Chair Saga

I'm starting to use the Goodwill for the first time, really. For a while I was sitting without using the back rest at all, and that's made my back hurt, so I'm trying something different. Whenever I try to sit with my back against the back of a chair, I can't seem to "reach" the steno keyboard properly, even just putting the LS on my lap. But this chair is pretty adjustable, so I tilted the back all the way forward. I had to take the LS off the tripod, but I've written with it that way a couple of times, and it seems to be working okay. I don't know if it's making my back feel any better, and it definitely feels weird to write that way, but at least I am resting my back on something.

I wanted to get a fancy ergonomic chair, something that would be really good. I thought about an Aeron chair, but I've seen a lot of people not liking those. They're also insanely expensive, and it might not fit, and if it breaks it's expensive to repair. I went to a showroom and tried out some Lifeform chairs. They're also anywhere from $1-3k. They were pretty comfy, but they didn't do anything to make my arm feel better, so I decided they weren't worth it.

I think it must've been an NCRA newsletter where I saw the Soma Court Reporter Chair listed; or maybe someone on depoman posted a link to the newsletter. Either way, I remembered it, and looked into it. I figured it would be the best chair, since I could use my tripod with it. After a couple weeks of thinking about it, I decided to get it. I called the two Soma dealers in my state, and after a couple more weeks of going back and forth with them, basically came to the conclusion that neither one of them could help me out.

So I called Soma directly, and talked to a really nice guy who got all the different components picked out for me. He said if I picked up the chair at one of the dealers, they could adjust it to fit me there, and I'd be able to swap out a backrest or something if it wasn't right. That sounded pretty awesome, so he emailed them. Two weeks went by and I didn't hear anything, so I called him back, and he called them, and they called me. They sent out a "proposal" for the chair, but it was missing the cutout. So I called the local place, and they said they'd check with the Soma guy.

A week later, I called the local place again. The representative said she emailed Soma twice, but they must be on vacation. Right. So I called Soma myself, and he said I don't need the court reporter cutout because I'm getting a split seat, and there's a space for the tripod. I went along with it and called the local place back, and officially placed my order. I think the standard wait time is about 5-6 weeks.

I'm a little concerned about the lack of a cutout, though. I wasn't sure the cutout was going to be deep enough to begin with, because I like my steno machine really close. Looking at pictures, it seems like the split is even more shallow. I don't know what the point of getting an $800 chair was if it's not even going to have the cutout. But hopefully all the adjustments, and the fact that it was under $1k, will make it worth it. It's got to be better than the two chairs I'm using right now.

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!

11.11

     I got my new minute already. I really liked the strategy of starting at a slower speed. I think what worked for me was telling myself I wasn't allowed to move on until I was "comfortable" writing it, as opposed to just shooting for 95% accuracy. The minute was also only at 220 wpm, which is the speed RTC claims the entire piece is, and the speed at which I actually want to practice.
     I decided to try getting a tripod for the LS, and today was the first time I used it. It was actually really nice not having to balance anything on my lap. It felt much more sturdy that way, and I think it's going to work out.
     I have another list of potential word-boundary conflicts: cast, going, grade, heart, ward, stream, wind, bridge, found, wax, bound, rail, nail, comb, fill, hole, room, pile, mill, fare, house, made, and bulb. And there were a few words that only presented problems in one instance: printwheel, standstill, and handshake. I can't believe anyone would have STAND\STIL defined as one word! There were a lot of instances for "-house" and "-room" especially. I also changed "board" to BAORD a while ago, but I never went back and put asterisks in for "-board" or even fixed all instances of BORD, apparently, so I took care of that.
     When I got to "-nk" in the Phoenix drills, I realized I never practiced doing FRNG instead of *NG. I started trying to think of the finger formation as "-nk" instead of thinking of words as, for example, DRAFRNG. That's what you're always supposed to do, but there are a lot of instances where I never quite got there. PB I think of as N, of course, and TK as D, etc., but for a lot of the other stuff, like IFM for "-ism," I'm still thinking "IFM." "-nk" words were dramatically easier to stroke once I started thinking of the position instead of the keys, so hopefully I can apply that to other aspects as well.

5.13

     I am slowly making progress on my minute.  I can only tell how fast I’m going at the very end, but I was writing at 250 wpm once yesterday and once today.  I’m also sporadically getting to about 214 at the end now.  I finally decided to give up my brief for driver.  I’ve never really been able to write it well, and so now I’m just going to write DRAOIV/ER.  I think instead of dictionary maintenance, I’m going to finish getting through all 107 exercises in the Phoenix drill book.  So far I’ve made it through 30, and my speed is slowly falling, unfortunately.  It’s down to 126 now.  Last time I did any work with a metronome, my average speed was 104, but that had some multisyllabic words, so I guess I can’t really make a comparison.

     The biggest problem I’m having with the exercises in the drill book, besides not being able to go fast enough, is coming to a dead stop whenever I make a mistake.  You’re supposed to just keep going without erasing in order to keep a steady rhythm.  I’m working on the same thing during speedbuilding, too.  I might as well be stopping every time I feel myself make a mistake, because I have to write the word again once, twice, or even three times before I can keep writing, and by then I’ve missed quite a bit of audio.  I’d be much better off if I could just ignore it and keep going.  My accuracy wouldn’t suffer that much, either.  The problem I’ve had with trying to do that in the past is then I can’t focus on writing anything well and I just write slop.  I need to find a happy medium, where I try to write everything perfectly, but if I don’t, I just ignore it and keep going.

