Old Fixes

I probably haven't been doing as much dictionary maintenance as I should lately. I bet there are still a lot of word groups that I don't have defined the way I write them, but somehow I've stopped looking out for them. I even have a list of stuff to work on that I've just been completely ignoring. Maybe I feel like the mistakes don't go through that often, so it doesn't seem as important anymore. I did fix quite a few a long time ago that I've never had time to mention, though.

I changed -tal to T*AL (257 instances), changed it so words like "influential" could be written like IN/FLAOUNL (198), added /ELZ for words like novels (642), a -VS for words like conclusive = CON/KLAOUVS (416), -AIRBL for -ational, -TAIRBL for -tational (3) and KAIRBL for -casional (306), -lize and -mize as LAO*IZ (349) and MAO*IZ (47), GA*ET for -gate (215), NALT for -nality (78), LIFK for -listic (52), changed -sen to S*EN so it wouldn't conflict with words that started with SEN like sensationalism, and changed li- to L*EU.

I feel like my prefixes and suffixes are still all over the place. I don't have a uniform system for them. Someone told me at one point to put an asterisk in all the suffixes, so I did for a ton of them, and then I didn't like it so I took them out, but now I basically do it again, except only for words that are already words; but I'm discovering that a lot of words start with the same sound, like the sen- and -sen thing, so even though "sen" isn't a word, I should still do an asterisk in -sen just for consistency so I know what to write.

I guess I should work on that. It actually shouldn't take as much time as it used to now that I figured out how to edit dictionaries in Word.

12.7.13

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

4.30.13

I finally got to do some CART work. My first day, I wound up covering four events. Two classes, one bidder's meeting that ran short, and one council meeting that I covered the last hour of because it ran long. I wound up working from about 8 in the morning until 11 at night, trying to get all the transcripts out. It was a crazy day.

I was supposed to cover a class the next day, but it got cancelled. I did a couple the day after that, and that was last week. I did another one this morning. I haven't officially checked my accuracy, but it's looking good. I didn't have any drops, and everything made sense. I think the semester's about to end, though. There might not be any classes to cover after this week.

It took me less than the length of the class to edit my transcript today. It probably shouldn't take as long as it does, but I like to go through and global everything, and make the transcript look perfect. It'll take less time the more practice I get.

I'm also trying to focus on practicing for the CBC. That's been going well. The 180 takes are a lot easier this time around than they were in January. I'm just trying to focus on staying calm. Lots of times I've written a take for the first time, and thought I didn't get it, but I did. So that's giving me confidence to just keep focusing, keep going, and know that there's a real possibility that even though it doesn't feel like it, I might pass the take.

I finished -i endings, and I'm working on 1765 for -o now. I don't remember why I wrote down that I need to work on -o. I write it "OE," which hasn't changed. But it doesn't hurt to write a bunch of words; lots of them aren't defined the way I'm writing them.

I found a bizarre dictionary hole. "Pens" wasn't in my dictionary as PENZ, and it translated as "ends." I also discovered, during CBC practice, that I need to take out my glue stroke when I take the test. I have it in as DRA*ES, since I use it before a web address. DRAES is just "address." I wrote DRA*ES in a take without realizing it, and glued the entire rest of the take together! That would've been an instant fail.

I'm still working on positioning. My left arm still isn't cooperating. I can almost never seem to get it in a position that's comfortable. I don't know what the problem is, but I wish I knew what to do about it, because it makes it really hard to write for more than about 10 minutes at a time. It's supposed to be so much better to write on the LS, but it's just not working.

It didn't work on the Stentura, either, so it's not the LS' fault, but I know I would write a lot better if I could ever get the positioning down. It's gotten to the point where I dread having to CART a class because I know it's going to hurt. It shouldn't be that way, but I just don't know how to fix it. It only hurts when I write, so it's got to be something about the way I sit or hold that arm when I write. I don't have any problem at all with the right arm. If only I could figure it out!

4.20.13

I have had a couple of minor successes. I seem to be writing faster when I "talk to myself" during practice. It used to be always around 150, but now it's consistently getting up to 214. Maybe that's a sign of a faster writing mentality overall. I'm also getting better at realizing that a word probably isn't in my dictionary - or at least not the way that first comes to mind to write it - and fingerspelling it on the fly. I did a great job getting Adriatic and panacea like that the other day, without skipping a beat.

I also had the brilliant idea to start defining things that I often immediately dash, like cruise for crews. Crews is supposed to have an asterisk, and lots of times I'll remember that - right after I stroke cruise. So I defined "cruise -- crews" as "crews." I've done that with about 40 entries now. It hasn't actually helped yet, but it should in theory. According to the dictionary, the only stroke like that I've ever actually used is H-F D-RB, which would be me stroking a hyphen followed by a dash, which I wanted to translate as only a dash. Since creating it a month ago, I've used it 14 times. Apparently I write "hyphen dash" a lot.

I'm also trying to fix a problem where I'll write something, know or hear that a new speaker is coming up, stroke the >>, and then read that something in the previous speaker didn't translate properly. I have time to fix it, but not time to delete the >> and fix it, and without thinking, I just dash and fix it. It's weird, though. The new speaker isn't saying the correction. I have to just let it go. I'm past the point where it makes sense to fix it. So, what I'm trying to do is wait until everything tranlates out before I stroke the >>. I'm not having much success with that yet.

I finished all my -ia corrections, and now I'm working on 1086 entries that end in "i." I put most of these things on my list so long ago I don't remember exactly what was wrong with them anymore. Back in my "defining suffixes" days, I defined all the "-i"s as consonant + I + *P, so -ni is N*IP. I was really only intending to use it for name-building, but I use it for pretty much everything now. Unfortunately, nothing is defined that way, so it creates a lot of problems.

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!

Proficient

I tested out my skills on QVC and The Weather Channel, and I did great. I even got above 99% on the weather. I did those two, plus three national news broadcasts and four local ones. My lowest rate was 98.1%, and when I averaged them all together, it came out at 98.55%. So, obviously, I don't always hit 98.5% accuracy, but 98% is the minimum to get hired at some companies, at least. And if I could get a gig captioning something like QVC or the weather, I'd be set.

I decided to start out checking back in with the company I shadowed classes for in November. They said my notes looked good, so I got all set up with them. I bought the professional version of Eclipse, since I'll be using it for profit now. I didn't need to get the AccuCap portion, so that was $3,000 off the price, but I'm sure I'll wind up getting it sooner or later. Since it's the middle of the semester, the only CART work they've got is basically just filling in during emergencies. I was hoping I'd get more experience than that, but I guess it's only logical.

I still hate doing "homework." It's such a drag practicing for two hours every day, first thing in the morning. I would feel bad if I didn't do it, though. Lazy. And it's not like I'm doing anything else all that important or interesting. I was so disappointed the first time I failed the CBC, feeling like "now I have to go back to doing homework." For some reason I thought if I passed, I wouldn't have to do it anymore. I felt the same way to a certain degree when I was getting set up with this company. I had planned to keep up with the reinforcement/speed drills/dictionary maintenance, but at least I'd get paid for the "realtime practice" part, instead of doing the news for no one every day.

But the reality is, I don't think I'm anywhere near "perfect" at this yet (and I suppose no one ever is). As long as there are words that are difficult for me to write (which will probably be forever), I have to carve out time every day to practice them. Until I can do all the drills at at least 225, I have to keep doing them. And until there's nothing in my dictionary that's incongruent with how I'm writing it, I have to keep fixing things. No matter where I get hired, for how many hours, the "homework" isn't going away. That doesn't make it any easier to keep doing, unfortunately.