NCRA Midyear conference in New Orleans

I had a great time working with Carmen Santone at the Midyear Conference in New Orleans, a city I adore.

The highlight was the LightSpeed vendor seminar by Mark Kislingbury, with me as the helper. I didn't have much to say. Mark is amazing and did a great presentation. We had many reporters stop and try out the LS, plus a few LS owners. I got to meet some of the Depoman people, which was neat.

Johnny Jackson sent a prototype of an improved LS. The key overlay is one piece, eliminating the spaces on the sides of the key which allowed light in (in very, very bright conditions) and caused problems with the light refraction. The prototype's key surface was like a hard rubber, with the keys molded into it. A different feeling, but I think I liked it. Some of the keys had small ridges at the top (bottom row consonants) or the side edge (vowels) which made it easy to find your "home" position.

I would bet that by the Annual Convention there will be an even more improved prototype, if not updated model available.

ACRA Midwinter Conference

The Alabama Court Reporters Association 1009 Midwinter Conference is January 23-25. I will be there as the Stenovations rep with my Lightspeed.

Friday is all-day software training. Andrea Martin and I are teaching beginner and intermediate seminars for the digitalCAT users.

Lightspeed Tripod

From Howard, as posted on depoman:

I guess I'm too clumsy, but after breaking the LS tripod twice, I decided to retrofit an old and heavy stenograph model, one with the metal clamp. I don't know if the newer models with plastic or phenolic clamps will work. The fittings are obviously completely different from the LS tripod/machine to stenograph tripod/machine, but the shaft size is identical. If anyone else wants on board, all you need to do is loosen the two allen set screws on an old tripod, pull it off along with the shaft, remove the circlip on the end of the shaft and then remove the shaft from the clamp. Then simply break out the LS shaft from the LS tripod -- I think there is a two-pice collar that you have to dig out. Be careful not to dent the shaft. Next, slide on the thick rubber o-ring bumper from the old shaft, and slide it into the metal collar, slide those two into the tripod assy and tighten 'er up. It's a little heavier, but now you have a practically unbreakable tripod. Hope this helps. . . Howard

Xena

Xena was a dog who showed up at my office one January day in 1998. It had been storming. Her head popped up over some boxes, her ears perked. My boss took her home that night, fed her hot dogs (!) and brought her back the next day. She hung around our office, and we thought surely this smart dog's owners would be looking for her. We took her picture and made signs and put them up at the intersection. I talked my sister Carla into keeping the dog until we found her owners; I had an apartment and she had a fenced back yard.

Much to my surprise, no one ever claimed her. That was good, because after only a couple of days, Carla had fallen in love. She was named Xena because of her beauty and her fiercely protective nature. The vet estimated her age from 5 - 8 years old.

Xena loved to walk. My husband (then my boyfriend) and I would meet at Carla's after work and walk Xena to the park and back, about 2 miles. In 2000, we moved into a home two doors down from Carla. Then Carla and I walked Xena almost every day. She walked with a hop in her walk and her ears perked. Her ears had a bounce to them that I will always fondly remember. (See how she has them in the picture , right, with Max, her little brother.)

Xena loved to walk, and she was an amazing escape artist. She was able to escape from Carla's for a couple of years, all the while we tried to outsmart her with electric fence wire, reinforced fencing and the like. To no avail. The only thing that could contain her was a wooden privacy fence! She was very smart, following Carla's directions from just a look in her eye. When we walked Xena, children would stop us and say, I like your dog, I like your dog's ears, and pet her. She always behaved like a lady. Several people said she was a "cow dog, " whatever that is! We thought that she was a secret agent (remember, she was so smart) who had retired. Or an Iditarod dog (she had this singular purpose when walking, and she didn't stop to "smell the roses" a lot), who then came to Montgomery by hopping trains.

She wasn't my dog, but I loved her very much. Xena was in our lives for almost 11 years. We often joked, if she was 6 years when she came along, she would be 15 years old! (Insert different numbers)

She was an old lady. Our Xena Bean, our Beanlady. She was a good dog.

Xena left us today, November 25, 2008. I will miss that puppy dog.

Reading files from the SD card in Eclipse

An October firmware and software release made changes relating to the the SD card. Here are instructions from a LS user on how to translate notes in Eclipse software.

What I did was put the card from the writer in my computer, found the file I wanted in the folder with today's date, right clicked and Send To my Laura folder in Eclipse. Then in Eclipse I changed the writer type under the Input tab to Smartwriter and changed Read From to Drive or Folder and directed that to my Laura folder. After doing that, I could Alt I and read in the file.001 or whatever and translate it. So apparently we do still have a backup on the SD card, but you have to read the file on as Smartwriter notes instead of importing the RTF file, and that's the only backup.