kids, don't try this at home

Jeff standing on the lake a few hours
before the ice melted
(click image for larger version)


So when Jeff sent me the picture above, I confess I wasn't exactly thrilled, especially since he said there was open water about 2 ft. in front of him. He reassured me, however, that his parents were in a motorboat with a rope in case he fell through the ice (yeah, that made me feel SO much better :)). Three hours later, the ice in this photo had all melted.

It has been a little tough, these last few days, but I'm still convinced that I made the right decision not to go to the cottage for ice out this year. I didn't want to go through another major setback like I did after my last weekend cottage visit, in terms of my arms improving, plus I wanted Jeff to have a break from having to look after me.

I still get frustrated sometimes with how long everything seems to take me because of my tendinitis. This includes getting dressed, undressed, eating meals, etc. My friends and family have been very patient. But as Jeff said recently, "It's not like I have a choice!" :-D Seriously, though, it has meant a lot to me.

Turns out that my weird Spam filtering problem was probably caused by ViaVoice somehow. Not exactly sure what happened, except that I know I began experimenting with using ViaVoice in helping me answer e-mail starting Sunday, and my mail problems also started Sunday. So I've changed my mail filters, and I'm keeping a closer eye on ViaVoice when I'm using Eudora. There are 483 e-mail messages in my inbox right now. Going through them slowly (lots of mouse clicks involved).

Ruth is coming over tonight to help me do laundry, and then we're going to Yonge Street and cruise for cute guys. OK, so maybe I'm lying about the cruising part. :-)

It was so great to hear from other fans of Fruits Basket, by the way!

(This entry written using ViaVoice.)

Apr/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

fruits basket

The heroine of Fruits Basket


My friend Michelle was kind enough to lend to me some anime recently, and I'm now totally hooked on Fruits Basket. The animation style takes a little getting used to at first, such as when the characters' eyes turn into roughly sketched circles when they are emotional, or a giant teardrop appears on the back of a character's head when he or she is nervous.

Anyway, I love the series. I called Michelle recently to thank her and to also ask for more episodes. Unfortunately, she has no more right now. Fortunately, she has six more on order, which should arrive in May. Unfortunately, there are No More Episodes After This (!). I can't believe it. How could Michelle get to be hooked on this series, knowing that that there were only 26 episodes available?! Maybe she's hiding some. Maybe if I post more pictures of her in Blatherings, she will be able to find them for me. ( Evil cackle fading into the distance)

I'm no longer taking Vioxx (anti-inflammatory pills), or rather my doctor has told me to only take it when the pain is really bad, since I'm apparently a member of the small percentage of the population who suffers side effects from the drug. She is worried about my mild side effects of turning into more serious side effects, all of which sound rather nasty.

More sad news: Nick the Physiotherapist is leaving me! Or at least for three weeks, while he takes off on a vacation in Greece. I told him I would miss him terribly; I think he thought I was joking.

I'm finding that ViaVoice is not as helpful when replying to e-mail, mainly because I still have to use the mouse quite a bit. So I'm focusing on practicing of ViaVoice through my Blatherings for now, since my arms can get more rest that way, and I'm gradually getting closer to the point where I will feel confident enough to start writing columns and articles and fiction using ViaVoice. I'm also forcing myself not to surf the web to try and minimize my keyboard work.

I wrote this entire Blathering without using my arms even once, and the editing process is gradually becoming a little bit easier each time I blather. The key seems to be patience, slow and steady speech, and taking the time to edit as I go along so ViaVoice has a chance to learn, and I get more proficient at using the editing functions.

Apr/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

e-mail woes

Argh.

I just discovered that something has gone wonky in my Spam filtering program, and "real" mail has been filtered into my Spam mailbox for a few days now. Sorting through it now, but apologies to those who have sent me e-mail and never received a reply.

You know, I thought things were a little too quiet. :-)

Apr/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

dungeons and dragons

Ginny and Jeff in front of
Ginny's new workbench


I remember finding out about Dungeons and Dragons the first time while reading an issue of Games magazine. I was so thrilled by the idea that I immediately it ordered a copy by mail and then planted myself but the front door waiting for the postman.

Of course, I didn't know anyone else who was interested in the game, so when the game finally arrived, I used my own family as guinea pigs. Didn't really know what I was doing, and made the story up as it went along. Partway through the game, my parents put an end to the session because my little brother and sister were getting too scared. Can't remember exactly what the story was about, but I do remember it involved vampires and caves and coffins, and that I was scaring myself all little as well. We never played it again. :-(

In high-school, I heard that the war games club was starting to experiment with D&D. Excited, I attended an after-school session. I was the only girl, and although they welcomed haveme, it was clear that I was putting a crimp in their style. The dungeon master kept apologizing when it anything particularly violent occurred, or when anyone used strong language.

Frustrated, I never went back again.

During University (now why would ViaVoice Want to put the capital at the beginning of the word "University"?), a number of my friends played D&D, and I joined several campaigns. My first character ever was a magic user named Rowena, in a campaign run by Tom West, who is now married to my friend Michelle Sagara. My next was a hobbit thief named Charity, in a campaign run by my friend Andy (who posts in Blatherchat as "aiabx").

