Be prepared to pound those keys for a national
Posted By: be switched from account to account on 2007-06-09
In Reply to: I have not strictly transcribed in about 10 yrs.sm - Curious
and you have to be able to stay focused if you chose a national requiring set hours. Consider your benefits. There are pros and cons to working from home. I would say unless you have a really good reason to type from home, then keep your day job. I do fine myself because I am an IC, but I sometimes feel very isolated from the outside workforce. I do have children, but adult conversation when you are pounding those keys all day is hard to come by. The other duties you speak of on-site keeps you sane! Just my opinion! Good luck whatever you decide. The money is just not there anymore working for these nationals unless you are willing to put on long days and pound out about 300 lph. 
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DId NOT work. Had to pound the keys -- took it back in 2 days. nm
x
A small national is a national company that is smaller
than a big national. There are a few "big" nationals, where they have hundreds, if not thousands of employees. I work for what I call a small national, only has about 30 employees. An MTSO could also be considered a small national.
I went from national to small back to national
My large national has all the resources and money to operate successfully and have decent platform, etc., to work on, the small company did not, and I went back to the national.
I am sure you do, you 300 pound MT.
So, get a mirror and take a look at yourself. Get a membership to Curves and lose at least 75 pounds. The people getting attacked are the ones who like MQ, they are the ones who start it and if we respond, you make it worse. You think I am going to sit here and take crap from some lard a** who is ugly and lives in a trailer park? Doubt it. So, go type and don't worry about me, that is, if you can fit in your chair.
Prepared
Bravo! Well said. I live in Florida. I heard Jeb Bush say the other day that people had plenty of time to stock up for at least 3 days. I cheered - he is so right! I'm tired of all the whining from all the "victims" in this country - people need to take responsibility for their own lives and get on with it. The government should help the people who truly need it - handicapped, elderly, sickly of all ages, but healthy people who take handouts are just irresponsibile and reprehensible.
and be prepared
All I know is in VA they zapped the heck out of me and I had to get a business license to boot. Employee status is a little more restrictive but Im getting money back not paying out over 2000 a year..
Have you tried calling the pound?
Wonder what they'd do with the goat?
I was visiting my MIL this week, and there were three beagles running around her yard. They kept coming up on her porch, so I led them out to the road. They followed me quite happily. Then somebody drove up in a truck and just observed us. I wandered over to ask if he was missing any beagles, and he was the dog catcher! He had been called about FOUR beagles. I just told him they weren't mine, but they sure were friendly! He asked if they'd come to me when called, and I said SURE! But then I left him to call the dogs himself, LOL. I can't help it if dogs don't like him. :oD
LOL it's POUND sand... nm
nm
Pound Sterling (GBP It is..(SM)
Pound Sterling is the currency in Channel Islands (Aldernay, Guernsey, Jersey, Sark), Isle of Man, and United Kingdom (England, Great Britain, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales, UK, GB, GBR). Pound Sterling is also known as the British Pound, the United Kingdom Pound, UKP, STG, the English Pound, British Pound Sterling, BPS, and Sterlings. The symbol for GBP can be written £. Pound Sterling is divided into 100 pence. The exchange rate for the Pound Sterling was last updated on June 13, 2008 from The International Monetary Fund. The GBP conversion factor has 6 significant digits.
Fed govt should have been prepared.
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Los Angeles Times
Despite Warnings, Washington Failed to Fund Levee Projects
By Richard A. Serrano and Nicole Gaouette Times Staff Writers Sun Sep 4, 7:55 AM ET
WASHINGTON — For years, Washington had been warned that doom lurked just beyond the levees. And for years, the White House and Congress had dickered over how much money to put into shoring up century-old dikes and carrying out newer flood control projects to protect the city of New Orleans.
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As recently as three months ago, the alarms were sounding — and being brushed aside.
In late May, the New Orleans district of the Army Corps of Engineers formally notified Washington that hurricane storm surges could knock out two of the big pumping stations that must operate night and day even under normal conditions to keep the city dry.
