driving me crazy. It's not just that it hurts when I write; I can't write properly. My hand doesn't do what I tell it to, and it affects my product. I monitor my accuracy, and it's still above 99%, but it's so maddening having something like this keep me from doing my best work. The pain makes me dread having to start every class, and it feels like it's ruining my whole life and it's never going to go away.
The worst part is I don't know what the problem is or how to fix it. I bought a heating pad and tried that, but it doesn't help, either. There's a nerve or something on the inside of my upper arm and when I touch it, pain shoots all the way down my arm. That's got to be the problem. I don't understand why no one can figure out how to fix it.
I wound up calling the rehabilitation specialist a couple weeks after he never returned my call. He said maybe it's a muscle problem, or maybe an MRI would help. He wants me to come in so he can do another exam and see if he missed anything, since we've pretty much ruled out thoracic outlet causing the problem. He has such limited appointments that I can't get in to see him until a week from now, and even that one I might have to reschedule. He's not in network on my new insurance, either, so I'll probably have to find someone else to look at the MRI after I get it done.
I'm starting to have a new pain in the small of my back. I'm not sure what's causing it. I thought it might be because I tried out writing with my steno machine in a lower position for a few days, but it didn't make my arm feel any better, so I stopped doing that a while ago, and my back pain hasn't gotten any better. I got a memory foam mattress topper, so that could be it. I'll be sad if I have to lose the topper, though; my mattress is way too firm without it.
Instead, I started going to a chiropractor. He said that he could definitely help me, and my spine was out of alignment and pushing on nerves that were affecting my arm. He said my neck didn't have enough backwards curve, so my head is too far forward, and that's throwing the curve in the small of my back out of alignment, too. He wanted me to do two visits a week for four weeks, then one visit a week for two weeks, and then see where we go from there.
I've had five adjustments now, and it hasn't made a bit of difference. The chiro says he's not seeing any problems in the area that would usually affect that part of my arm. He's confident I'm going to see results if I keep going. I'm not so sure, but I might as well go through the entire course of treatment. This chiropractor won't be in network for my insurance next year, and my last appointment falls in January, so I probably won't go to that one if I'm not feeling any better.
I stopped doing the exercises from physical therapy. I did them for three months without any improvement, so I think that's a good enough try. I'm doing a few now that the chiro suggested. I'm also using a Denneroll pillow/pad/thing under my neck to try to restore the proper curvature.
I'm about at my wits' end with this thing. It's driving me crazy. It's not just that it hurts when I write; I can't write properly. My hand doesn't do what I tell it to, and it affects my product. I monitor my accuracy, and it's still above 99%, but it's so maddening having something like this keep me from doing my best work. The pain makes me dread having to start every class, and it feels like it's ruining my whole life and it's never going to go away.
The worst part is I don't know what the problem is or how to fix it. I bought a heating pad and tried that, but it doesn't help, either. There's a nerve or something on the inside of my upper arm and when I touch it, pain shoots all the way down my arm. That's got to be the problem. I don't understand why no one can figure out how to fix it.
I wound up calling the rehabilitation specialist a couple weeks after he never returned my call. He said maybe it's a muscle problem, or maybe an MRI would help. He wants me to come in so he can do another exam and see if he missed anything, since we've pretty much ruled out thoracic outlet causing the problem. He has such limited appointments that I can't get in to see him until a week from now, and even that one I might have to reschedule. He's not in network on my new insurance, either, so I'll probably have to find someone else to look at the MRI after I get it done.
I'm starting to have a new pain in the small of my back. I'm not sure what's causing it. I thought it might be because I tried out writing with my steno machine in a lower position for a few days, but it didn't make my arm feel any better, so I stopped doing that a while ago, and my back pain hasn't gotten any better. I got a memory foam mattress topper, so that could be it. I'll be sad if I have to lose the topper, though; my mattress is way too firm without it.
CCP/CBC Hopeful
This probably would've been a better post if I had had time to write it a little closer to the event, but c'est la vie. I was feeling a little under the weather when I took the exam this time, so instead of being nervous, I tried to focus on just feeling sick and being angry that I had to go take a test instead of being nervous. I cut time a little close on getting there; I wasn't sure if you had to be there half an hour before the exam started. I think I made that time by about 30 seconds.
I was kind of concerned about getting set up and entering the terms in time, but I didn't have anything to worry about. I got everything all set, worked out the terms, and got myself in a comfortable writing position, and then decided not to do any practice material. I never practice before I CART for real, so why practice then?
I didn't try to do any fancy briefs with the terms. I knew I wouldn't remember them and I'd default to stroking them out, anyway. I think I did make briefs for a couple, and I think I actually remembered to use them. But for the most part I just wrote the words a bunch of times and tried to get possible misstrokes in my dictionary.
I had to wait for the CRR to be given first. We had the unusual circumstance of a candidate taking the CRR, and then going over to the next room for the RMR. The chief examiner let us know that after the CRR, she wanted everyone to stay seated, and the CRR/RMR candidate would gather up his things and go to the other room before she played the CBC/CCP exam.
One of the candidates said something about a lot of "movement" during the exam, and the examiner said she saw it. I had decided to just sit with my eyes closed during the CRR and wait for it to be over, so I didn't see anything. I thought maybe a lot of people went by the door or something.
When it was time for my test, I was nervous I wouldn't have enough time to get comfortable and get in the groove, but it turned out to be fine. I wrote the warm-up minute, and it was pretty terrible at first, but I got things under control before the test started. I kept getting nervous and feeling like I was losing control, but I tried to focus on getting my arm comfortable. I can always write better if my arm feels like it's in a good spot.
I also continued my new strategy of looking down at something in the same spot my computer speakers are at home instead of looking up at the whiteboard, and that worked well. I could just kind of zone out/let my eyes glaze over, but also focus on something at the same time. I think it must be training from when I CART that when I look away from the screen, it takes pressure off and makes it easier to write.
There were a couple sections where I dropped the ball and it was a struggle to push through, but I did it. The topic we were given was "patriotism." I think the text was some kind of Presidential acceptance speech. It felt really comfortable and familiar since I've been doing a political science class all semester. That probably helped me be less nervous, too.
After the exam, one of the candidates was complaining about how the RMR candidate was "a mess," and was messing around with his equipment and stuff. I guess that's what was going on during the CRR. I don't think it would've bothered me even if it had happened during my test. I couldn't see anyone during my test, and I couldn't hear him doing stuff even with my eyes closed. The chief examiner said she would let NCRA know about it.
