An Update

It has been almost a month since my last post. Here is what I have learned so far, listening to e-books at work has been working wonderfully! I have listened to approximately 12 nonfiction books this past month while at work and have several more research material books lined up. I have been listening to so many books and doing so much research that I have needed time to process all this information!

 

Dictating new material while driving back and forth from work did not work for me. I had to transfer of the material to my computer and then re-edit it. It was just as easy to dictate a post from scratch and just as time effective. In fact, I have spent several hours simply turning e-books into audio files! I never realized how much time that took. It takes about one half hour to turn a 500 page book into audio files.

 

Dictating posts has become quite natural and easy as long as it consists of my original material. Translation work has definitely taken a hit because I haven’t had the time to spend on it.

 

When you consider that I’m listening to research material seven hours a day during the week and writing posts at night when I get home you can see how powerful these new processes are! Yet this raw information needs to be processed. In addition I’ve been reading books to supplement those that I have been listening to. The end result is a massive assault on a new writing project.

 

Perhaps the most interesting thing is that the few times I have not listened to books at work I have been extremely bored! This is definitely a permanent change in my worklife! I also find myself much more satisfied and able to relax more at home in the evening than ever before. I feel like I have accomplished something during the day! I also feel that it’s okay to take a break once in a while.

The Crash

The crash.

 

The last few days have been extremely crazy. I continued to have growing pains with my computer as it attempted to settle down into its new status. I should probably explain this a bit. While my little notebook computer was running, it was still pretty much of a wreck. But I didn’t know any better. According to the technician there were a lot of drivers that were damaged or missing and they ended up doing a complete reinstall of the system. Now I thought that was good and that that would be the end of the problem. That shows how much I know about computers! It has really been a struggle trying to get that little computer up to speed. Now there were actually four programs that were installed on my notebook for me by the technician. The first one was the antivirus program. The second one was an adware or a malware detection program. The third one was a basic health program that optimizes the system and made sure everything was running properly; the fourth program was the one that I wanted in the beginning. It was a driver update program. All of these programs took an immense amount of time to get through their scans on the little notebook. To make matters worse, I had an automatic power saving feature on my notebook which shut it down if I wasn’t there, moving the mouse every now and then. So there I was trying to let the computer do its thing and every few minutes trying to move the mouse. So I was chained to my chair in a nonproductive position. While going through the health scan the first time it only got partway through and then hung up on some program. I called the technician because I had just paid for getting it cleaned and it should have been working properly. They were working on it for several more hours, and began using a junk ware removal tool that chewed through everything, until suddenly, as I was watching, it reached whatever was blocking the scan and the scan finished completely.

 

By that time I had to go to bed. I woke up and went through the scan again and everything was fine. In the meantime, I was still having problems with pop-ups and trying to find out how to deal with those. Then I discovered that my pop-up setting my pop-up blocker setting was only on medium, so I changed that setting to high and some were still getting through, but not that many. I hope you can sense the level of frustration that I was trying to cope with. Then, the next night, I tried running the fourth program, the driver update program. It came on and started to do a scan and found nineteen dangerously outdated, drivers. It was requesting permission to update down and I told it to go ahead. Then it began to install the new drivers, one by one. But again, I was struggling because I had to move the mouse every few minutes and the computer kept shutting off.

 

There was one program that was supposed to install all the drivers, but my computer did not have enough resources to run it. So they had to be installed one at a time. One set of drivers was taking and extremely long time to load and after waiting an hour I went to bed. In the morning the computer was still stuck. To make a long story short, I ended up calling the technician again and they were working on it for several hours until they lost connection. My little notebook has not been able to connect to the Internet since.

 

This is now actually two weeks later. I had to get a different computer. I got a nice laptop and then I had to purchase word because my existing edition of Microsoft office was not transferable to my new computer; neither was coral Photoshop. I tried to get the antivirus programs transferred and found that the software programs I had purchased had not been purchased through the manufacturer, but through the technician service. What this meant was I didn’t have the passwords and the serial numbers to download and activate the programs on my new computer.

 

While I was not involved in a scam from the legal point of view, I felt that the technician had certainly misrepresented the situation to me and refused to have anything else to do with them. To make a long story short, I was out almost $500 for the costs of the software and the cleaning out my computer which was now burned out!