     I did get another cool thing from the Phoenix book.  They say to check your machine position, you should write “green glass, black and blue.”  I like that.  It works well for reassuring me that my machine is in the right place.  I have a terrible time with positioning, and it hasn’t gotten any better on the LS.  I always feel like I have to “search” for the keys, or like they’re not where I expect them to be.  I like to really press the keys and linger on them every time I hit to get a feeling for where I am, which is the totally wrong thing to do, but I’ve never gotten the hang of the “light touch.”  I was definitely a pounder on my SRT, and it completely threw me off when I tried to make the touch lighter on it.  I know I can write faster on the LS, I just don’t know if it helps me to go faster when my accuracy suffers.

     I hate how nothing translates properly anymore.  I’ve changed how I write so much from the StenEd that nothing is in my dictionary, it seems like.  It makes me feel like I haven’t made any progress, like I’ve only gone backwards and it’s going to take forever to go forwards.   I also put in ton of new suffixes and prefixes, but I haven’t learned any of them, so I never know how to write anything, and I always just write it the old way and it comes out wrong.  I need to actually learn those prefixes and suffixes or having them in my dictionary isn’t doing me any good.

Background

     I'm 25 years old. I've lived in St. Louis, MO, my entire life. When I have the money, I want to move somewhere warm, probably California.   I graduated high school with a 4.3/4.0 GPA, and in December 2007, I graduated from Lindenwood University with a 4.0 and Bachelor's in Spanish.  I taught Spanish for a semester at my old high school, and then I taught for a semester at another high school.  I was mostly interested in the career for the retirement benefits, and after a year, I decided they weren't worth being miserable for 30 years.  I wanted something a little less interpersonal, so I had to find a new career.
     I found out about court reporting by looking in the big book of jobs and how much they paid at the library.  I was already thinking about medical transcription, since I could type 100 wpm and I didn't think I would get bored doing it, but I really wasn't interested in anything medical. Court reporting seemed easy enough, and in looking into it, I found out about captioning, which seemed even better.  I love watching TV, so it seemed like it would be a pretty sweet gig to just type whatever I heard on TV.

     I found a school based on which ones were NCRA accredited.  I thought about a couple of online options, but I didn't like the idea of having to lay out $5,000 right at the outset.  The only school in Missouri that was even participating (they weren't accredited at the time, although they are now) just happened to be the local community college, St. Louis Community College.  I was able to enroll in classes about a week after they officially started, which turned out not to be a big deal at all.  I wound up doing the entire program online. I took the first theory class that spring, and the second and last theory class that summer.  Learning it was a breeze.

     I did very well in all of my speed classes, and managed to stay almost a full semester ahead.  Once you got to a certain point, though, if you were in the captioning program, you stopped doing the court reporter speedbuilding classes and started just using Realtime Coach for practice and testing.  My teacher didn't think I really needed to do that, so I just signed up for Realtime Coach and started practicing on my own.  I took both of the "Broadcast Captioning" classes at STLCC, but all they entailed was writing to TV and adding words to your dictionary based on what you wrote, as well as journaling about your reactions to each type of broadcast.

     The next step after that was a captioning internship, which I had the required speed for, but the professor didn't feel comfortable having me represent the college because I hadn't taken medical and legal terminology.  She suggested I talk to some captioning companies and see if I could work out some training with them.  I'm sure that would have turned out great, since I could barely write at 180 at that point.

     Ever since then I've just been using RTC to practice away on my own.  I've been practicing about 2 hours a day the entire time I've been student, which I know isn't much compared to some people, but it's also more than others.  I'm hoping to get in to the Caption Masters course, but you have to be at "court reporter speeds," and while I'm sure I'd easily be testing there now if I had kept taking tests, as it stands I've fallen out of test-taking mode and I'm not used to writing raw material even as slow as 180, although I'm practicing at 230.

     I got my LightSpeed writer about two months ago, and learning to write on that has been a challenge.  It allows me to write much faster, which isn't always a good thing, because I get tripped up trying to go so fast.

     Somewhere back in September when I was still in the broadcast captioning class, I discovered Mark Kislingbury's StenoMaster theory and thought it was the greatest thing ever. I even bought the $260 book. I tried to write everything as "short" as I could, and lost a lot of speed trying to get my fingers into complex positions for briefs.  That wasn't such a great idea, and now I just incorporate a few of the principles, like tucking K, R, S, and G.

     I had the opportunity to observe a CART provider about a month ago, and although at first, when I thought CARTing was just following a deaf person around at school, I didn't like that idea at all, now that I know more about what CARTing is, I think that might be a great way to go, too.  You can do remote CART from home, which I think I would like, but I also like being in the classrooms, so I think doing it in person would be fun, too.  It seems like there's less pressure than with captioning, although I know it's still important to be the best you can and provide quality text.

     I wrote this on my steno machine, and it's interesting how different my writing style is from when I type on a keyboard.