I feel really confident about the exam. Barring any formatting/equipment/other weird issues like that, I think I passed. It's about a million times harder to wait for what I think are passing results than it was to wait for what I was almost certain were failing ones. They said we should have the results by "mid-December," so I guess I've got about a week and a half left until I find out.
I was kind of concerned about getting set up and entering the terms in time, but I didn't have anything to worry about. I got everything all set, worked out the terms, and got myself in a comfortable writing position, and then decided not to do any practice material. I never practice before I CART for real, so why practice then?
I didn't try to do any fancy briefs with the terms. I knew I wouldn't remember them and I'd default to stroking them out, anyway. I think I did make briefs for a couple, and I think I actually remembered to use them. But for the most part I just wrote the words a bunch of times and tried to get possible misstrokes in my dictionary.
I had to wait for the CRR to be given first. We had the unusual circumstance of a candidate taking the CRR, and then going over to the next room for the RMR. The chief examiner let us know that after the CRR, she wanted everyone to stay seated, and the CRR/RMR candidate would gather up his things and go to the other room before she played the CBC/CCP exam.
One of the candidates said something about a lot of "movement" during the exam, and the examiner said she saw it. I had decided to just sit with my eyes closed during the CRR and wait for it to be over, so I didn't see anything. I thought maybe a lot of people went by the door or something.
When it was time for my test, I was nervous I wouldn't have enough time to get comfortable and get in the groove, but it turned out to be fine. I wrote the warm-up minute, and it was pretty terrible at first, but I got things under control before the test started. I kept getting nervous and feeling like I was losing control, but I tried to focus on getting my arm comfortable. I can always write better if my arm feels like it's in a good spot.
I also continued my new strategy of looking down at something in the same spot my computer speakers are at home instead of looking up at the whiteboard, and that worked well. I could just kind of zone out/let my eyes glaze over, but also focus on something at the same time. I think it must be training from when I CART that when I look away from the screen, it takes pressure off and makes it easier to write.
There were a couple sections where I dropped the ball and it was a struggle to push through, but I did it. The topic we were given was "patriotism." I think the text was some kind of Presidential acceptance speech. It felt really comfortable and familiar since I've been doing a political science class all semester. That probably helped me be less nervous, too.
After the exam, one of the candidates was complaining about how the RMR candidate was "a mess," and was messing around with his equipment and stuff. I guess that's what was going on during the CRR. I don't think it would've bothered me even if it had happened during my test. I couldn't see anyone during my test, and I couldn't hear him doing stuff even with my eyes closed. The chief examiner said she would let NCRA know about it.
I feel really confident about the exam. Barring any formatting/equipment/other weird issues like that, I think I passed. It's about a million times harder to wait for what I think are passing results than it was to wait for what I was almost certain were failing ones. They said we should have the results by "mid-December," so I guess I've got about a week and a half left until I find out.
WA CSR
I decided to sit for the Washington State Court Reporter Exam. I practiced takes at 200 wpm, one a day for two weeks. I had a really hard time finding any material at 200 wpm. I had some at 225, so I slowed it down to what should've been about 200. I did okay on the first few takes, but my accuracy got worse the more I did. When I ran out of those I started slowing down some at higher speeds, and I did even worse on those.
I wasn't really sure what my chances of passing were by the time the test rolled around. The information they sent said to go to the Technology Center, which was different from the building I go to for the NCRA exam. The TC was locked, but luckily the usual building wasn't very far, and that's where the exam was being held.
The staff was very friendly, and got me set up in a nice corner in the room. I had the option of writing the test on my laptop and then printing it on their printer, which was awesome. You have to bring your own printer for the NCRA exam, which I think is just silly. Luckily for the CBC/CCP you don't need a printer, anyway.
There was practice material playing, which was a little confusing because about 10 minutes before the test was supposed to start, the material said something along the lines of, "the practice is now over and we will begin the test." I didn't really want to practice much before the test. I figured with my arm problem it would just wear me out unnecessarily. I don't practice at all before I CART, and I do fine out of the gate, so I figured I don't need to practice for 20 minutes before an exam, either.
The proctor wasn't in the room at that time, though, so I thought surely that wasn't the test, and I took a chance and didn't write it. Luckily it wasn't the test. The gave me an envelope when I came in, to put my test in when I was done, and I looked inside it and there were instructions and grading rules. I was particularly interested in those since I hadn't been able to find them online before the test. I figured they were about the same as NCRA's anyway, though.
I was surprised to find out that you can turn in both transcripts if you want to, and they'll grade them both. The proctor read some instructions, and asked if there were any questions, and people actually asked questions, so I felt comfortable asking mine to verify about sending in both transcripts. The volume wasn't too loud, which was nice. It's always too loud at the NCRA exam, and it throws me off a little.
Part of the instructions for transcribing told you where each exam would stop/start being graded, since only 5 minutes out of a 7-minute take are graded. I didn't want to look at that before the exam, though, because I figured I would get nervous thinking "this is when the grading starts" or be anxiously waiting for when the grading would end.
When the proctor started the exam for real, there were two minutes of practic,e and then the exam. I did pretty well on it; not perfect, but I kept it together most of the time. I was expecting another two minutes of practice before the second take, so I was resituating and getting comfortable, and all of a sudden the second take started! I wasn't ready at all and I never regained my composure. It was a mess.
After the takes were over, we had 90 minutes to transcribe. It took me about an hour to transcribe the first take, and I felt like I had a maximum of about 11 errors. You're allowed something like 50, so I was feeling pretty good about it. One of the very first sentences said something about a man working somewhere for "# years," so that wasn't helpful at all. I had no idea what number I was trying to write. But it didn't really matter with that amount of errors.
Before the test, I thought I might turn in both transcripts. But since it took an hour to do the first one and I had mucked up the second one so badly, I didn't even look at it. I turned in my one transcript and left, and then I had the anxiety of worrying about "what if I didn't send in the right section" or "what if I didn't copy everything out of Eclipse properly," etc. Always something you can wish you had double checked.
The instructions said the results would be in after two weeks, but I thought that was a little too optimistic and tried not to think about them coming in at all. They really did come in about two and a half weeks later, though, so that's not bad at all. I was correct in thinking I had passed, so I'm now officially a WA CSR.
It's not really very exciting. It was definitely worth it to get some kind of certification, but it's not related to CART or captioning at all. It's a relief to know I can pass something at least.