Also, the Corps said, several levees had settled and would soon need to be raised. And it reminded Washington that an ambitious flood-control study proposed four years before remained just that — a written proposal never put into action for lack of funding.
What a powerful hurricane could do to New Orleans and the area's critical transportation, energy and petrochemical facilities had been well understood. So now, nearly a week into the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, hard questions are being raised about Washington officials who crossed their fingers and counted on luck once too often. The reasons the city's defenses were not strengthened enough to handle such a storm are deeply rooted in the politics and bureaucracy of Washington.
With the advantage of hindsight, the miscues seem even broader. Construction proposals were often underfunded or not completed. Washington officials could never agree on how much money would be needed to protect New Orleans. And there hung in the air a false sense of security that a storm like Katrina was a long shot anyway.
As a result, when the immediate crisis eases and inquiries into what went wrong begin, there is likely to be responsibility and blame enough for almost every institution in Washington, including the White House, Congress, the Army Corps of Engineers and a host of other federal agencies.
For example, Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, the Corps commander, conceded Friday that the government had known the New Orleans levees could never withstand a hurricane higher than a Category 3. Corps officials shuddered, he said, when they realized that Katrina was barreling down on the Gulf Coast with the vastly greater destructive force of a Category 5 — the strongest type of hurricane.
Washington, he said, had rolled the dice.
Rather than come up with the extra millions of dollars needed to make the city safer, officials believed that such a devastating storm was a small probability and that, with the level of protection that had been funded, "99.5% of the time this would work."
Unfortunately, Strock said, "we did not address the 0.5%."
Corps officials said the floodwaters breached at two spots: the 17th Street Canal Levee and the London Avenue Canal Levee. Connie Gillette, a Corps spokeswoman, said Saturday there never had been any plans or funds allocated to shore up those spots — another sign the government expected them to hold.
Nevertheless, the Corps hardly was alone in failing to address what it meant to have a major metropolitan area situated mostly below sea level, sitting squarely in the middle of the Gulf Coast's Hurricane Alley.
Many federal, state and local flood improvement officials kept asking for more dollars for more ambitious protection projects. But the White House kept scaling down those requests. And each time, although congressional leaders were more generous with funding than the White House, the House and Senate never got anywhere near to approving the amounts that experts had said was needed.
What happened this year was typical: Local levee and flood prevention officials, along with Sen. Mary L. Landrieu (D-La.), asked for $78 million in project funds.
President Bush offered them less than half that — $30 million. Congress ended up authorizing $36.5 million.
Since Bush took office in 2001, local experts and Landrieu have asked for just short of $500 million. Altogether, Bush in his yearly budgets asked for $166 million, and Congress approved about $250 million.
These budget decisions reflect a reality in Washington: to act with an eye toward short-term political rewards instead of making long-term investments to deal with problems.
Vincent Gawronski, an assistant professor at Birmingham Southern College in Alabama who studies the political impact of natural disasters, said the lost chances to shore up the levees were a classic example of government leaders who, although meaning well, clashed over priorities.
"Elected politicians are in office for a limited amount of time and with a limited amount of money, and they don't really have a long-term vision for spending it," he said.
"So you spend your pot of money where you feel you're going to get the most political support so you can get reelected. It's very difficult to think long-term. If you invest in these levees, is that going to show an immediate return or does it take away from anything else?"
Gawronski said flood control projects do not have the appeal of other endeavors, such as cancer research and police protection. At the same time, Congress habitually approves billions of dollars for highways and bridges and other infrastructure that politically benefits individual congressmen.
Gawronski called it inexcusable for the United States to have been "gambling so long" that the old levee system in New Orleans would hold.
"Disasters are often low probability, high consequence events, so there's a gamble there," he said. "It's not going to happen on my watch, there's the potential it might, but I'll bet it won't."
