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.
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.
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