I've got some new 180 takes I've been practicing this week for the NCRA exam next weekend, and I've been having mixed results. After seeing how many mistakes I made on the court reporter exam (that I was able to fix in the transcript), I felt like there was pretty much no chance of being able to pass the CCP this time. The CR exam was at 200 wpm, though, and the CCP is only 180, so maybe that will help. I think my nerves might get the better of me as usual, so I'm trying not to hold out much hope. I just have to keep trying, and sooner or later there will be an exam that's easy for me to write, and I'll pass it.
It's just so much pressure knowing I've only got one shot, and it has to be right the first time. I think knowing I got to fix it later and all I was trying to do was really get down notes for myself to be able to go off of helped a lot when I took the CR exam. I don't write well under pressure at all. Luckily when I CART I'm able to not think about the fact that someone's reading it and just do the best I can. I regularly get up to 260 wpm and I'm my accuracy is above 99%, so that works fine.
I wasn't really sure what my chances of passing were by the time the test rolled around. The information they sent said to go to the Technology Center, which was different from the building I go to for the NCRA exam. The TC was locked, but luckily the usual building wasn't very far, and that's where the exam was being held.
The staff was very friendly, and got me set up in a nice corner in the room. I had the option of writing the test on my laptop and then printing it on their printer, which was awesome. You have to bring your own printer for the NCRA exam, which I think is just silly. Luckily for the CBC/CCP you don't need a printer, anyway.
There was practice material playing, which was a little confusing because about 10 minutes before the test was supposed to start, the material said something along the lines of, "the practice is now over and we will begin the test." I didn't really want to practice much before the test. I figured with my arm problem it would just wear me out unnecessarily. I don't practice at all before I CART, and I do fine out of the gate, so I figured I don't need to practice for 20 minutes before an exam, either.
The proctor wasn't in the room at that time, though, so I thought surely that wasn't the test, and I took a chance and didn't write it. Luckily it wasn't the test. The gave me an envelope when I came in, to put my test in when I was done, and I looked inside it and there were instructions and grading rules. I was particularly interested in those since I hadn't been able to find them online before the test. I figured they were about the same as NCRA's anyway, though.
I was surprised to find out that you can turn in both transcripts if you want to, and they'll grade them both. The proctor read some instructions, and asked if there were any questions, and people actually asked questions, so I felt comfortable asking mine to verify about sending in both transcripts. The volume wasn't too loud, which was nice. It's always too loud at the NCRA exam, and it throws me off a little.
Part of the instructions for transcribing told you where each exam would stop/start being graded, since only 5 minutes out of a 7-minute take are graded. I didn't want to look at that before the exam, though, because I figured I would get nervous thinking "this is when the grading starts" or be anxiously waiting for when the grading would end.
When the proctor started the exam for real, there were two minutes of practic,e and then the exam. I did pretty well on it; not perfect, but I kept it together most of the time. I was expecting another two minutes of practice before the second take, so I was resituating and getting comfortable, and all of a sudden the second take started! I wasn't ready at all and I never regained my composure. It was a mess.
After the takes were over, we had 90 minutes to transcribe. It took me about an hour to transcribe the first take, and I felt like I had a maximum of about 11 errors. You're allowed something like 50, so I was feeling pretty good about it. One of the very first sentences said something about a man working somewhere for "# years," so that wasn't helpful at all. I had no idea what number I was trying to write. But it didn't really matter with that amount of errors.
Before the test, I thought I might turn in both transcripts. But since it took an hour to do the first one and I had mucked up the second one so badly, I didn't even look at it. I turned in my one transcript and left, and then I had the anxiety of worrying about "what if I didn't send in the right section" or "what if I didn't copy everything out of Eclipse properly," etc. Always something you can wish you had double checked.
The instructions said the results would be in after two weeks, but I thought that was a little too optimistic and tried not to think about them coming in at all. They really did come in about two and a half weeks later, though, so that's not bad at all. I was correct in thinking I had passed, so I'm now officially a WA CSR.
It's not really very exciting. It was definitely worth it to get some kind of certification, but it's not related to CART or captioning at all. It's a relief to know I can pass something at least.
I've got some new 180 takes I've been practicing this week for the NCRA exam next weekend, and I've been having mixed results. After seeing how many mistakes I made on the court reporter exam (that I was able to fix in the transcript), I felt like there was pretty much no chance of being able to pass the CCP this time. The CR exam was at 200 wpm, though, and the CCP is only 180, so maybe that will help. I think my nerves might get the better of me as usual, so I'm trying not to hold out much hope. I just have to keep trying, and sooner or later there will be an exam that's easy for me to write, and I'll pass it.
It's just so much pressure knowing I've only got one shot, and it has to be right the first time. I think knowing I got to fix it later and all I was trying to do was really get down notes for myself to be able to go off of helped a lot when I took the CR exam. I don't write well under pressure at all. Luckily when I CART I'm able to not think about the fact that someone's reading it and just do the best I can. I regularly get up to 260 wpm and I'm my accuracy is above 99%, so that works fine.
10.19.13
I'm still enjoying CART, although sometimes it can be pretty boring, and I look forward to classes where the instructors say more/faster so I don't have any downtime. And sometimes I have to shower after lunch, which kind of bugs me. But I think it's worth it. I wish I had more work. I don't have any classes at all on Fridays. But I'm only working for one company, so I haven't exactly run out of options on that front yet. I'm waiting until after the CBC/CCP exam on 11/1 so I can see how I feel about that before I reach out to more companies.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
I love the idea of doing remote CART exclusively, but I don't like the idea of not working during the summer. I'm not sure what else I could do during the summer, though. I guess I could do some captioning, but I'd have to buy AccuCap, which is $3k, and I'd need to have phone lines installed, and get an audio coupler and all of that stuff. I guess it would be worth it to have income during the summer, but I wish there were an easier way to get summer work.
I've been going through my dictionary maintenance list, and I've noticed a disturbing trend of finding things that I wanted to go back and fix - like "-cal" words not working when I stroked K-L - that weren't defined that way just because it was wrong to write them that way. -cal is KA*L, and K-L is -cle, so of course "magical" wasn't defined as MAG/K-L. I should probably reinforce KA*L, not define all the -cal words as K-L and KA*L. I guess it doesn't hurt to have them in there as K-L, too, where it doesn't cause any conflicts.