In the case of New Orleans and flood control, another factor was at work: the reputation of the Corps of Engineers. Over the years, many in Washington had come to regard the Corps as an out-of-control agency that championed huge projects and sometimes exaggerated need and benefits.
The Corps began as a tiny regiment during the Revolutionary War era; it now employs about 35,000 people to build dams, deepen harbors, dig ditches and erect seawalls, among other things. But critics say some projects are make-work boondoggles.
In 2000, Corps leaders were found to have manipulated an economic study to justify a Mississippi River project that would have cost billions. The agency also launched a secret growth initiative to boost its budget by 50%. And the
Pentagon found in 2000 that the Corps' cost-benefit analyses were systematically skewed to warrant large-scale construction projects.
As a result, said a senior staffer with the Senate Appropriations Committee who spoke on condition of anonymity, requests by the Corps for flood control money were especially vulnerable to budget cutting. "A lot of people just look at it as pork," said the staffer.
The Bush administration's former budget director, Mitch Daniels, was known as an aggressive advocate for Corps reform who cast a skeptical eye on its budget requests.
"The Army Corps of Engineers has a very large budget, and it has grown a lot over recent years," Daniels, now the governor of Indiana, said. "To the extent there's been any limitation of [the Corps'] budget, it has to do with previous tendencies to build marinas and things that don't have much to do with preparing us for disaster."
The Bush White House maintains it never ignored the security needs of the Gulf Coast. "Flood control has been a priority of this administration from Day One," said White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan.
He said hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the New Orleans area in recent years for flood prevention, and he said the failure of the levees was not a matter of money so much as a problem with drawing the right plans for the dike work and other improvements.
"It's been more of a design issue with the levees," he said.
Other administration officials said there were not enough construction companies and equipment to handle all the work that had been proposed.
John Paul Woodley Jr., assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, who has responsibility for the Corps of Engineers, said: "It's true, we cannot accomplish all of our projects at full funding all the time. I think that's true of any agency, particularly any public works agency, but we had a lot of work underway in New Orleans, and I was personally supportive of it.
"As a native of Louisiana," Woodley said, "I understand the problems associated with flooding in New Orleans. I don't think there's any lack of support for flood control projects in New Orleans, particularly within the context of other projects around the country."
On Capitol Hill in recent years, several Democrats warned that more money should be marked for the protection of New Orleans. For instance, in September 2004, Landrieu said she was tired of hearing there was no money to do more work on levees.
"We're told, can't do it this year. Don't have enough money. It's not a high enough priority," she said in a Senate speech. "Well, I know when it's going to get to be a high enough priority."
She then told of a New Orleans emergency worker who had collected several thousand body bags in the event of a major flood. "Let's hope that never happens," she said.
But in May 2004, then Senate Minority Whip Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said he had visited the levees as a guest of Landrieu and believed them adequate.
He praised the ancient water pumps for keeping the waters from cascading into the city, proclaiming them "these old, old pumps that hadn't been changed since before the turn of the century, that still keep New Orleans dry."
"It was as clean as a restaurant," he added. "These big old pumps work."
Today, eight of those 22 pumps are underwater and inoperable.
Over the years, several projects either were short-changed or never got started. The Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project was authorized by Congress after a rainstorm killed six people in May 1995. It was to be finished in 10 years, but funding reductions prevented its completion before Katrina struck.
The Army Corps of Engineers did spend $430 million to renovate pumping stations and shore up the levees. But experts said the project fell behind schedule after funding was reduced in 2003 and 2004.
The Lake Pontchartrain Project was a $750-million Corps operation for new levees and beefed-up pumping stations. Because of funding cuts, it was only 80% complete when the hurricane hit.
The project that never was started was an examination of storm surges from large hurricanes. Congress approved the study but did not allocate the funds for it.
In May, AL Naomi, the Corps' senior project manager for the New Orleans district, reminded political and business leaders and emergency management officials that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane was always possible. After that meeting, Walter Brooks, the regional planning commission director, came away shaking his head.
