Bloglet, the gentleman's mock turtle soup -- Moss made it sweeter than myrrh ash and dhoup
If Martin gets to foodblog, I get to foodblog too.
Dinner tonight was grilled rainbow trout with tarragon, broccolini sauteed with garlic, boiled new potatoes with butter, and a tomato, cucumber, and avocado salad. Dessert was fresh peaches with Greek yogurt, and to finish I had half a toasted pita with butter and Marmite. K. had the other half without the Marmite. Dude. Yum.
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10:47:34 PM,Sunday 1 June 2008
Via Kate Beaton.
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01:03:02 PM,Saturday 31 May 2008
The Adagio of K. 488! That's what we played in the SJC Orchestra sophomore year! I've been trying to remember its number for years!
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10:24:52 PM,Friday 30 May 2008
Hey, I just thought of a tool that would be invaluable for writers of pastiche and period pieces. If this thing already exists, let me know where it is, 'cause I need it. An anachronism detector! You've got an engine hooked up to an unabridged dictionary (ideally the OED) and you feed it a text file (up to novel length) and a date. It works for a while and then spits out a list of all words in the text file that had not yet been coined by the date you entered. You go back and fix them and your literary cred (or at least your potential to avoid making historically-minded readers cringe) just shot up by at least 41%!
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(8)
03:24:53 PM,Sunday 25 May 2008
Ask Neal Stephenson about Anathem. I already asked him one. I've been thinking about how much I adored the Redwall books when I was a kid, even though they really weren't all that good, because I've always wanted to be a monk and live in an Abbey. But there was never any God in those books, and it's sort of strange to see what contortions Jacques had to make to keep him out of them.
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(3)
03:49:27 PM,Friday 23 May 2008
"Prickwillow's Museum of Fenland Drainage" is my new favorite phrase ever.
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11:50:31 PM,Wednesday 21 May 2008
I applied to a dozen or more transcription companies yesterday. No word back from anyone, though I did just get a new three-hour CART assignment in June. So I did my usual desultory search on Craigslist a few hours ago -- they're not usually good for much, and my first terrible transcription job came from there -- and found the ideal company. I went to their website and started jumping up and down, I liked their style of persnickety grammatical braggadocio so much. So I write up a long suave cover letter, slap my resume into it, and send it off with soaring spirits, only to have it returned four seconds later because the address doesn't exist. Now, the posting itself doesn't mention the company's name; I deduced it from the gmail address they'd used to post with (and summarily discarded, I guess). So I went to the site and pasted my letter into their client request form. Now I'm all anxious. I really want to work for these people. Did they already hire someone? Is that why they canceled the gmail address? Will they think I overstepped by using their web form? Should I have sent it to the email address they had on the site instead of the form so at least if it bounced back again I'd get a notification? Should I send it again, or would that annoy them? Argh! I'd forgotten how nerve-wracking job searching can be. I keep thinking back to that first disastrous transcription job. They were nice enough people and the work itself was fine, but they had no clients to speak of, and I sat in my room every morning, getting broker and broker, waiting for the secretary to call and tell me not to bother coming in that day. Then my computer broke and I had to buy another one, I got my captioning job, went through the three month minimum wage probation period, and came out of it $3,000 in debt. My ever-saintly godmother had to bail me out, or who knows what would have happened -- and that was when my rent was almost half of what it is now and my student loans were deferred. Never again. I'll find work. I have to.
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(4)
05:27:21 PM,Wednesday 21 May 2008
Instant Word Search, by the guy who wrote Smacklet. Way too much fun to play with.
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(1)
07:27:11 PM,Tuesday 20 May 2008
Just try to tell me that this isn't the awesomest fact you've learned all week.
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(3)
03:41:54 PM,Sunday 18 May 2008
Doing my part to make Wikipedia a more accurate resource for us all.
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(1036)
11:06:09 PM,Saturday 17 May 2008
So before I previewed the show I'm captioning tomorrow I went to Staples to get the script printed out and three-hole punched. I look at the itemized charges and notice that I'm being billed $2 for file conversion... from .txt to .pdf. "Oh yeah," the clerk says, "if it's not a .pdf, we have to convert it, and that costs extra." I give her my best incredulous stare and she agrees very sweetly to waive the fee, so full marks there. But seriously. What is this @$&# world coming to?!
Also, at the show tonight I spotted one of my favorite people from Bigfork, who I hadn't seen in more than six years. Lovely surprise, and now I have his card. Yay all over that action. Also discovered that two of the actors I worked with there are now in musicals on Broadway. Ain't bad for a hick summer rep outfit, huh?
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02:09:11 AM,Saturday 17 May 2008
Can't watch it now because I have to prep this script, but it looks promising.