I think the problem is when I'm doing realtime, I just write the first thing that comes to mind, and it isn't always the right thing, even though it makes sense at the time. I don't like going through and rewriting (in the case of -cal) 580 words the wrong way, though. I'm almost reinforcing the wrong thing. I always write the the right way, too, though, just to make sure it's in there that way as well. Hopefully just by writing all those words at least some way will stick and there won't be any hestitation the next time I write them.
I'm probably supposed to do -ice words as consonant + IS, but I wrote 253 of those as IS just in case. -cept works fine as SEPT, but sometimes I do it as SE*PT, so 27 of those work now. Dis- is just DIS, but some words sound like DIZ, so I fixed about 5 of those to work that way. -ling should be L*ING, but that's hard to write and something I think I just came up with myself, so it's not ingrained at all, and lots of times I wind up stroking LG. I have that defined as -ing for misstrokes, but I fixed it so 532 of those should work as -ling now. And -ious is typically YOUS, but I fixed 670 words so that YUS works, too.
I never seem to make any progress on my dictionary maintenance list. I cross things off, but then I add more things, so it never gets any shorter. I have 19 problems to address right now. I don't always spend a lot of time working on it, though. Starting next week I have to start practicing for the CCP/CBC, so I probably won't do much with it until after the exam.
I'm still having problems where I try to put asterisks on all of my ending word parts whether they need them or not. I wish I had just left my dictionary that way after I changed it to be like that. I guess hindsight is 20/20, though. And maybe there are a lot of endings that I didn't catch and hadn't changed, so I'm not as bad off as I think I am. For now, I'm still just trying to remember which ones need asterisks and which ones don't.
I'm trying to be a little less strict with the realtime rules. I have a lot of trouble trying to remember to write devastate as DEV/STA*IT. DEV is delve, so you can't write DEV/STATE or it would be "delve state." But who's ever going to say "delve state?" Someone sometime maybe, I guess. But "delve stating," is even less likely, so I finally broke down and just defined DEV/STA*IT/G as devastating. I've been trying to think about that kind of thing more often. It goes against all the rules of realtime, so I guess I'll find out sooner or later whether it hurts or helps.
Chair Update
I'm feeling better about the Soma chair. I've got the arms where I
want them, and I got the taller backrest for it, although that was a bit
of a fiasco. The Soma guy was coming to Seattle and he wanted me to
wait until he was here to swap out the back, so I did - and he came to
Seattle without taking care of my chair.
I wound up having to go back to the retailer when they said I could bring the chair had have it swapped out, but it turned out no one was there and they neglected to tell me. So Chris had to swap it out himself, and it took forever. I have a feeling that back had been waiting there for a very long time, too. If I had known it was there and I wasn't going to have any help putting it on, I would've gone to get it a lot earlier.
I'm still struggling with overall position. Sometimes when I'm writing my arm doesn't hurt, but my right leg does. It seems to be exacerbated by trying to sit up straight. If I slouch in the chair, it goes away, but that's not a very good writing position. Sometimes I can't go more than half an hour without my back hurting, and then I have to lean back into the chair to fix that; but then I have to put my arms on the arm rests, and that's not good for writing, either.
I wound up having to go back to the retailer when they said I could bring the chair had have it swapped out, but it turned out no one was there and they neglected to tell me. So Chris had to swap it out himself, and it took forever. I have a feeling that back had been waiting there for a very long time, too. If I had known it was there and I wasn't going to have any help putting it on, I would've gone to get it a lot earlier.
I'm still struggling with overall position. Sometimes when I'm writing my arm doesn't hurt, but my right leg does. It seems to be exacerbated by trying to sit up straight. If I slouch in the chair, it goes away, but that's not a very good writing position. Sometimes I can't go more than half an hour without my back hurting, and then I have to lean back into the chair to fix that; but then I have to put my arms on the arm rests, and that's not good for writing, either.
Lack of Pain Resolution
I found out the wrist brace wasn't actually helping my hand when it started going numb despite the brace, so I stopped wearing it, but I haven't been having problems with major numbness in either hand for a while.
I didn't actually wind up seeing a vascular surgeon. It turned out the appointment was with her PA, who spent about two minutes with me and then told me she'd ask the surgeon what we should do. What a total waste of time and money. The vascular surgeon referred me to a rehabilitation specialist. He thinks a muscle in my neck might be too tight and is restricting blood flow in my arm. He did the EMG test on my neck and there was a little activity, so he decided to do a numbing injection. When he did the EMG again to see where exactly to do the injection, there wasn't any activity anymore.
I don't think the muscle in my neck is really the problem, especially since the numbing injection did absolutely nothing for my arm pain. He prescribed lidocaine patches or cream. The patches were way too expensive, so I tried the cream a couple times a day for a week, and then four times a day for another week.
It seemed like my arm might be getting a little better, but it wasn't exactly a controlled study because I also stopped practicing sentences with hard words. For some reason, that's when my arm always hurt the most, so I figured maybe I was doing something during that time to make it worse and I might as well stop and see what happened. As a further experiment, I stopped using the cream, since it was kind of a hassle to put on four times a day and it made my neck itch (probably from my hair sticking to my neck all the time). My arm didn't get any worse at all, so either the cream did help and the positive effects haven't been reversed by not using it for the past two weeks, or it didn't help.
I told the doctor that the shot didn't do anything, but he still wants me to try having a Botox injection to see if that helps, so my appointment for that is on 11/1. I tend to sleep with both of my arms under my head/pillow, so I've been focusing for a few weeks on trying to sleep over my shoulder less, and off of my arms more.
Sometimes when I'm writing I can get into a pretty good spot where my arm almost doesn't seem to be a problem. But I think that's always been the case, so it's not really improvement. It doesn't hurt much during the course of daily activities, but it never has. Showering is still the worst. My arm feels pretty bad after I do that, and if I try to write right out of the shower, it's a disaster. It's like I don't have any strength in my arm at all. Doctors always do strength tests, and they don't find any weakness on the left side, but it really feels weak/like I can't hold it up/use it at all when I try to write.
My hand doesn't go as numb when I do serratus punches and another weighted exercise, so I think that's a good sign. But I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately, really. I do maybe an hour a day of hard stuff, and that's pretty much it. I don't do any realtime on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Most of the time, I still feel like it's a pretty big hindrance to my ability to work.