"We've learned that we're not as safe as we thought we were," he told the local newspaper, the Times-Picayune.
Last week, Corps commander Strock defended past work, saying, it was his "personal and professional assessment" that work in New Orleans was never underfunded. What he meant by that, he explained, was that no one expected such a large disaster before all the renovations and other improvements could be completed.
"That was as good as it was going to get," he said. " We knew that it would protect from a Category 3 hurricane. In fact, it has been through a number of Category 3 hurricanes."
But, he said, Katrina's intensity "simply exceeded the design capacity of the levee."
Asked whether in hindsight he wished more had been done, Strock said: "I really don't express surprise in my business. We don't sit around and say 'Gee whiz.' "
Times staff writer Mary Curtius contributed to this report.
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Be prepared to pay big bucks - nm
nm
Also true... but bid low and be prepared to do it yourself...sm
because the lower you bid, the less likely you're going to find a quality MT who will do it for you for less that what you bid it.
That's all I'm saying. I know that's the way it's going... it's going that way everywhere... doesn't mean we have to take the lower pay. There are good paying jobs out there, you just have to look a little harder to find them. There are MTSOs who won't bid too low to pay their good MTs a decent rate and they should be commended.
Not difficult if you are prepared sm
but also you have to be prepared to stick it out until your income picks up. You're not going to come out of the box making huge bucks right away. I find that MT is something you either love or you hate, no inbetween. Read the boards and look at the comments. Check out the new MT/student board and see what they're saying. Quite honestly, anyone that has asked me about going into MT recently I've suggested they find another career as MT ain't what it used to be. Good luck to you though.
How's this for a fun fact? A pound of flab is the...
equivalent of four sticks of pure butter. Thought this would make some laugh. I just started running and found this fun fact in one of my fitness magezines. So that means I have 100 sticks of pure butter on my butt and thighs that I want to lose, LOLOLOL!!!
It sounds like if feel you don't want to pound
IC job on-line?
Yep. But also be prepared for them to immediately end your contract. nm
x
Sorry, disagree -- be prepared to do all accounts
If you want to start off with your own accounts you have to prepared to take anything and everything so that you can get your name out there. Also, there are still many docs that use tapes and though they are the minority, they do exist. Also I have many calls from people that want seminars, conferences, etc. transcribed and they are all on tapes. 75% of my accounts are still on tapes and I pick-up, deliver, print, cut apart chart notes, etc. Part of my SERVICE to the customer. If you need to so this, you can build this into your cpl. I enjoy getting out of the house and doing it, good write off for the use of my car, I get to know the office staff and docs and I feel we are "people" to each other and not just a voice. Again, when starting out you cannot be so picky -- but that is just my two cents but have been in the business for 18+ years so it works for me. Patti
I would call Linksys, but be prepared...
Linksys tech support is in India.
If US wipes out its MT industry, it better be prepared to
I know I'm at an age where, if US MT disappears entirely, I'm too far from Soc. Sec. or retirement to be able to take advantage of that, and too old to go back to school for the length of time it would take to learn a new skill that would pay the rent/groceries/gas/etc. So most likely I'd be on the government dole. Multiply that x tens of thousands, (hundreds of thousands if you add in all the OTHER US workers in other industries, but in the same boat age & skill-wise, and you've got a whole 'nother Katrina going on.
My huge 19-pound cat lies on my footpedal
and I constantly have to chase him off of it. :)
My 75 pound husky likes to "sm"
come and take her ball and toss it on my keyboard! When I have enough and tell her to quit, she will lay it very sweetly beside my keyboard! She knows exactly what she is doing!
get business cards, pound the pavement....sm
go to medical center buildings and sell yourself with your business card, your resume if required, and your own self-confidence!! Good luck!! 
