Goldilocks and the Three Keytoppers

I tried some different key tabs on the IE. First I tried it "naked." I liked it at first, being able to freely slide around, but it was a little hard on my fingers. Actually, the reason I put my old leather tabs on it (Stenovations sent them back to me when they took them off the LS to calibrate it, and put the silicone ones on it) was because Jason wasn't responding to me about getting my asterisk closer to my FR, so I thought, "Why don't I just put key tabs on it, and put the tabs on the asterisk closer to the FR?"

So that's what I did, and it worked! I only have a little bit of a problem with them not being close enough now. The number key above the asterisk is still way too far to the left, but key tabs aren't going to be able to solve that. The leather still wasn't soft enough for me, though, so I ordered velcro toppers. I thought those would be really soft. They were, but they kind of gave me "rug burn." I guess I slide my fingers around too much.

The Neutrino Group (the company that makes the IEs) sells "soft rubber" key toppers. I thought maybe they would be like squishy silicone, so I ordered them, but it turns out they're foam. They also sell thick and thin; for some reason I got the thick ones, and they add a crazy amount of height to the keys. I have a problem with not being able to lower the IE enough because it runs into my legs, so having it artificially raised didn't help at all. I also felt too much friction on the foam, so those were out.

I had two sets of the leather Depoman keys, and I felt like my old set wasn't as "grippy" as it could be, so I put the new ones on the left and the old ones on the right. It turns out the new ones aren't any more "grippy," or really any different from the old ones that had already been used for at least a year, so I just left it the way it is. No hope for a softer keyboard for me, I guess. I could take the silicone ones off the LS, but I don't think they'd be any better. They were getting really worn and slippery already, anyway.

Mechanical Developments

It's been four months since my last update. That's only half as long as it took me to post last time, so there's that. Somehow, though, I've got way more to talk about. So much, in fact, that I'm going to have to break this up into parts.

I gave up on the Report-It quite a while ago, although I think I forgot to mention it in my last update. Recently, I've started writing with my theory book under the steno machine. I think raising it up is helping a bit. I still go through periods where I feel like I can't "reach" or "find" the keys, but I seem to be able to work it out after about 15 minutes of writing the news, if nothing else.

I think I was holding my left arm funny, because it was starting to go numb while I was writing, so I've been trying to focus on making it a bit more comfortable and remembering to stop tensing it up and let it relax. I ditched the BackJoy when my arm started going numb, too, and I don't miss it.

I finally sent my LS in to have the loose USB port fixed. They decided to put in a "new" battery while they were at it. I have no idea why; there was nothing wrong with the old battery. Now, the "new" battery doesn't hold a charge. It's kind of frustrating, really. But I don't want to be without the LS for a week again to send it back. My service contract expires at the end of the month, too. The only reason I renewed it last time was because I thought I would want to upgrade to the LSX, and Stenovations has a nifty trade-in policy.

But now the LSX isn't really in the works anymore. I think the LS v2 looks interesting, but if I get one, I'll want to have it as a backup writer, so I won't be interested in a trade-in. It just doesn't make sense to pay $300 a year for nothing. I don't think anything's going to go wrong with the LS; they seem pretty foolproof. It's a bummer that mine effectively doesn't have a battery anymore, but I've been leaning more toward captioning/remote CART than onsite CART, anyway, so it probably won't matter.

I have the silicone Stenovations keypads on the LS now, and I really like them. They are maybe a bit too slippery, so I'm not going to say I can't imagine using anything else, but they're better than the Depobook leather ones.

Positive Influences

I had the opportunity to talk with Stan after the CBC exam, which was really cool. I got to test out his LSS (with pads on the keys), and I did not like that at all. It was like trying to write on a squishy mattress. I also got to see him write, and one thing I picked up was that he writes periods with both hands. I'd read before that's a good idea, to avoid stacking, but I just couldn't wrap my brain around the idea of doing it.

Seeing Stan do it made me realize how easy it would be, though, and now I've got a two-handed stroke for periods, commas, and new speakers. Getting myself trained to use those strokes is easily the hardest thing I can ever remember doing in steno. It felt so unnatural! It seemed like there was absolutely no way it would ever work. But after a few days, it did. I still have hiccups and confusion with it from time to time, but I don't have stacking issues anymore, so it's probably worth it.

I was reading Mirabai's blog over the summer, and I read that she did transcription for offline captioning while she was in school. That sounded like the perfect job for a steno student. I wanted to look into it, but I wasn't sure what to do, so I asked on Depoman. I received some great advice, and one of the members pointed me in the direction of the WAHM forum for work at home moms.

Through that forum, I found an opportunity to do transcription at home. I don't use my steno machine, and it doesn't pay very much, so I tend to wind up working more hours than I might somewhere else, but I absolutely love being able to work from home whenever I want, completely at the whim of my own schedule. And it's about a thousand times better than where I was working, so I can't thank Mirabai and the Depoman forum enough!

6.8

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

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

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

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