Dictation

I saw a notice on the Morningside Facebook page that a lady had a friend who was doing her PhD and was looking for someone to transcribe oral interviews in the written versions.  I phoned the lady and she gave me the number of the PhD Student.  The PhD student set me up with an account to send me the audio recordings.  She said she could pay $100 for an hour of audio.  She said she had 10 interviews to do.  She sent me an example audio file and an example of what it looked like transcribed and she sent me a confidentiality form.  I tried to transcribe the audio and I couldn’t type fast enough even when I slowed down the recording.  I was talking to my brother in law about it and he suggested there might be some voice to text software I could use.  So I looked up apps on my phone and tried one.  I also remembered that we had tried voice to text on Facebook messenger and I found there was a voice to text feature on Gmail.  I tried to use the voice to text app through the speakers of my computer but it didn’t work.  So I tried listening to the audio recording and repeating it into the phone app and that seemed to work fairly well but I found the listening was slow because I often had to stop and repeat parts and also after it was in text, I had to upload it to the cloud and download it into Word and edit while listening to the audio again.  The PhD student wanted me to transcribe all the 'ums' and 'uhs' and pauses and giggles.  Barb thought that was stupid but the PhD student said she needed the nuance. It would probably take me more than 3 hours to transcribe an hour of recording which didn’t make the $100 an hour sound so good if it was $100 for 3 or more hours but I signed the confidentiality agreement and sent it to the PhD student.  She replied that she would send me  an audio file soon.  When I told Sarah about it, Sarah said she would pay me $100 not to do it.  She thought it was stupid.  I waited and the PhD student never sent me anything and I never got back to her.  So it looks like it is not going to happen and I am okay with that.

Reviews

Barb immediately tried out her new washer and dryer.  The new washers and dryers come with all kinds of new safety features.  Barb likes to put clothes in the washer gradually as it fills with water to see how much she can fit in but the new washer won’t let her open the lid once it starts to fill.  Then after the clothes are washed, spin cycle goes for almost a half hour and wrinkles the clothes terribly.  She went to the internet and read the reviews on the washer and dryer and everyone complained about those things.  Then they said that the dryer turns itself off every 20 minutes or so when it thinks the lint filter is full.  So if you want to dry the clothes, you constantly have to get up and clean the lint filter.  Barb wished she had read the reviews before she bought the new washer-dryer.  I tried to explain to her about safety regulations that are constantly getting tougher and they are trying to protect her but she was not impressed.

Smudge

Barb found our washing machine was leaking.  I thought we should get it fixed but Barb thought it was too old and so she bought a replacement.  She talked to a salesman over the phone and he promised it would be delivered in 5 to 10 days.  Barb was getting upset because our laundry was piling up.  They delivery men finally called and said they would be delivering the washer and dryer between 8 and 12 the next day.  We had to get both a washer and dryer even though only the washer was broken because they were stacked to fit into our little cupboard in the kitchen.  We found out that we had to disconnect the washer and dryer and they said we had to take them apart.  We were able to disconnect them but we couldn’t get them apart.  The next day Barb was playing pickleball in the afternoon and was happy they were going to deliver in the morning.  She got up early and waited and finally they hadn’t come by 11:30.  So Barb started getting ready to leave for pickleball.  She had parked our cars in the neighbour’s driveway to allow room for the delivery truck and she was happy with herself because the neighbour’s had gone away for the winter and they often use other people’s driveways when our neighbours are away.  Anyway she was just about to leave when the delivery men arrived.  We found out that we weren’t supposed to take the washer and dryer apart.  Barb left and I supervised the men as they installed the washer and the dryer.  They were two big strong guys but seemed very happy and they did a good job.  Barb was worried that they would scratch the floor but they didn’t.  Then I moved the kitchen table back in place. Barb saw a scratch on the floor and I thought maybe I had done it when I moved the table back.  But Barb was able to wipe it off.  It was only a smudge.

Sore

We took advantage of one of the last reasonably warm and dry days to clean up the garden for the winter.  Barb did most of the work cutting down the plants and I helped bag them and I took the bags to the yard waste container at the Community Centre.  Barb only had three yard waste bags.  So I had to take the bags in the car and empty them in the container and then bring the bags back.  Usually you just throw the bags out with the yard waste in them.  I was kind of embarrassed reusing the bags when there were other old guys dumping stuff in the container when I was there.  They must have thought I was really cheap.  Anyway, Barb was so sore the next day after gardening that she could hardly play pickleball but we were really happy to have it done because the weather was rainy for the next two weeks until it snowed.

Cargo

I was doing the accounting and was looking through Barb’s Costco bills and noticed a big expense of 7 times $21 labelled Cargo.  We thought it was a mistake.  The only thing I could think of was some kind of shipping fee.  I even looked up cargo on the internet and all that came up was airline cargo.  Then we finally realized that that was when Barb bought me 7 pairs of cargo shorts on sale that I wear all summer in Canada and all winter in Florida.

Accident

Julia and I are always making fun of this friend of Julia’s who drove her car into a house in Barrhaven.  Well today I was at the doctor’s office and when I was leaving I was lazy about looking behind me when I was backing out of my parking spot and ran into the garage attached to the doctor’s office.  I was getting lazy because I was used to driving our new car that has the rear view camera.  I thought the accident was worse than it was.  When I got home, I was able to wash off the paint from the wall of the garage using Barb’s super cleaner sponge.  There was just a small scratch on the back bumper.  But really how do you drive into a house?

Turned Around

On the drive home from the football game, I got turned around a little and took a strange and long way home.  I sort of knew my way home but it was definitely not the fast way home.  Fortunately, Barb and Sarah were happily talking and didn’t notice anything strange and I didn’t say anything about being lost.  Finally, I knew we were going in the right direction but I didn’t really know where we were and then I saw a familiar sight and found my way and got on the highway to get home.