I didn't actually wind up seeing a vascular surgeon. It turned out the appointment was with her PA, who spent about two minutes with me and then told me she'd ask the surgeon what we should do. What a total waste of time and money. The vascular surgeon referred me to a rehabilitation specialist. He thinks a muscle in my neck might be too tight and is restricting blood flow in my arm. He did the EMG test on my neck and there was a little activity, so he decided to do a numbing injection. When he did the EMG again to see where exactly to do the injection, there wasn't any activity anymore.
I don't think the muscle in my neck is really the problem, especially since the numbing injection did absolutely nothing for my arm pain. He prescribed lidocaine patches or cream. The patches were way too expensive, so I tried the cream a couple times a day for a week, and then four times a day for another week.
It seemed like my arm might be getting a little better, but it wasn't exactly a controlled study because I also stopped practicing sentences with hard words. For some reason, that's when my arm always hurt the most, so I figured maybe I was doing something during that time to make it worse and I might as well stop and see what happened. As a further experiment, I stopped using the cream, since it was kind of a hassle to put on four times a day and it made my neck itch (probably from my hair sticking to my neck all the time). My arm didn't get any worse at all, so either the cream did help and the positive effects haven't been reversed by not using it for the past two weeks, or it didn't help.
I told the doctor that the shot didn't do anything, but he still wants me to try having a Botox injection to see if that helps, so my appointment for that is on 11/1. I tend to sleep with both of my arms under my head/pillow, so I've been focusing for a few weeks on trying to sleep over my shoulder less, and off of my arms more.
Sometimes when I'm writing I can get into a pretty good spot where my arm almost doesn't seem to be a problem. But I think that's always been the case, so it's not really improvement. It doesn't hurt much during the course of daily activities, but it never has. Showering is still the worst. My arm feels pretty bad after I do that, and if I try to write right out of the shower, it's a disaster. It's like I don't have any strength in my arm at all. Doctors always do strength tests, and they don't find any weakness on the left side, but it really feels weak/like I can't hold it up/use it at all when I try to write.
My hand doesn't go as numb when I do serratus punches and another weighted exercise, so I think that's a good sign. But I haven't been doing a lot of writing lately, really. I do maybe an hour a day of hard stuff, and that's pretty much it. I don't do any realtime on Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Most of the time, I still feel like it's a pretty big hindrance to my ability to work.
180
I really like doing CART. It's great not having to work weird hours like I would have to for captioning. And lots of times I wind up not having to actually do anything and I still get paid, which would never happen with captioning. Something's always going to be on the air, whether it's what you did prep for or not. The only bad part is that the audio isn't always that great. But I can only work with what I've got, and so far I don't think I've missed writing anything vital because of it.
I'm always more surprised by what's in my dictionary properly than by what isn't. "Hieroglyphics" came out perfectly the other day, and I already had "Micah" in there. Who knew? I have a bunch of math symbols in, like +, -, etc., and I've even got superscript set up. Auto Brief comes in handy a lot. In one of my classes, the instructor kept saying "prepositional phrase," which I write as PREP/SIGS/NAL/FRAIS, or PREP/SILGS/FRAIS if I'm feeling really confident. Auto Brief suggested "PRO*EP," which was a whole lot easier, and I wound up using that brief 30 times just for that one session.
My arm being messed up has really slowed down my progress on the Phoenix speed drills. It's just impossible to try to build speed with any kind of accuracy at this point. But I keep plugging along anyway, and sometimes I have good days with it. I finally hit a major milestone: I've got a speed of 180 wpm or better on every drill, and my average speed is 185 wpm now. Maybe that means I can finally pass the CBC/CCP this time. I'm not going to a concert the night before specifically so I won't have any regrets about it after the test, so it had better be worth it.
I've been getting some good dictionary maintenance in. I spent a couple hours on it one day, and added 956 entries. Per is P*ER because PER is per-, so I made sure all 253 -per entries were defined with P*R. I decided VAL should be Val, so I defined 84 -val entries as VA*L. I do -in and -en both as -N, so I made sure 993 -in entries and 1524 -en will work. And I guess there was something wrong with -eous words, because they were on the list, so I wrote all 126 of those.
I'm always more surprised by what's in my dictionary properly than by what isn't. "Hieroglyphics" came out perfectly the other day, and I already had "Micah" in there. Who knew? I have a bunch of math symbols in, like +, -, etc., and I've even got superscript set up. Auto Brief comes in handy a lot. In one of my classes, the instructor kept saying "prepositional phrase," which I write as PREP/SIGS/NAL/FRAIS, or PREP/SILGS/FRAIS if I'm feeling really confident. Auto Brief suggested "PRO*EP," which was a whole lot easier, and I wound up using that brief 30 times just for that one session.
My arm being messed up has really slowed down my progress on the Phoenix speed drills. It's just impossible to try to build speed with any kind of accuracy at this point. But I keep plugging along anyway, and sometimes I have good days with it. I finally hit a major milestone: I've got a speed of 180 wpm or better on every drill, and my average speed is 185 wpm now. Maybe that means I can finally pass the CBC/CCP this time. I'm not going to a concert the night before specifically so I won't have any regrets about it after the test, so it had better be worth it.
I've been getting some good dictionary maintenance in. I spent a couple hours on it one day, and added 956 entries. Per is P*ER because PER is per-, so I made sure all 253 -per entries were defined with P*R. I decided VAL should be Val, so I defined 84 -val entries as VA*L. I do -in and -en both as -N, so I made sure 993 -in entries and 1524 -en will work. And I guess there was something wrong with -eous words, because they were on the list, so I wrote all 126 of those.
Soma Split Seat Chair
I finally got my chair. It was going to come in fairly quickly, but then it was delayed because there was an unexpected back order on seat shells. It does have a lot of adjustments. You can move the arms up/down, in/out, and do a 360-degree rotation on the arm pads, which comes in handy. I can't actually lower the arms enough to get close to my keyboard tray, so that's pretty annoying.
The seat of course goes up and down, but it doesn't actually go down as far as I need it to. The fancy "dynamic ergokinetic split seat" seems to add a lot of height to the seat. I can slide the seat backwards and forwards, which is cool, but doesn't actually seem to affect anything. The back rest also goes up and down, and tilts forward/back. The problem is that because the seat is so high, so far away from the base of the vertical bar for the back rest, the actual back rest itself is way too low, and even raised to its full hight, it's too short.
