Showing posts with label accuracy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label accuracy. Show all posts

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.

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.

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.

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. 

Struggle

I wound up doing a lot of CART/captioning work for the first three weeks. I got to cover a lot of the floor sessions for a state House of Representatives, so that was really cool. Now that it's summer, though, there's basically nothing. I also learned that writing for hours at a time sucks. Even just going for an hour, I couldn't find a comfortable position.

I think there's definitely something wrong with my left arm. I've been trying all kinds of stuff, and it's driving me crazy. I can barely write it hurts so much. I went to a Relax the Back store and checked out some chairs. They were nice chairs, but they didn't help with the pain at all. I was able to pivot the armrests to pretty much anywhere I wanted, and using one just made it worse. So a good chair isn't going to solve the problem.

I found a nice adjustable chair for $13 at Goodwill, and it beats the folding chair with pillows I was using before, even though it's not terribly comfortable. The seat is actually short enough that I can use my tripod with it, so I've been trying that out. It's nice to be able to vary the height of the machine so easily, although it doesn't seem to be helping much with the pain.

I always feel like I'm really struggling when I write these days, and so many errors could be avoided if I could just get comfortable. I'm still practicing to the news, and I'm always surprised that my accuracy is still above 98%.

The whole thing is frustrating though, because it's really holding me back. I'm not ready to apply for more places until I have it figured out, and I'm so close to being able to make a living with this! I got a taste of it, and it was great, and now it sucks going back to low-paying ways of making money.

I've been working on "sub-" words, trying to get myself to remember that I want to write them as S*UB. My instinct is to put the asterisk in the attached word, but that usually doesn't work out very well. I actually wrote "subculture" properly during a job because of it, so that was a good moment.

I found out that "loon" wasn't in my dictionary at all. Crazy (no pun intended). I've been making good progress with the dictionary maintenance. 227 -ma entries corrected to MA*, 404 -ler as L*ER, 319 -gy which I guess I just needed to enter even though I haven't changed the way I write it, and the same for 2512 -ation. That last one was a project for a while.

Rejected

I got a rejection letter from one of the companies I applied to a while ago. I sent them a realtime sample from when I did meeting minutes for the water district. They said my accuracy was decent (98.7%), but they didn't want to hire me because I had too many commas. Commas! I just took it to mean that they're not looking to take any beginning CART providers under their wing, so to speak. They're only interested in hiring people who could go out and work with no modifications. Which is fine. But I really could've just written fewer commas, if I had known ahead of time.

It's something to think about in my writing, though. I do tend to put in a comma when someone pauses. I try to look at CART from a consumer standpoint, a readability standpoint. If the professor is one of those that's constantly going "right? all right?", I don't put it in. I hate hearing it all the time, so I wouldn't want to read it all the time, either. Excessive utterances like "um" and "uh" don't need to be in there, eunless I need to convey what type of speaker they are, which isn't really necessary with a professor.

I've always written punctuation. There hasn't ever been a point in my training when I didn't think it was necessary. So, of course I punctuate things. But I never really thought about having too many commas. I just figured it was the way people talked, so it was okay. But I guess I need to look at it more aggressively from a readability standpoint, and write it the way it makes the most sense, not necessarily the way it was said. If they're going on for too long, I can break it up into two sentences. If they paused in the middle of a thought, and it looks better without the comma, I don't have to write it.

On a less disappointing note, I've been impressed with a lot of words that are in my dictionary. It's fun to just stroke out names like "Gunther" and "Mahoney" however I think I should, and have them actually translate. Same thing with some technical terms, like "thermosphere" and "ventricles." The technical stuff isn't always in there, but when it's not, it either looks close enough, or I can fingerspell it.

I also had an awesome breakthrough the other day. I have to have the cursor in a certain window to stream the CART, so I thought I couldn't have Eclipse up. But I figured out that the window with the cursor in it isn't really important for me to see, and I can make it tiny, and make Eclipse big enough to see. There was a huge delay with the CART getting to the cursor window, and it made it really hard to edit as I was writing.

But now, I can watch it in Eclipse, just like when I practice. It comes up instantly, and I can fix any mistakes right away. It actually tired me out a little the first time I did it. I wound up writing more because I didn't have to wait so long to see if what I was writing came out right or not.

