Did I Or Didn’t I?

As I told you a while back, a recent CT scan showed that I had experienced a small stroke at some point, probably back in 2019, when I had a dizzy episode and tingling in my head that lasted for several hours.

Since then I have undergone a bunch of other tests, including another MRI, and when I went to see my new cardiologist yesterday, she didn’t see any indication of that stroke on the results of the MRI. Granted, she said that she is a cardiologist, not a neurologist, and was basing her comments on her experience. So did I have a stroke or didn’t I? I have no idea.

She got me set up for some more tests, including wearing a heart monitor for 48 hours and an ultrasound of my heart, and then there will be a conference. I guess we’ll know more after that. I’ve got to tell you, this getting old sucks. However, it does beat the heck out of the alternative, doesn’t it?

After we left the doctor’s office, we drove out to the beach and parked for half an hour or so, just enjoying the breeze and the surf. It was kind of a gray day, and there were not a lot of people out. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought we were on the Oregon or Washington coast instead of here in Central Florida.

One windsurfer was out having fun ignoring the chilly water and zipping back and forth, experiencing a heck of a ride!

We are having heavier waves than normal, along with heavy rain predicted for tomorrow, and then high tides and wind over the weekend that may lead to some beach erosion.

Before the power went out yesterday, I was doing some research based on feedback I was getting from an online Dragon Dictation forum. As I’ve said, I can easily dictate 5,000 words a day using Dragon, and I’ve done as many as 11,000 words. However, there are so many errors that it takes another day or two to make corrections, bringing that total daily word count way down.

I’ve tried various microphones with no success, and I’m not really sure what’s causing the issue, but someone suggested I might want to get an external sound card for my computer because the sound cards that come with them are very basic. That made sense to me until someone else said that if I’m using a USB microphone like my Blue Yeti Nano, it already comes with its own built-in sound card, so that shouldn’t make much difference. More research is needed.

I also dictate quite often using my Sony digital recorder with the same results, and I dictate using Microsoft Word’s own dictation feature. No matter what I do, I still get a lot of errors, so maybe it’s just the way I talk (or mumble). I also dug out an older Audio-Technica lavalier microphone I had and plugged it into the Sony digital recorder yesterday and tried that out, with mixed results. Now I’m using it plugged directly into the computer to dictate today’s blog. In a few minutes, I’ll run it through Dragon to transcribe it and see what happens. Wish me luck.

Update: I did not see any real improvement with the lavalier microphone either. Maybe I need speech therapy.

Be sure to enter our latest Free Drawing. This week’s prize is an audiobook of Birdsongs, the first book in my friend Jason Deas’ excellent Benny James mystery series. To enter, all you have to do is click on this Free Drawing link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn Sunday evening. Note: Due to the high shipping cost of printed books and Amazon restrictions on e-books to foreign countries, only entries with US addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

Thought For The Day – It is fine to celebrate success, but it’s more important to heed the lessons of failures. – Bill Gates