Jupiter Conjunct Pluto, Oops, I Forgot

Of course I did something involving my own personal power <hysterical laughter> - I transcribed one whole page.

This little saga began at least two months ago when I agreed to do some transcribing work after not having done it for at least four years. (For those fortunate enough to not know what transcribing entails, it involves being tethered to a computer by a set of earphones while using a foot pedal to control, in the olden days, a machine into which one inserted an audio tape, and now a software program into which a sound file has been loaded, and then typing, or keyboarding if you want to be technical, whatever the contents of the tape or sound file contains - usually an interview of some kind, sometimes, if all malevolent planets in the universe are lined up against you, a technical or academic conference in which all speakers are at least six feet away from a mal-functioning microphone. Favorite places for clients to record are restaurants at the height of lunch or dinner hour, airport runways or next to factory conveyor belts.)

So - yes, I say, of course I can continue with the job I was doing for you. I still have the disk with the sound files and I'll get going on it just as soon as I've washed the kitchen floor and done all the windows. I did find the disk immediately, but what I forgot was that, transcribing machine or Express Scribe, I needed a foot pedal, which took another couple of weeks to locate but was eventually found in one of the boxes I sent to myself when I moved out here 12 years ago.

Ok. Plug in the foot pedal, get the sound file loaded - this a production in itself thanks to the monstrosity that is iTunes 11 - place foot on part of pedal that is supposed to activate the software - silence. Repeat three or four times, checking the connection, breathing deeply, then decide I will need to buy a new foot pedal and go on vacation for two weeks.

Return from vacation $1500 poorer than when I left, plug pedal in again just in case, proving AA's definition of insanity, and then start scrutinizing every word on the web page for the software.  Discover that only one manufacturer's pedal will work with the free version of the software and it is, of course, not the one I own. Shell out $29 and download the software. Still no sound. After about an hour, see a fleeting message referencing a Set-up Wizard. Set up the foot pedal. I am boring myself to tears here and cannot be bothered to go on with this, but suffice it to say that yesterday, while the bits of old caulking were being scraped off the roof, I sat here and  - in spite of discovering that MS Word 2008, my version of the program, no longer supports macros and I will have to manually type in the names of the speakers by listening to the MP3 AGAIN when I am done - I transcribed a whole page of an interview before fleeing outside and beginning to frantically pull up weeds - ANYTHING to escape.