I cook mine low - about 225 or 250, for about 10 minutes per pound
x
There are laundries that will wash/dry/fold by the pound sm
I have taken in Laundry Mountain and had it all finished for around $40. Of course it's going to be different wherever you are. It did get me caught up and I was able to keep up with it for quite a while.
Penny wise and pound foolish
Cheap ones don't save in voice files. They're hard to use so most likely your doc will not bother to pause or rewind for dictation. You may save some money now but you will end up wasting more time to decipher the recording. The best one is Olympus DS5000... every word can be heard clearly with that.
Oh please, Floridians had plenty of time to get prepared.
These hurricanes were not unexpected events. In fact, there is no excuse for being unprepared as there is a specified hurricane season every year. This happens every freaking year. What part of be prepared don't you understand? At least start preparing now for next year. It's not that hard.
We were prepared to survive 3 weeks cut off from the outside world.
We moved out of Florida after getting hit with 3 hurricanes last summer, but since Hurricane Andrew in 1992, we took it very seriously. As long as the roof held, we had 3 weeks of emergency canned goods, batteries, a portable TV and radio, oil lamps, sterno, pallets of bottled drinking water and at least 120 gallons of stored water in containers tinctured with bleach for personal hygiene and flushing toilets. Cars gas tanks were topped off before the hurricane.
I no longer live in Florida, but everybody should always have some emergency supplies and extra food and water on hand. Every part of the country has some kind of weather or power outages at times. My parents lived during the depression and taught us to be self sufficient and never wait for a hand out.
I went to career step & graduated 3 yrs ago. I think it prepared me well.
Hyphens are used because 32-year-old and 11-pound are compound modifiers. SM
A compound modifier is two or more words that act as a single modifier for a noun.
For example:
32-year-old male
11-pound weight loss
22-gauge needle
1-cm mass
Please, don't "ex-pound," I probably meant expand!. It's late! Thanks
nm
I am prepared to quit, too! Have the patches. Going to get popsicles and lollipops.
dd
Your daughter will be better prepared for life by having a part-time job now. sm
Meanwhile, her BF will end up feeling entitled to everything she wants because she's being spoiled now. Hopefully your daughter will continue to work because she enjoys it...the money, the responsibility, the feeling of being a little grown up. Maybe it'll rub off on her BF. If not... well, rest easy knowing your kid is doing all right.
I felt very prepared for a job after finishing AT-Home Professions course.
The ladies and instructors at the school were very helpful. I have been working as an MT for 7 years now and felt like they tought me a lot. I think it depends on who you talk to. Definitely helped me that I first got my experience in a small hospital where I was able to learn at a slow pace and built speed with time. I didn't pay 2-3000 dollars for the school but felt very confident when I went looking for a job.
My cat veterinarian authorized us to use cat Frontline on our 5-pound tiny toy poodle
She said it goes by size and he's the size of a small cat.
I have an 80-pound, 3-legged husky under my desk--- keeps messing with the foot pedal! - sm
So I have dog now lying down somewhat quietly but breathing his hot breath on my legs, makes it hard not to laugh hysterically ---- certainly hard to work, but it is funny.
Of Course Endiqua read your post. It is irrelevant to her what you wrote and she is fully prepared
Hush and take notes. Endiqua is the authority on all things and doesn't need to read your post or even understand it. She's got an opinion and by gawd you will listen. QA is annointed boss of you.
Husband likes it prepared in skillet basted with bearnaise sauce. nm
Forget dinner! Just prepared a huge lunch. Skillet chicken: Skinless boneness breasts cooked in skil
golden brown, add can of cream of mushroom soup, 1 cup of frozen mixed veggies, 1/2 c water - cover and cook about 15 minutes.
Then I made homemade mashed potatoes - extra thick - with plenty of pepper :0
Then, boiled my water for my sweet tea....with lemon.
After the chicken is done, pour a cup and a half or so of mozerella cheese on top and let it sit for about a minute or so.