The seat itself also tilts. You can have it in free-rocking position (a feature that comes standard on most chairs but cost $55 for this one), or you can lock it at a certain tilt. It's supposed to be some fancy "SomaComfort" seat, but it's really pretty uncomfortable. I have no idea why anyone would find it comfortable.
The only good thing about it besides the flexibility of the arms is that because of the split seat, I can actually use my tripod with it and get my machine as close to my body as I want to. It's really nice not having my machine sliding away from me all the time.
I called the Soma rep as soon as I got the chair. I figured it would be a pretty easy fix to send down a back rest with a longer bar. For some reason he wanted me to wait practically an entire month so he could bring the part here himself, so now I've got to wait until September 18th to find out if the taller back rest actually helps or not.
I don't feel like it's a chair that's worth $800, but it would also cost $300 to send it back, so there's that to consider. It doesn't make my back hurt any more than my other chairs, and it's nice not having to swap out chairs depending on what activity I'm doing. But I definitely feel like my body took a beating at the end of the day, especially my "seat."
The seat of course goes up and down, but it doesn't actually go down as far as I need it to. The fancy "dynamic ergokinetic split seat" seems to add a lot of height to the seat. I can slide the seat backwards and forwards, which is cool, but doesn't actually seem to affect anything. The back rest also goes up and down, and tilts forward/back. The problem is that because the seat is so high, so far away from the base of the vertical bar for the back rest, the actual back rest itself is way too low, and even raised to its full hight, it's too short.
The seat itself also tilts. You can have it in free-rocking position (a feature that comes standard on most chairs but cost $55 for this one), or you can lock it at a certain tilt. It's supposed to be some fancy "SomaComfort" seat, but it's really pretty uncomfortable. I have no idea why anyone would find it comfortable.
The only good thing about it besides the flexibility of the arms is that because of the split seat, I can actually use my tripod with it and get my machine as close to my body as I want to. It's really nice not having my machine sliding away from me all the time.
I called the Soma rep as soon as I got the chair. I figured it would be a pretty easy fix to send down a back rest with a longer bar. For some reason he wanted me to wait practically an entire month so he could bring the part here himself, so now I've got to wait until September 18th to find out if the taller back rest actually helps or not.
I don't feel like it's a chair that's worth $800, but it would also cost $300 to send it back, so there's that to consider. It doesn't make my back hurt any more than my other chairs, and it's nice not having to swap out chairs depending on what activity I'm doing. But I definitely feel like my body took a beating at the end of the day, especially my "seat."
Pain Update
I finished out all four weeks of my PT, and there wasn't any improvement. The physical therapist suggested I try a vascular surgeon next, but they required an ultrasound first, so I made an appointment with my PCP to see what she suggested. She was totally useless and just said I should do whatever the physical therapist said.
So, I had an ultrasound, and the technician said there seemed to be a little bit of restricted blood flow when I held my left arm straight up, but it wasn't really a big deal. My PCP thinks I should go see the vascular surgeon anyway, so I've got an appointment to do that on Monday. I don't feel like that's really the problem, though.
I have this weird spot on the front of my chest that hurts a lot sometimes. It started hurting after the not-my-usual physical therapist did some stuff with my arm. It's really bothersome, and it just started hurting on the right side in the same spot yesterday. Maybe it has something to do with the new way I sit when I write.
It's all really frustrating. I just started my first semester of classes, and I have a lot. Luckily a lot of them haven't actually needed CART for the first few days. I still get paid, but the student hasn't been there, or they've had technical difficulties, or whatever. One of my classes is super slow. My average for a 2-hour class is only 140 wpm. I love that class. I can even lean back and rest my arms on the arm rests when I write that one, and it doesn't hurt my arm at all.
I haven't been so lucky in any of the other classes, though, and it hurts a lot to write them. I know my writing would be better if I weren't favoring my left arm/hand, too. I'm not getting paid as much as I could be, and I feel like I don't want to start branching out until I get my arm fixed, but it feels like it's never going to happen at this point. It should be fixable. It should be something the doctors can figure out. It's a real thing, so why can't they determine the cause?
I wore my wrist brace for three weeks, at the suggestion of the neurologist. It didn't help my arm at all, so I stopped wearing it for about a week. Then my hand went numb for a whole day, so I decided to try the wrist brace again, and it's been feeling much better. I guess buying the brace wasn't such a waste after all.
So, I had an ultrasound, and the technician said there seemed to be a little bit of restricted blood flow when I held my left arm straight up, but it wasn't really a big deal. My PCP thinks I should go see the vascular surgeon anyway, so I've got an appointment to do that on Monday. I don't feel like that's really the problem, though.
I have this weird spot on the front of my chest that hurts a lot sometimes. It started hurting after the not-my-usual physical therapist did some stuff with my arm. It's really bothersome, and it just started hurting on the right side in the same spot yesterday. Maybe it has something to do with the new way I sit when I write.
It's all really frustrating. I just started my first semester of classes, and I have a lot. Luckily a lot of them haven't actually needed CART for the first few days. I still get paid, but the student hasn't been there, or they've had technical difficulties, or whatever. One of my classes is super slow. My average for a 2-hour class is only 140 wpm. I love that class. I can even lean back and rest my arms on the arm rests when I write that one, and it doesn't hurt my arm at all.
I haven't been so lucky in any of the other classes, though, and it hurts a lot to write them. I know my writing would be better if I weren't favoring my left arm/hand, too. I'm not getting paid as much as I could be, and I feel like I don't want to start branching out until I get my arm fixed, but it feels like it's never going to happen at this point. It should be fixable. It should be something the doctors can figure out. It's a real thing, so why can't they determine the cause?
I wore my wrist brace for three weeks, at the suggestion of the neurologist. It didn't help my arm at all, so I stopped wearing it for about a week. Then my hand went numb for a whole day, so I decided to try the wrist brace again, and it's been feeling much better. I guess buying the brace wasn't such a waste after all.
PT: So Far So Not So Good
I decided not to try the Topamax. I don't really want to mess with any more meds, especially if it's not likely they're going to help, anyway. The physical therapist recommended some posture changes (don't arch my back so much; put my shoulders back more; tilt my head down) and some exercises to do to relax my neck and chest muscles, and strengthen my upper back muscles. She did some muscle work on my neck for a couple sessions, but she said I "wasn't responding like a normal case," since that wound up not helping at all. Last time I went I saw a different practitioner, and she said I have thoracic output problems, which is making my arm go numb.
