Is It Just Me?

In my office, here at home. there are two the filing cabinets.  In those cabinets you will find all of the utility bills for the house since we moved in in 2001. Yesterday, I needed to send originals of my utility bills to a solicitor... guess what.  Only the ones that I need are not to be found.

Explain that if you can!

DW

So the other day I sang the praises of Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred voice recognition software saying that it was the best thing since sliced bread ... then yesterday I had a catastrophe with it. I took the laptop upstairs to print out a few files (thank you Bill Gates: network printer cannot work any more and I blame the you personally!) And when I came back the software worked really badly, really slowly. Since I was in the middle of a panic to meet a deadline I became rather stressed. Luckily I was alone and no one was here to hear my expletives. I spent an hour and a half trying to find a way to make the software work again. I thought I'd found that the sound card driver had imploded so I uninstalled it; but when I came to reinstall it ... it has gone! So I went to the website to get a replacement driver: downloaded it, installed it... it seemed to work. Then it stopped working again. So I missed a deadline (fortunately not serious and have since met it) and had to go out to meet the fair Maria! After that teaching/learning session I got back home and tried the software. Again. I was desperate, thinking that I might need to return the software, throw something through a window all ... so I slept on it. This morning I started again and took a more rational view of things and by doing so I found the solution. It helps to plug in the headphones the right way round. I should say no more, otherwise it would be embarrassing for me. Dragon NaturallySpeaking Preferred is excellent and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. DW

Speech recognition software

I thought you needed to know about some software called Dragon naturally speaking preferred version 9. At last week's seminars one of my fellow presenters recommended that I try speech recognition software. I did. I went to Amazon.com and found this Dragon naturally speaking preferred version 9, as recommended, for about one third of the price that I found on Dragon's own web site and I am happy.

I am dictating this message using the software and I have to say it is fantastic. Of course, it needs to be tweaked as it needs to learn my accent and style of delivery but I think it's success rate at recognition is probably in the high 90%s. I have used similar software before but it's nowhere near as good as this. I can even speak fairly quickly, ie almost at normal speaking rate and it still catches up with me: there I just did that.

One reason why I bought this software is because of the repetitive strain injury I suffer from. It's not nice and now I can talk and I don't need to type. Let's see how quickly my fingers recover. Suppose the only thing to worry about is to be sitting in an airport or it coffee shop somewhere and apparently talking to myself.

DW

My earand the quack

A couple of weeks ago, I got another ear infection, so I went to see my doctor, who took a look with his little implement only confirm that yes I did have an ear infection and after a little chat he prescribed some drops for me.  So I dutifully went to the chemist's and bought the drops. I then administered them once.  Now, from time to time, I read the leaflets inside the medicine packet and that is exactly what I did on this occasion.  To my horror, I read that, in capital letters, anyone with a perforated ear drum should not administer the drops.  I called the surgery and talked to the practice manager.  I asked her to ask the doctor what I should do.  She talked to him and he called me.  I briefly outlined what he had done and he said, I didn't see a perforation.  I said I've had a perforated ear drum, since I was five years of age.  I am fairly sure that he hadn't read the letters he has received from the specialist at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, which explained my problem in medical terms, because he never mentioned them.  And if he had he would realised that my ear condition is rather serious.  Otherwise I wouldn't be seeing the specialist.

Anyway, I asked him what I should do and he said I should call into the surgery that evening and collect another prescription.  I did that.  I was shocked though, that he didn't suggest that I called into his surgery for him to take another look at my ear for him to understand the mistake he made.  I find that shocking. It is also a shocking that I had to pay for two prescriptions, a total of more than £13 when I should only haave paid for one.

DW