The mixture from the potatoes is a creamy blend with mixed veggies poured over either rice or potatoes. I just make stuff up all the time like this. You could even add crackers to the mixture to give it a crunchy feel. My 2 boys were in heaven today. Of course, I may have to work the night shift when my lunch is finished - when I eat like this during the afternoon I usually skip dinner altogether because of the carb content.
Remember with this dish: You can do it low fat by substituting above ingredients. Also remember to have plenty of color to your diet! Voila!
Lemon pound cake wtih lemon drizzle. mmmmmmmmm
x
I Take the Keys Off
I take the keys off and then clean it with a keyboard cleaner kit I bought. It contains a little vacuum, lint-free cloth, and a few attachments to get between keys or whatever. I use alcohol for the keys and the keyboard itself. To just clean the wrist wrest and 'My Favorites' buttons, (I have the Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000) I use Lysol sanitizing wipes.
well in my 40s, looking for keys and....sm
my eyeglasses all the time began.....and is still happening and I'm no longer in my 40s....*LOL* - you have to laugh at it, or you'll cry, and we don't want you to cry so try to laugh at the aging process......try fighting it if you want...you know, you're as young as you feel/look, etc. Certainly try NOT to worry about these things that happen to EVERYBODY!!
use alt keys
you can use the alt keys:
f2-slow speed, f3, fast speed, f4 stop, f7 rewind, f8 ff, f9 play, f10 play reel speed.
hot keys
my last job we used the alt F keys and i actually got used to it. i never had a pedal. the stretch on the fingers tho does a number on ya. i will be back to using the pedal soon tho with this new job...back to tapes, oh my godddd. i took three steps back. surprise surprise, the voice recognition thing didn't go over well...
keys
You must be working with VR. I never use my function keys either. I follow along with my mouse. To me it is easier.
F keys
You dont have to use them, the mouse is fine. I personally dont like having to use the mouse and keep typing. I also use the F keys instead of the foot pedal. After 20 years, my foot and ankle are in pain after about one hour of typing.
Any others use hot keys only? sm
I know of someone in same situation, however, I did not suggest the hot keys as I tried them myself and I found it to be extremely slow and thought no company would ever put up with it, so I didn't suggest it. Does anyone else use hot keys exclusively? Could you be an Editor this way, just wondering. Seems very cumbersome, time consuming and probably could not keep up speed wise and get canned. Perhaps I've been wrong all this time, it would be nice if some company had the patience, they all seem to want speed, speed, speed.
Hot Keys
I transcribe with my footpedal for 1 account and then my big money maker is editing which I do exclusively with the hot keys. It works very well for me.
When I first started on-line transcription (I worked locally with tapes for nearly 3 years) I wanted to make sure it would be a good fit for me and find a good company ( I had heard and read many horror stories about not getting paid, etc) so I used the hot keys exclusively then too. I have found many transcription companies are looking for a certain number of lines a day (they do not care how long it takes you as long as it is within turn around time) rather than speed, but I understand that is not everyone's experience. Anyway I became quite fast with the hot keys on transcribing as well so it can work, but not for everyone certainly. Of course I do not and never expected to transcribe more than 200 lines per hour or rihgt around there:)
Hot Keys are....
They are your "F" keys at the top of the keyboard. This way your hands stay on the keyboard at all times. It can take some time getting used to, but it is well worth it!
hot keys
It took me probably a month before I was really comfortable with the hot keys. I would try and learn a new hot key every few days. The first one I would recommend is the ALT-K.
Hot keys
I give you lots of credit if what I understand is that you have been doing transcription without a foot pedal, but rather are using hot keys! I am utterly lost without my foot pedal!
If you can't get used to the marker keys, then
right click on Phrases, go to Options, Marker Keys and pick the ones you want to use. I used the space bar for a long time and maybe this option gave me the comfort to use what I knew. Use what you know for now so you can get used to it. IT really is a great program. I like the single and multiple file compilations too as IT then picks out the terms and phrases that you use a lot for you. Keep trying, it's worth the trip.
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