The Frustration Never Ends

At least it seems that way around here sometimes. As I’ve said before, since I’m a slow two-finger typist and I narrate my books into either a Sony digital recorder and then transcribe them with Dragon software, or else I dictate directly into Dragon. Neither of these are perfect, and I wind up with lots of errors. So while I can easily crank out 5,000 words in a day, and some days as much as 10,000 words, I then have to spend a day or more going through and making corrections because of the words Dragon got wrong or mangled. That’s a long and frustrating process.

I started out using a headset microphone and then some people on an online Dragon Dictate forum suggested getting a better microphone, either a Blue Yeti Nano or a Zoom H4n Pro. I took their advice and bought both, hoping they would eliminate some of the problems I was having, but they really haven’t made that much of a difference.

Then someone suggested I skip Dragon altogether and use Microsoft Word’s built-in dictation feature. I’ve done that but have not had any better luck with it. Maybe I just don’t enunciate clearly, I don’t know.

On Monday, someone suggested that the problem might be the fact that I am using an external microphone plugged into a USB port and suggested I use the computer’s built-in microphone instead. His theory was that maybe I was losing something because of the USB connection. I decided that might be a possibility, but the problem is, I use a Dell desktop computer, which does not have a built-in microphone.

So I borrowed Terry’s new Surface Book Pro and tried dictating with it, and the first paragraph or two were fine. But the more I dictated, the slower the words appeared on the screen, and I started getting more and more garbled words or the wrong words in the wrong places, which is what I’ve been experiencing all along. I also dug out my Dell laptop and tried using it with its built-in microphone, getting the same results.

All of that was very frustrating and wasted a lot of time, but I still managed to get in about 4,000 words on Monday in my new John Lee Quarrels book. I was back at it again yesterday and got just over 5,500 more words. Of course, those will still need to be gone through and corrected, but that puts me at about 82,000 words in the manuscript. I’m getting very close to the end of this book now!

Terry’s been dealing with her own frustrations, trying to get the pedals and lamms tied up correctly and everything balanced on one of her Glimakra looms so she can get going on a blanket weaving project she’s been eager to do. After days of crawling inside of the loom’s frame trying one setup after another, she said yesterday that she’s finally got it pretty close, and she was able to get about a foot of actual weaving done.

She told me she’s come to realize that the big Glimakras just might be too much for her, in terms of setup and just physically using them. She’s not a big woman, and she has to stretch to get the shuttle from one side to the other or to reach the pedals and the beater bar and everything that needs to be done.

She is mulling over her options as to what to do about that, but in the meantime, she ordered a new Louet Spring II loom, which is somewhat smaller but much easier to use, and a brand new design as opposed to the 70 plus-year-old technology of the Glimakras. The only problem is, there is a long wait between the time you order one and the time it is delivered, so it won’t arrive until sometime after the first of the year. Meanwhile. she will keep plugging away at it, one shuttle throw at a time.

Speaking of things that get ordered and take forever to receive, when I ordered my new Dodge Ram Laramie pickup, I was told they would start production of the 2022 models in early June, and it would take four to six weeks for the truck to be built to my specifications and delivered to the dealer. Then that changed to July. Yeah, right. Several people told me not to believe that nonsense, but I was optimistic.

As it turns out, we’re into September, and they haven’t even started to build the Laramie model trucks yet, and no one really knows when they will. The dealer keeps texting me telling me that I can expect it any day now, but when I go online to the Dodge customer chat line and give them the VIN of the new truck, all they can tell me is that production hasn’t started yet and they don’t know when it will. Just more frustration, right?

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us.

Thought For The Day – Never argue with someone whose TV is bigger than their bookshelf.