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I have a new toy to play with. The above paragraph is an example of what a powerful machine and software can accomplish.(for those of you who may not know, this is sarcasm...)
Karen and I went out to eat at Applebee's last night. After an excellent meal, we went to Best Buy, just to look around. I found the IBM VoiceType Simply Speaking Gold had finally hit the shelves. I spent about an hour wishy-washing around before Karen talked me into buying it.
Then I spent the rest of the night trying to use it. I do believe that it is going to take at least a couple of days for me to get it working properly.
However, when I get it properly trained,
I don't really know what fascinates me about voice dictation/navigation. Somehow, I have it in my mind that writing just with my voice would be the most natural way to write. There is something stultifying about a keyboard... and even with the mouse combination, it still seems artificial. Even with Win95!
I have been pounding on keyboards for a long time, but I have never learned to touch type. Yeah, I have Mavis Beacon on a CDROM around here somewhere... and I have one of these "natural" keyboards from Cirque, which I just love, and it has the extra little touch-pad, which is really handy. But I really just want to talk. Talking is natural; I'm pretty accomplished at talking. I did notice, however, after about three hours of talking last night to train this program, that my mouth was very dry. I really doubt that I will spend many three-hour sessions talking.
It is a beautiful day here in mid-America. Cool, about 70F, light breezes from variable directions, blue sky, everybody and their brother setting off explosives. It is pretty dry, not having rained for a week or so, and there is a definite fire hazard. I'm glad that I'm not a firefighter on this fourth of July weekend. Actually, I'm glad that I'm not a firefighter anytime. I'm too fascinated by fires to want to put them out. I would wind up being like one of those loser firefighters who would set fires just to watch them... and maybe get to be a hero. You know the guys... there are several occurrances of this behavior annually. It usually makes the front pages, and people are weirded out when they realize that the people that they pay to fight fires are actually the ones setting them. But this happens often enough that we should be used to it by now... but it's always a shocker, anyway.
Back to the weather... we are supposed to have three of these beautiful days in a row... on a weekend! On the fourth of July! This is practically unheard of. It is probably going to be a record. Generally, here in Kansas, the fourth is spoiled by violent thunderstorms, raining on the parades and picnics of the celebrants. Not this year!
Geez, I have a lot of unanswered email... I been getting lazy lately. You who have written me in the last week, expect a reply soon. However, this is too beautiful of a day to spend inside on the computer, so it probably won't be today...
O'yeah, the Mars lander thingie is going to be happening soon, I'm gonna be glued to the TV inside regardless, I guess. This is one of mankind's amazing accomplishments, but it seems to be almost routine. People accept the fact of the space shuttles, the deep-space flights, the MIR, the soon-to-be space station... the stuff of science fiction, really happening right now, right before our eyes! This stuff is commonplace to the common man.
When we landed on the moon, I envisioned a string of space-ship possibilities... but several wars got in the way, and people with no vision were elected to run the country. Think of where we'd be right now if there weren't so many political agendas concerning NASA....
I really don't like holidays very much... but have a happy fourth anyway!
OK, that's enough for now. There may be more later, and there will certainly be more tomorrow...
I really believe that it will be wonderful. So far, I have only tried the dictation part, I haven't messed with the navigation controls at all.
I have never learned to touch type. Yeah, I have Mavis Beacon on a CDROM around here somewhere...