Thanks for taking pictures of tigers.

It only took a few minutes and I have Jott posting to my blog. I won’t go into Jott right here and now but let me sum up;

Dial a phone number
say: WordPress
say: [whatever I want for about 30 seconds]
——–
the results will be posted here along with an audio link (in case the Jott translator can’t hear me or gets it famously wrong).

Yesterday Abby left me a Jott:

Don’t forget to bring surprises.

but Jott thought she said

Thanks for taking pictures of tigers.

That is an extreme example, and a good one too, but so far I have had a LOT of success with Jott.
But what, you may ask, will I use this for?

Right now the only thing I anticipate is for status updates while riding the Flying Wheels Century on Saturday and the Seattle To Portland in July.

You who are so worried or so inclined can login and check periodically to read or listen to my progress. I may even have a guest blogger (BopOp or JC).
Alternatively you can read and listen in series at a later time using the new ‘Jott Biking’ category. I may even segregate it further into it’s own sub-page…but not today.

Dvorak update

So I get some grief for using the Dvorak keyboard layout but the numbers don’t lie.

On this powertyping page I have consistently come back to take the small “Frequent Words 1” typing test.  For a while my speed plateaued at about 60wpm which is what I think I could have attained in QWERTY and after a while of not checking I came back yesterday and again today (to make sure yesterday wasn’t a fluke) and I can report the following numbers.

your typing rate is :  79 wpm
words typed : 57
mistakes made : 8
which is 10.9 mistakes per minute

I have always maintained this level (or more) of mistakes which means I am hammering as quick as I can in a speed run and worrying little about absolute accuracy. This time, however, I noticed that it reported 8 mistakes and I only made 4. I counted them up afterwards and must report that the tool is flawed somehow. So, my error rate is 1/2 of what is reported.

I am quite sure that I couldn’t have attained that level in QWERTY, and now that I know yesterday was no fluke I am ‘gunnin’ for 80+. When I test myself on the other, more natural sentences I get around 55+ WPM with about the same number of mistakes so 79 is by no means my actual typing speed (for a letter) but it would be accurate for short chats, twitters, and other such information-like offal. It also serves as a good comparison of my progress (getting faster, my numbers today, still typing, still more numbers) since this test is the same one that I have been taking since I switched.

In case you didn’t know I have made this switch and are curious if I can still type ‘normally’? In short…No.

I am completely QWERTY illiterate these days (except for my name and my password) and when absolutely forced to type in QWERTY I am a single finger, hunt n peck (SFHAP) typist. Luckily, being forced in this way only happens at kiosks where keyboard configuration is not possible, and usually those keyboards are touch screen anyway…this makes us all SFHAP typists.

Summer is fun

Friday night we had friends over for dinner, 6 friends. We talked until midnight then a subset of the group partook of the 39 ºC hot tub. They left at 02:20.

Then Saturday another guest, we watche Big Brown pull up in the Belmont dashing a 5 year old girls dreams of a triple crown winner…even though 5 short weeks ago she didn’t know what the sport of kings was. She cried, but got over it pretty quickly once she found out that he wasn’t going to die, like Eight Belles did when she didn’t win. That’s how new racing is for her. 🙂

So, we were up late watching Angel-A, the latest Luc Besson directorial effort. Very good.

Then today, all three mermaids and I went to Auburn and walked 3 miles for Cystic Fibrosis and, more specifically, for the daughter of a good friend. She is 18 months old. Then, the Luck O’ the Abby played it’s hand again and the very first item in the raffle went to us. It was a Nesco Roaster.

Then, still with undeniable energy we did some yard work, read some stories and now at 21:00 on Sunday the summer evenings have me awake and blogging.
I am tired, to be sure, but I will probably be up until after midnight doing something or other.

Summer is good. I can sleep in November.

What is a double play?

Wednesday afternoon I won tickets to the Mariners game…for Wednesday night.
I called home.

Does Abby want to go with me?
Abby, do you want to go with Daddy to the baseball game?
N.uhhh…well…ok.

Her vote of confidence was overwhelming but when she was apprised of the potential for cotton candy and hot dogs she was all-in like Templeton.

She wore her pink Mariners hat, pink Mariners pants, her sporty shoes, and a blue windbreaker…Mariners of course.
We got there early and then waited an inordinately long time for a train. I am not kidding, something like 15 minutes or more on the wrong side of the tracks makes the cotton candy on the other side equivalent to a christmas that will never come. We procured our hot dogs and watched batting practice from our seats in right field. We weren’t back again until the 8th.
Since the M’s aren’t terribly good right now there were a lot of available seats and we sat in all of them. Every half inning we switched seats. At the top of the 300 section; now on the rail; 20 rows back from the 3rd base dugout; now we’re in Ferris Bueller land.
Two servings of cotton candy (blue and pink), one hot dog, exactly 1/2 of a peanut (salted and unshelled – “echhh! THAT is nasty!”), one homerun, 8 baseball cards, and a whole lot of seating changes we cheered the M’s to a 1-0 victory over the Boston Red Sox.
Somewhere about the 4th or 5th inning, near the Beuller seats, Abby said:

I didn’t know it was gonna be THIS much fun!

Forget the peanuts and cracker jacks man.

Hello Pancreas? WAKE UPPPPPP!

Take me out to the ballgame!

Bada boom! Big bada boom.

Emma fell down today. She has fallen before but this time she hit her face.
We have noticed a couple of things of late.
1) She is navigating stairs and other obstacles with relative ease of late, and she is going faster and faster because of her confidence.
2) She is falling down more.

Today was a perfect storm of a composite driveway (crumbly surface), a steep grade, biggish shoes, and a confident two year old.

It all added up to this.
Multipass!

A scraped cheek, a split lip, some scraped knees, and well…her pride is still pretty much intact.
She cried of course but overall, she recovered and was back to business as usual before the day was over.
It seems that she has QUITE the pain threshold.