She did some stuff that made my shoulder hurt, and suggested I do nerve flossing twice a day. That was a couple days ago, and my shoulder still hurts. So, so far, all I've managed to do is add an additional problem. Go physical therapy. But I'll keep going and see how it pans out.
It's kind of tough to adjust to my new writing posture. I have good days and bad days. I have lots of weird misstrokes. I was looking at my averages for my last 5 rounds of 8 shows, though, starting back on 4/24, and it goes 98.28, 98.31, 98.40, 98.6, 98.61. So that's got to signify some kind of improvement. I've been trying to slow down and really go for accuracy, and I felt like it might be leading to more paraphrasing, or leaving out an unimportant sentence here or there, but I'm actually writing 400+ more words per show than I used to, which just seems crazy.
When I stroked out RAOE/YOE/DAI/JE/NAIR/ROE the other day, I was pretty surprised to find that it translated perfectly. Guess I've written it that way before. It's nice when things like that happen. I used to not be able to remember to write "aide" at all. It would always come out aid, without thinking. But I'm actually writing "aide" now, so that's cool.
One thing that's not so cool is I've developed a problem with coming back for -G for -ing. At least once or twice a practice session, I hit -D instead of -G. I guess it's just easier, but it really messes with the transcript. I add that word to my "words to practice" list every time I catch it, though, so hopefully that will reinforce the -G.
I also tend to write "OFT T" (of the the) a lot. I've started defining phrases that way whenever I misstroke them like that, so I decided to be proactive, and I'm going through my dictionary, finding any "the" phrases, and defining them appropriately so there won't be a double "the" if I stroke it after the phrase.
She did some stuff that made my shoulder hurt, and suggested I do nerve flossing twice a day. That was a couple days ago, and my shoulder still hurts. So, so far, all I've managed to do is add an additional problem. Go physical therapy. But I'll keep going and see how it pans out.
It's kind of tough to adjust to my new writing posture. I have good days and bad days. I have lots of weird misstrokes. I was looking at my averages for my last 5 rounds of 8 shows, though, starting back on 4/24, and it goes 98.28, 98.31, 98.40, 98.6, 98.61. So that's got to signify some kind of improvement. I've been trying to slow down and really go for accuracy, and I felt like it might be leading to more paraphrasing, or leaving out an unimportant sentence here or there, but I'm actually writing 400+ more words per show than I used to, which just seems crazy.
When I stroked out RAOE/YOE/DAI/JE/NAIR/ROE the other day, I was pretty surprised to find that it translated perfectly. Guess I've written it that way before. It's nice when things like that happen. I used to not be able to remember to write "aide" at all. It would always come out aid, without thinking. But I'm actually writing "aide" now, so that's cool.
One thing that's not so cool is I've developed a problem with coming back for -G for -ing. At least once or twice a practice session, I hit -D instead of -G. I guess it's just easier, but it really messes with the transcript. I add that word to my "words to practice" list every time I catch it, though, so hopefully that will reinforce the -G.
I also tend to write "OFT T" (of the the) a lot. I've started defining phrases that way whenever I misstroke them like that, so I decided to be proactive, and I'm going through my dictionary, finding any "the" phrases, and defining them appropriately so there won't be a double "the" if I stroke it after the phrase.
7.28.13
I struck out at the EMG test, which I guess was a good thing. The neurologist doesn't think it's carpal tunnel or a pinched nerve. He said he'd "think about it" and I should wear the wrist brace at night for three weeks and then come back and see if he came up with any new ideas. I don't think I'm going to pay to make that happen. I scheduled a PT appointment for this week, so we'll see how that goes. The neurologist also wrote me a prescription to try Topamax, but I haven't gotten it filled yet.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
I've been having a good streak where I remember things that have given me trouble in the past, like TS and DZ, and remember to write them out in two strokes during realtime practice. I'm doing the same thing with words that are conflicts the "normal" way I would think to write them; nothing as simple as plague/playing, but that's the idea. I just have a general feeling that I shouldn't write it the easy way. I don't remember why right then, but it pays off. Before I would just kind of be stubborn about it and write it the easy way anyway, and then have to scramble to try to fix it.
I've had a small epiphany (can that be a thing?) about numbers, too, and I'm writing them one at a time more instead of garbling them. 12 is *really* difficult for me to write with my hand the way it is, and I realized I can just write it in two strokes, with much less chance of misstroking it.
I got Pyongyang right twice during practice today (without getting it wrong, to boot). I write it out a long way: PAOE/YONG/YANG. It's hard to start. It's almost like I want to bolt whenever I have to write it. But it's not so bad once I actually do it. I also fingerspelled a lot of names in practice today; some I knew right away weren't in there and fingerspelled the whole thing, like Lindy Boggs. Others I tried to do first (Pedro Vargas) and wound up fingerspelling them after they didn't come out right. I always do a thing where I think "I have -da defined, so I can just write Brunda, that'll come out fine."
My writing is really stilted with my hand being messed up, though. I wind up with a lot of dashes in the transcript that aren't preceeded by any mistakes. I just get lost and things start to feel wrong and I might hit one wrong letter and erase it, and then dash. At least I can pull it together and do it without dropping anything. Sometimes I don't catch the mistakes, though, and I wind up just hitting an S before writing SRAR, or hitting an N after writing something with N in it. I've got an average of 98.56% accuracy for my last five practice shows, though, so I'm keeping it together pretty well.
Words that end in -nal weren't coming out right, even though I don't think I've changed anything from theory (I just do NAL), so I re-wrote all 472 of those. I also wanted to start doing -tary with an asterisk to avoid any conflicts with tear, so I fixed 145 of those entries.
7.21.13
I did wind up calling the doctor about my arm, because it was really starting to be a problem. I got the runaround for a few days, and then they suggested I stop taking gabapentin and try Elavil. The first day I tried it was a disaster; the pain was so bad I went back to gabapentin right away. But after a week of that I was right back where I started before I took anything at all, and I decided to give the Elavil another shot.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
Today was my fourth day taking it. Saturdays are usually my day off steno practice, so that could have something to do with it, but it finally felt a *little* bit better today during practice. I go in for the EMG test on Thursday, and find out the results the Monday after that, so I've got another week of painful practice at the least.
My accuracy was consistently above 98.5 for about five shows, but then the pain started getting worse. Friday it was at 97.5, and today was good but I had a drop that invalidated the results. I don't count shows with drops in my averages. There always seems to come a point during anything I'm writing where I get overwhelmed, and I feel like I can't do it, and I want to give up. I usually wind up dropping a sentence, or half a sentence, during that time, but I'm working to push through it and just keep going instead.