So Jeff and I have been teaching Sara and Annie the basics of D&D. The first few times, Jeff and Sara and Annie each described their character and character name to me, and then I would make up the story involving their characters, giving them options on what to do along the way. The girls love this game. My main challenge is not making a story too scary (does that sound familiar?). In my last "Campaign", the villains name was Baba Ganouche, a nasty old witch who liked to eat squirrels and poison children.

On Sunday night, Annie asked if she could be the dungeon master. She prepared a map, and sat in the corner of the room with her map hidden inside a picture book, reminding me uncannily of when Tom and Andy used to hide behind their screens while doing their dungeon master thing in the old days.

Survey: Have you ever been involved in a role-playing game? What kind? Do you still role-play?

(typed with ViaVoice; please excuse typos I've missed)

Apr/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ

viavoice critique

A drawing by my 6-year-old niece, Annie


So I had a follow-up appointment with my doctor today. She was concerned because my arms are worse than they were when I saw her a month ago, but I told her that they're starting to gradually improve again. I'm supposed to see her again in a month. Sometimes it's hard not to get discouraged, but at least now I have ViaVoice and am trying to get my head around the fact that it may be a while longer before my arms are better.

Had lots of fun with Allison and Donna on Friday. Allison and I went to see a movie earlier in the afternoon, then hooked up with Donna later on, had some sushi. In the evening, we decided to see "The Two Towers". It was my third time, Allison's 6th time, and somewhere in the 30s for Donna. Allison and Donna are two of the most avid Lord of the Rings fans that I know, so it was fun seeing it with them. I really, really, really can't wait until the next movie.



Donna and Allison


Jeff had to work on Saturday, so in the afternoon I hung out with Parki. Very laid-back and relaxing time; we spent most of the time listening to music. He's gotten me hooked on the Grateful Dead. :-) For some reason, I always had the idea that the Grateful Dead were screaming heavy metal types so never listened to them. Holy cow, was I ever wrong.

On Sunday, Jeff and I did a lot of visiting. We drove to Orangeville to see his mom and to go through some old boxes that she was storing for us from our previous move. Next stop was Aurora, where we visited with Elizabeth and Bryan and Brianna; Jeff's first time meeting Brianna! In the evening, we had Easter dinner with my family.



Jeff meets Brianna


Several of you have asked about ViaVoice. So far I've only waxed eloquent about it is positive aspects. To be fair, here's a list of some of the shortcomings I have found so far, in case any of you are thinking of trying it out. Please keep in mind that what I'm talking only about the Mac OS X version; the regular Windows version may not be the same.

ViaVoice shortcomings so far

You need a lot of patience. Even though ViaVoice can quickly learn enough of your voice to be able to transcribe roughly, it still takes a lot of time and patience for you to learn how to edit the mistakes that via Voice makes. There have been many times when I've been strongly tempted to just forget the voice recognition and to make a correction by the keyboard.

Sometimes the microphone quits working for no reason. This happens at least once to twice for every hour I use ViaVoice. I usually just quit to ViaVoice, then restart it, and everything's fine. I had to do this three times during the writing of this particular Blathering.

Sometimes ViaVoice loses the cursor. This means I have to click the mouse so the application can find it again, which of course defeats the original purpose.

You have to plan out your sentences before saying them. This can be trickier than you think. I'm still not sure how editing my fiction writing will be. Right now, I'm still getting the hang of editing my nonfiction, practicing through these Blatherings.

You can only use editing features when the dictating into the ViaVoice text editor. even though I can dictate into Microsoft word, for example, it's much slower and I can't edit using my voice. I have to dictate into ViaVoice's SpeakPad first, then copy and paste the text into the appropriate application. I haven't been able to get the Transfer To function to work properly yet.

Sometimes ViaVoice quits for no particular reason. I have learned to save my ViaVoice documents frequently.

There is a problem with the VVIEController file which caused a virtual memory leak as well as a weird problem that caused my hard disk to fill up whenever I ran ViaVoice, and even after I quit the application. Jeff was the one to figure out that this particular file had to be deleted. Not having the file means I can't use the "jump to" function in Explorer anymore.

You need to be in a quiet environment. this may be a problem for parents of young children as well as those who work in crowded offices. I tried demonstrating ViaVoice to Parki and Jeff while they were standing behind me, and their wisecracks and comments in the background while I was dictating caused ViaVoice to go through a spasm of confusion from which it never recovered (I had to quit and restart).

The ViaVoice manual is not very good. There are many functions, for example, that are not listed in in the manual, and can only be found by snooping through ViaVoice. I found that this applied especially to the editing functions.

Despite these complaints, however, I would much rather be using ViaVoice right now than not. I'm also finding that the process is gradually getting easier the more that I use ViaVoice, and I may even continue to use it for some tasks even after my arms completely heal.



Easter eggs decorated by Sara and Annie

Apr/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