Step Back

I don't know why stenography has to be such a two steps forward, one step back kind of deal. Every time I think I'm getting somewhere, there's a setback. I felt like I was making real progress with my realtime. I was becoming more aware of what I wrote as I was writing it. FREX, I wrote "BLOGD," and it didn't tran, so I wrote BLOG/D, easy as pie, during realtime. I felt like I was understanding better, as I wrote, why things weren't translating them, and I was getting better at fixing them without getting tripped up.

I had the opportunity to go sit in with a captioner, and she reviewed a half-hour file I did of the local news. She pointed out something that I saw when I was looking over the file myself. Since I learned to start dashing for corrections, and not counting it as an error if I dashed, I would often write things like "An air ryaner crashed in Baltimore today -- liner. Five people were killed." And I wouldn't count it as an error. But in reading that particular file, I realized that doesn't really help. It's completely out of context, and I should count it as an error.

She also said I needed to pick my speed up just a bit, and not drop quite as many sentences. I can agree with that. But when I try to force myself to go fast, I just get nervous and I make tons of mistakes, that I then try to fix, and then I'm even more behind, and it's a huge mess. I haven't ever been able to force myself to go faster that way.

I spent about a week trying to do it anyway, combined with trying to write (or re-write) more words around my corrections to give them context. I also practiced letting errors go more without trying to fix them, if I wasn't going to have time to give them context, or if I was going to drop a lot trying to make the correction. My accuracy tanked. For about another week, I tried to go back to my old style - more "smart" writing and telling myself I only had to get the important stuff, even though I'd wind up getting most of it. It didn't work. I still felt nervous about it, and my accuracy still sucked.

I started having problems getting into the groove of writing. I felt like my hands would go fast, no problem, but they kept stroking the wrong things. I even started stacking things I'd never stacked before! Ugh. I finally had one good day yesterday. I barely dropped anything at all, and nothing that was important. I had context around all of my corrections. My accuracy was 98.79%.

I'm not going to be able to find out if that particular streak would continue, because for the next two weeks I'm going to switch to metered verbatim practice for the CBC/CCP. Which we have to bring a printer for. Kind of silly, I think. I wonder if anyone ever gets together and says, "You bring the printer, and we'll all use it, and give you a few bucks for your trouble?"

I'm still forging on ahead, but I feel like I'm right back to square one again, feeling like I haven't made any progress in who knows how long. It's got to be there, though. Someone used to tell me, "When you used to be able to do something, and you can't anymore, that's just your body changing and evolving. It means you'll be able to do it soon again, better than before." It's a nice thing to pretend is true, whether it is or not.

Headway

I'm finally starting to feel good about my realtime. Out of the last three news broadcasts I've practiced, my lowest accuracy was 98.83%. I'm starting to not get freaked out when I make a mistake, and be aware of what's being said while I fix mistakes. I still haven't gotten any work from the company I signed a contract with, though. I'd really like to get my feet wet and see where I stand on some actual CART work.

I'm feeling so confident that I even sent out "applications" to five CART/captioning companies, but I haven't heard anything back. It's frustrating because I've been working so long to be "ready," and now that I've put myself out there, no one seems interested in taking me on.

I'm intimidated by the captioning aspect, too. I live in an apartment, and we don't have a single landline, let alone the three or four I might need for captioning. We only have basic cable, and if I started captioning the traditional way, I'd have to buy a TV, modem, coupler, and amplifier, at least, plus AccuCap, which would be $3k alone. I have enough saved up for all of those things, but I'd much rather not have to get them.

In less stressful news, I finally hit an average of 180 wpm on all of my speed drills! I've been gunning for that goal for a while. I'm also doing a lot better making my corrections make sense when I practice realtime; making sure I have a dash before and after the correction word, if it doesn't come right after the error. I was having a problem with dashing before and using a comma after, but that's only happening rarely now.

I finally finished all my -NAIR corrections, and I've moved on to -ia, which I now write as KWRA*. Nothing in that group of 744 words seems to be defined the way I write it now, so that's my next project.

I made some changes to auto-brief; namely, I learned that you can tell it not to suggest certain letter combinations, which is really helpful. I don't ever write -TD or -SZ (or at least, not on purpose), and now I won't get suggestions with them. I also noticed sometimes it would suggest a brief with -TZ in it, which was just crazy (for me, anyway). For some reason after I did that, I lost my pop-up window. It was really weird, and I couldn't figure out how to get it back, until a few days later, it magically reappeared on its own!