I'm still struggling to catch onto the benefit of fingerspelling instead of just blindly stroking things out. It elimates having to think about the words, it's faster, and it's more accurate, but it's hard to train myself to do. I did get "Laudenberg" out perfectly just stroking it out the other day, so that was cool. But it's the exception, not the rule. I also wrote "helicopters" has "helihopters" and TM tanslated that as "hell hospitallers," which I found amusing.
The longer I go without going through my theory book, the more muddled my theory becomes. I find myself just blindly stroking things and hoping they come out right instead of remembering what I'm actually supposed to be stroking. I realized three of the briefs on my practice list were so hard to write because I was writing them incorrectly.
I had NALGS for national, which should've just been NARBL (NASHL). Nation is NAGS or NAIGS, but that doesn't really translate to national. I was trying to smush RB (PRAOERBGS) into "appreciation," I guess because it has a similar sound to precious, gracious, etc. which I write as RBS. It's not necessary, though, and it's a lot easier to just write PRAOEGS than worry about what fingers are supposed to be where on that bank. And I was also doing deposit as SDPOZ because of words like disappoint, destroy, etc. which start with SD. It's not necessary at all, though. DPOZ works just fine. It's a good thing I review takes and make note of things that are hard to write; sometimes they're only hard because I've been trying to write them incorrectly.
I decided I should write all consonant + ize endings with an asterisk, which the AI couldn't figure out at all, so I went through and re-wrote all 720 entries that end in -ize, consonant + or not. I also decided there was no reason not to end words in -IT, so I updated 488 of those entries; and I made sure all 161 -ca entries work properly with C*A.
7.6.13
I have a real problem with joined words like northward and
checkpoint. My brain just can't process fast enough that they're
supposed to be two words. All I have to do is write "ward" with an
asterisk and it will join with "north" no problem, but I just don't even
think about it. And then I have weird things where I think maybe it
should be "safe-guard" and I write it that way. I know it's safeguard,
but in the moment of trying to keep up with so many things, that's just
what happens. Every time I make either mistake, I add the word to my
practice list, so hopefully that'll start having an impact soon.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
I'm also starting to have a problem with AOE words that are spelled "ea" or "ae," like sear, fear, etc. My tendency is to write them as AE, and then about 90% of the time they come up as something totally wrong. I guess there are a few words that I have to write AE, and it's just all gotten muddled together, to where I write AE by default. I've been focusing on that though, and I think it's starting to get better.
I'm getting better at writing traffic segments. They used to be a nightmare! All those numbers of highways; 405, 520, I-5, you name it, it was a problem. But I'm settling down more and not trying to write every single thing the traffic guy says, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable with it.
I found out the hard way that koi wasn't in my dictionary. But now I have "fish-cicles" in there, just in case that ever comes up again. I wrote pivot as PIV/VOT, thinking it was perfectly natural, and it came out totally wrong. I think I only had it defined as PIVT. Don't worry about it, I thought, there can't be that many words that end in "vot," I'm sure it's fine. Then the very next day I wrote DIV/VOT and it didn't come out right. Just goes to show no matter how small the problem is, you can't ever ignore it. So I checked to see what other words I needed to fix..and that was it. Just divot and pivot, nothing else in there.
"-age" words weren't coming out right when I wrote them as -AJ, so I went through and re-wrote all 652 of them to make sure they'd work. I also had a problem with normal words like "automatic" not working right when I used my theory-standard prefix for "auto-," which is AUT, so I re-wrote all 120 of those, both as AUT and AUT/TO. Sometimes I'll write words like "waxy" as WAK/SI and sometimes I do WAX/SI, so I fixed all 32 of those to work both ways, too.
Back in the Saddle
It was really weird coming back to steno after not doing it for two
weeks. I haven't taken a break that long..probably since I started, four
and a half years ago. I didn't hate it as much anymore. I felt grateful
to be able to even do it again. It's still really hard to get my
positioning right. I never really feel like my hands are in the right
spot. It's kind of like when you type on someone else's QWERTY keyboard.
Your fingers aren't quite sure where to go for a while. Except when I
do steno, I never seem to find my groove. So frustrating.
And yet my translation rate is still pretty solid. I've practiced to six news shows so far since I came back, and my average is 98.2%. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's not bad. I seem to be doing really well at correcting my mistakes appropriately, for some reason. I think maybe I care a little less about it, so it doesn't freak me out so much when I make a mistake. I'm able to stay calm, keep listening to what's being said, and fix the mistake without losing content.
It's hard to get back into the groove of fingerspelling. It's hard enough not to just freeze up when I hear a name, or glaze over it like it wasn't even said. I have to force myself to even phonetically write what I heard. But that's not helpful; then a bunch of weird stuff just comes out. I need to focus on fingerspelling those words. I'm trying, but it's definitely a work in progress. I think there's about a 50/50 chance right now that I'll fingerspell it.
It's just so hard to write anything right now. It's like pulling teeth. I feel like my max speed is about 130 wpm. I'm still hitting 250 when I practice though, so there are moments when it's not so bad. Overall, I think it was good for me to take a break. I didn't like it; I felt like a slacker. But it's good to just let things set and jell, and be away from it for a while.
And yet my translation rate is still pretty solid. I've practiced to six news shows so far since I came back, and my average is 98.2%. It's not where I'd like it to be, but it's not bad. I seem to be doing really well at correcting my mistakes appropriately, for some reason. I think maybe I care a little less about it, so it doesn't freak me out so much when I make a mistake. I'm able to stay calm, keep listening to what's being said, and fix the mistake without losing content.
It's hard to get back into the groove of fingerspelling. It's hard enough not to just freeze up when I hear a name, or glaze over it like it wasn't even said. I have to force myself to even phonetically write what I heard. But that's not helpful; then a bunch of weird stuff just comes out. I need to focus on fingerspelling those words. I'm trying, but it's definitely a work in progress. I think there's about a 50/50 chance right now that I'll fingerspell it.
It's just so hard to write anything right now. It's like pulling teeth. I feel like my max speed is about 130 wpm. I'm still hitting 250 when I practice though, so there are moments when it's not so bad. Overall, I think it was good for me to take a break. I didn't like it; I felt like a slacker. But it's good to just let things set and jell, and be away from it for a while.
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