 

My resources were completely exhausted and I didn’t have a computer! There was no way that I could continue my writing or my translation work! I was dead in the water. My dream of self-empowerment had completely crashed. There was nothing that I could do.

 

A few days later, in desperation, I went to my father and asked for some help to get a different computer. I had been estranged from my father for some time and this was extremely difficult for me to do. But I swallowed my pride, and explained the entire situation to him. We had a very good conversation and I felt closer to him than I had for many years. He helped me to buy the computer that I’m using now, and there has been a lot of healing between the two of us.

 

So what can I say? In the long run, this nightmare does have a happy ending.

 

This post is actually several weeks behind and I’ll just catch up with where I’m at right now. My new computer is working fine, I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking with Word for Windows, coral Photoshop, and text aloud. Text aloud is a program that transforms text into MP3 files which I can listen to at work. For the past two weeks I’ve been listening to “the ego and his own” by Max Stirner and am now listening to other stories. This has been extremely powerful and I’m enjoying it immensely! I still dictate on my way to work in the mornings, but not every day. I’m thinking about beginning the second volume of Anarchist Knight and working out the basic plot outline through dictation. I’m still learning how to use my new computer, and am very satisfied with what I can do. So far. I no longer use my fingers to type, but do everything through voice. By this I mean I do all the typing through voice. I still use the mouse to assist with the navigation of pages and files.

Computer Problems

My adventures in voice typing and translating.

As always, whenever somebody decides to do something things usually don’t turn out the way they think they will. As I was seriously preparing to get deeply involved and committed to the voice typing program I started cleaning out my little notebook computer. Then I started getting these pop-up ads and one of them talked about updating the drivers on my computer. I knew that that was an important thing to do, so I decided to answer. One thing led to another and I signed up for a driver update program that would theoretically ensure that my little notebook would be up to speed.

However, things are not that simple. One of the things I was supposed to do was call a technician, which ended up being a good thing because the technician asked if he could remotely poke around in my computer while I was watching just to see how it was performing. So I agreed to that. So I’m talking on the phone with him while he’s going through my little notebook and I’m seeing what he is checking out. He’s in the diagnostic part of the computer were there’s a record of over 2000 warnings and cautions that are saying my little notebook is really struggling. That’s when he he told me that my computer really needed to be cleaned, that it was working at 90%, and should really be working at some place between 40% and 80% where it was not working so hard. He suggested that I take it to a local computer store or he offered also that he could do it for a little cheaper.

Since I was on the phone with him anyway, I decided to let him go ahead. Then I went out and did some yard work. While he worked on my computer. Then he told me that most of the problems my computer was having were do to my using a bad antivirus protection. He recommended Panda antivirus and said that he could give me a special deal on it. By now I was spending much more money than I thought I would be. But I said, go ahead. Later, I was turned over to somebody else who also talked me into buying a malware program.

When everything was done, I was told that my notebook was such a mess that they had to completely reinstall the operating system. But it seemed to be working and I was quite happy about it. So now I’m thinking, I’ve got this great notebook. It’s one of the few notebooks that can actually run Dragon NaturallySpeaking, even though it is kind of slow. My notebook seemed to be running much better than it had before.

The lesson I’ve learned from this is how important it is to have good equipment and maintain it properly. I’ve been watching some demos about what Dragon NaturallySpeaking can do and I’m excited to begin trying Some new things.

I’ve already noticed that my notebook is too slow to be useful for some of the things that were in the demo like switching from page to page and doing Internet searches with voice commands only. I will talk more about this later.

On a side note, I’m totally amazed at how well dictating while driving back and forth from work is. I can dictate an entire post on my way to work or back from work. I’m really excited about how powerful this can be. What I do is transfer the voice recording to my computer at home and have Dragon type it up. Then I use that file as a rough draft and open another file, which I place side-by-side with the rough draft. Then, referring to the rough draft I dictate a clean copy making corrections as needed. This seems to be working very well. In fact, the posts I’ve dictated are piling up and I need to take it easy for a while.

