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.
Sidelined
I wound up going to my PCP to start figuring out what's going on with my arm. She charged me $30 and decided it was "stiff back muscles." She put me on 500mg of naproxen twice a day, and 10mg of flexeril at night. She said the numbess in my hand might be a bit of carpal tunnel, so I should wear a wrist brace (which cost another $70) while I slept. And she said I shouldn't do any typing or steno for two weeks. If it didn't feel better after all that, she said I should go to physical therapy.
My mom works for an epileptologist, and he thought it was probably a problem with the discs in my neck, which a lot of stenotypists have actually had problems with, according to depoman. That seemed more likely, but I wanted to try the cheap solution first, so I did what my PCP said for two weeks. My arm still hurt the whole time, and shockingly, at the end of the two weeks..nothing. No change. It still hurt just as much as it did at the beginning.
I was able to get an appointment with a neurologist for the first day after my two weeks was over. He basically said it could be anything - neck problems, carpal tunnel, thyroid, nerve problems. I told him what my PCP prescribed and he kind of laughed and didn't seem surprised it didn't work. He ordered some bloodwork and prescribed 300mg of gabapentin twice a day. That visit cost $70. I'm also going to have an EMG test at the end of the month, and I'll have to do a follow-up appointment after that. So much money! But it has to be done. I can't go on like this. And I know my writing is going to improve by leaps and bounds when my left arm and hand operate just as well as the right.
I can't really tell if the gabapentin is helping or not. Sometimes the pain is pretty intense; other times it's just a nuisance. I called the office yesterday because I was going to say it's not really working and ask what his next idea is (maybe just more gabapentin?), but the office was still closed from the holiday. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try again on Monday or not.
My mom works for an epileptologist, and he thought it was probably a problem with the discs in my neck, which a lot of stenotypists have actually had problems with, according to depoman. That seemed more likely, but I wanted to try the cheap solution first, so I did what my PCP said for two weeks. My arm still hurt the whole time, and shockingly, at the end of the two weeks..nothing. No change. It still hurt just as much as it did at the beginning.
I was able to get an appointment with a neurologist for the first day after my two weeks was over. He basically said it could be anything - neck problems, carpal tunnel, thyroid, nerve problems. I told him what my PCP prescribed and he kind of laughed and didn't seem surprised it didn't work. He ordered some bloodwork and prescribed 300mg of gabapentin twice a day. That visit cost $70. I'm also going to have an EMG test at the end of the month, and I'll have to do a follow-up appointment after that. So much money! But it has to be done. I can't go on like this. And I know my writing is going to improve by leaps and bounds when my left arm and hand operate just as well as the right.
I can't really tell if the gabapentin is helping or not. Sometimes the pain is pretty intense; other times it's just a nuisance. I called the office yesterday because I was going to say it's not really working and ask what his next idea is (maybe just more gabapentin?), but the office was still closed from the holiday. I haven't decided yet if I'm going to try again on Monday or not.
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.
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.
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.
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