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(1)
01:39:40 PM,Friday 16 May 2008
Bleh. I spent most of the day lollyfutzing on the internet, but finally wound up sending my resume to four remote CART companies. I've heard an answer back from one of them; they said they'd put me in their file. That's good, I guess. Then I had the idea of going all the way down to the bottom of Manhattan to register "Stenoknight CART Services" as my DBA so I could put it on things and sound impressive, but I left at 3:45 and arrived at the registry office at 4:54, only to discover that they shut down the computers at 4:45 and the place where you buy the forms closes at 4:00 anyway, so... not so much with that one. It's not like it's urgent. Just discouraging. I got to talk to my mom calling from Norway, though, so that was nice. She's been on a boat listening to Hardanger fiddle music. Tomorrow, ASL class and a picnic with K.'s writing center friends. I'm making deviled eggs. I've got to get more organized. I should have done more laundry today (did some last night, but not enough), cleaned the bathroom, emptied out the fridge, sharpened the knives, organized my closet, applied to more transcription firms -- glargh! I did learn of and join ATHEN, though, which is cool. And I've started logging my minutes with Smacklet, which seems to be keeping me relatively honest so far. Just gotta find a semi-steady gig and pull myself out of lassitude. Yar.
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(3)
08:28:13 PM,Wednesday 14 May 2008
Phoebe Res Corvallis Jugg.
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12:42:07 PM,Wednesday 14 May 2008
I GOT TELEVIEW WORKING OVER TEH INTARWEBS!!
Ten thousand and ten props to Martin, who has always been kind enough to test it when it wasn't working. Bazillions of times in a row over months and months. Poor Martin. But now it works! Remote CART, here I come!
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05:25:31 PM,Tuesday 13 May 2008
So the semester has been over for a while now, but I've been coasting. First I was preparing for the CCP, then meeting with my former-mentor-now-colleague to talk about the semester and demonstrate my new handheld CART system for her. (It's pretty cool: $700 Samsung Q1 from woot.com plus wireless router plus Teleview equals a portable display that my client can walk around the classroom with, have less intrusive one-on-one conversations, and search/scroll through the document at will, while I and my gear sit in the corner without having to be all up in their space.) Then I started ASL classes, which are damn fun. Then I CARTed a meeting of the Museum Access Consortium at the Met yesterday, about producing tactile exhibits for blind and low-sighted patrons. This Saturday I'm captioning a musical. I've got the Cochlear Implant Support Group next week, and there may be some more piecemeal CART work coming up, but other than that my calendar's pretty much blank. The checks are still coming in from the end of the semester and I've got a little put away, but I really have to find something steady for summer. Last week I finished my CART cover letters and resumes and sent them out to 19 colleges. Over the weekend I sent out a transcription resume to a pre-production company my friend from steno school works for. Nothing yet. I've also got to get Teleview working over the internet instead of just locally; freaking thing keeps giving me a 192.168.x.x IP even after using BAUPnP to open up port 80 on my router. I've been taking web seminars for Eclipse about writing macros for realtime editing, and it's about time I knock some out so I can be less qwerty-dependent. Also, laundry, cooking, chilling with K., messing around with our ridiculous cat. Life is glorious, even if it's unmoored. It's always a little nerve-wracking to be between steady gigs, but I've got mad skillz to make money with. I just have to figure out who needs 'em.
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(2)
02:19:10 PM,Tuesday 13 May 2008
Last.fm + YouTube. Ingenious.
Via Lifehacker.
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(2)
12:14:34 PM,Wednesday 7 May 2008
So I just took the CCP again. It was better than last time, but not by enough. I don't know how many errors I made last time; they stop counting once you go over 68. This time I'd estimate it's somewhere in the 40s or 50s, but I have to get 36 or fewer to pass. I'll know in six to eight weeks. They don't let you review it before you hand it in, but the last page was free of errors, at least. I think I made most of them in the beginning, with a few intermittent freak-outs along the way. Again, it felt ludicrously slow and I had all the words in my dictionary. I even had briefs for many of them, because the test was on a subject I've spent much of the year working with. Like last time, it was the shakes that got me, though I was able to master them for good portions of it, unlike then, when I was pretty much spazzing out for the duration. The one minute practice section for this test was taken from the last test, and I slapped every word down like catfish, easy as anything. Then the test itself started and my arms went all noodly. If it had been a transcribed test, I would have aced it; I didn't drop more than three or four words. It was all slop, and slop I'm sure I could have read through without any trouble. But it's a realtime test. And I'm a realtime writer. Thankfully, I've never had this shaking problem when I'm actually working, but it's getting really old. Last time about 20 people took it in NYC, and one passed. 15% of National Court Reporters Association members have passed it. There were people there who'd gotten their RMR -- 260 words a minute, transcribed, the highest certification speed they offer -- and they still hadn't passed this one (180 words a minute, unedited). Some of them had taken it 10 times already. It's simple, slow material. Why is it so impossible? I wish it were given more than twice a year. If I could take it again next week, I'd whup it. (She says, with the arrogance of the recently vanquished.) But instead I have to wait until November again. Blargh.
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(4)
02:39:02 PM,Saturday 3 May 2008
K., on aiming the blue cicada-shaped laser pointer at my hindquarters, causing the cat to climb my trousers frenetically while I wash dishes.
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(8)
12:00:53 AM,Thursday 1 May 2008