My Adventures in Typing

My Adventures in Typing

I wanted to be a writer for a long time. When I was in high school I knew that I wanted to be a writer, but now I’m 57 years old and I’m just getting started. Somehow I just could not find the time to write. I was always too busy doing something else and I still am. I work five days a week at my normal job. And then I work weekends at a second job as a driving instructor. There simply is not enough time during the day to get any writing done, but still, this book is going to be my 12th book. I’ve somehow managed to put out 12 books! Not that any of them are selling very well, but 12 books are 12 books.

The whole idea is about how to leverage the time that you do have during the day, and make it available for doing what you want. I’m 57 years old now, and finally, I’ve learned how to leverage my time in a way that I believe is powerful enough that other people might want to know how I do it. So I’ll start with this.

I’m dictating this as I drive to work on my second job on Saturday morning. I’m driving to work. I have a pocket voice recorder, and when I’m done dictating, I can plug it into my computer at home. My computer at home uses Dragon NaturallySpeaking and I am seriously trying to learn how to use it as effectively as possible. This book is going to allow me to share my steps in exploring this new way of typing by voice. As I walk through it step by step, I will share it with everybody. So this is actually the first day that I’ve tried. Now the portable handheld device or voice recorder has some useful features that are valuable for dictation. Probably one of the two most important features is an automatic pause feature, so when I’m not talking  and just thinking about what to say it stops. It starts back up again as soon as I start talking. The second nice feature is that it filters out noise so even if there are outside noises, road noises, or car noises, I get a pretty clear dictation.

Now, I have to learn how to dictate. I’ve been avoiding this for years! I’ve simply reached a point where I have to do it! Otherwise I won’t get anything done.

Now, back to my early writing experience. 14 years ago I was working as a security guard at a casino and was still wondering if I was ever going to start writing. Again, there was simply no time for writing. I was still working two jobs. But I was serious about wanting to write. I didn’t know how to type either. So I got a Mavis Beacon teaches typing program and learned how to type on my computer. I messed around on the computer learning various web page design skills and still didn’t get very far. Then I started working the graveyard shift at the casino and was spending my nights driving around the parking lot in the security car. It was the perfect opportunity for me to try to do some writing. So I bought a mini voice recorder that used little cassettes. I think everyone has seen them. This would have been around 1999 or 2000. It was at the turn of the millennium.

Anyway, I clipped the little microphone to the visor of the car and drove around talking to myself like I usually do. The voice recorder also had a pause feature, if I remember correctly. And I began working on my first book,  Anarchist Knight  Apprentice. So every night I went through the basic development of the book, working on chapters, outline, and developing a very rough story outline.

I had also purchased Dragon NaturallySpeaking 7, which was a very early version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking.I became quite frustrated with it because it was not very accurate, and I am a very lazy speaker. I tend to slur my words and mumble to myself. None of those things made voice dictation very easy. To make a long story short, those cassette tapes sat for several years in a box. Then, several years later, I dug them back out and played them once more. But this time I had purchased a new version of Dragon. I was confident that this time I could do it. So I sat and listened to my cassette recordings. I would listen to a little bit and then I would speak it into the voice typing system until all of those early tapes were put down on text. It was a mess. But for the first time I had an actual book in progress on paper or at least in text on a file. That was the beginning of my writing career. Again, that version of Dragon was inadequate. I was unable to use it effectively, and I’d lacked the personal discipline to learn more than the rudimentary skills involved. So finally, what I ended up doing, was painfully typing out the rough draft and expanding it to include the entire story, without any dialogue. When I was fairly happy with the story, I then went back and inserted the dialogue. I became incredibly frustrated with how complex writing actually was, especially when it came to grammar, paragraph structure and all sorts of things that seemed to have nothing to do with the writing of the story itself. To make things worse, I still didn’t have the discipline to put everything into book form.

In an act of desperation, I began posting the story online as a blog. At the time, I believed that posting the story online would help me to finish it. And it worked! But that brought its own set of problems. Because I had already posted my story online, technically it was already published, and I was afraid that no publishers would be interested in it. Obviously my first adventures in self-publishing haven’t gone very well, because I’m still working two jobs, seven days a week.

Welcome!

Welcome to my latest adventures!