How many times have you heard your kids say that? Let me tell you, Madison has been on a roll lately. For some reason, she is refusing to go to sleep at night. She’s killing me. I want to get to bed, and she’s staying up later than me and Bill. I refuse to let the 5 year old the run of the house, so I am the one that tends to suffer. Let’s see, her excuses to not go bed include:
I’m thirsty
I’m not tired
I have to go to the bathroom
I don’t want to sleep by myself
I hate sleeping
It’s too loud
A lot of the time, she doesn’t even have excuses. She just slinks herself down the hallway thinking that we won’t notice. Of course, I always do. She’s not as quiet as she thinks she is.
What kind of excuses do your little ones come up with for why they can’t go to bed? What do you do to stop them?
NOT! I swear when it rains it pours. I awoke to a huge puddle of water in front of my house this morning. Now, the temp is -8 with a windchill of -20, so I definitely should not have had standing water. I called Bill freaked out and he had me call the village. I think it is a water main break. However, nobody bothered to come to my door. Instead, they just turned off my water. I just realized it when I tried to make Will his diluted version of juice. Needless to say, I am ticked. I called the village, and they won’t give me an ETA at all. I seriously would love to know if I need to send Bill out for water or what. I seriously am trying not to be highly irritated right now. I could be working on things like Increasing Blog Article Quality or doing some of my freelance work. Instead, I am standing in my front window watching my village dig a huge hole in my street and trying to figure out what to make for dinner with no water. Also, try explaining to a 5 year old why she can’t flush the toilet after we have spent 2 years drilling it into her head that she needs to flush the toilet.
I know there are way bigger things in life I should be concerned about, but man this is irritating.
It is terrible here in Illinois. This is what my house looks like this morning:
We broke our back door trying to open it this morning. My house is a sheet of ice. We have about 4 inches of snow. On top of that, we have freezing rain, so it is definitely an interesting combination we have going on out there. We watched the traffic report starting quite early this morning, and at this point, Bill isn’t even going to try and go to work. The bad thing is that he left his laptop at work, so he’s trying to do what he can from his cell phone. It actually was hailing and snowing at the same time this morning if you can believe it. We are hoping to take the kids out a tad later and maybe build a snowman. However, the snow is more like ice chunks, so I don’t know how easy that is going to be.
My kids are still pretty little to be making handmade gifts for the holidays. I do remember doing it for my parents though. I wonder if my parents appreciated all my hard work or not. I am just kidding. I know they do since I appreciated all the hard work that Madison put into this handmade ornament she made at school for Christmas last year:
When we decorated the Christmas tree, we definitely put it up. I made sure I saved it so we could put it on the tree this year. I have a special gift the kids are working on for the grandma’s for Christmas this year. All I can tell you is that it will require some art skills. I don’t want to give away much more than that.
What handmade gifts have you received or have you given?
I have been writing a lot about Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software lately. I absolutely love how it saves me time writing posts. If you see the post before this one, it is almost 700 words. I used the software and with editing (mainly because I decided to reword things), it took less than 10 minutes. This software is a bloggers dream. Life is so much easier when I can write a 700 word post in the little bit of time I catch here and there during the day. The best thing is that I am not the only one who thinks so:
Drew of the BenSpark has put together a great little video demonstrating Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Drew has been blogging for quite some time and he might just be one of the best mobile bloggers that I know. He is probably more famous for his picture a day work as he is an excellent photographer. But I can’t help be amazed at how much content he creates and the high level of quality in that content.
He’s definitely a blogger that employs best practices when he finds them. And based on this video, it looks like he might see some potential in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now I am not trying to put an endorsement in Drew’s mouth. Time will tell, but I do think he is off to an excellent start.
You’ll notice in his video, that the sound quality of his video is excellent. That’s actually an important aspect for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I don’t mean that you need good video quality or sound quality in a video to make Dragon NaturallySpeaking work. However you do need a good microphone, and it should be a noise canceling microphone at that. The better the sound quality, and the better able your microphone is to remove other background noises, the better your system will be able to recognize the words that you say as fast as you say them and transcribe them accurately.
Now Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with a noise cancellation microphone that works very well when you buy it out of the box. Drew is working with a download version that does not come with a microphone, and so he had to supply his own.
As I write this article, I am using a wireless headset microphone from Logitech. I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost two years now, but I’ve just recently untethered myself from Dragon NaturallySpeaking and started using a wireless headset microphone with noise cancellation capabilities. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 does have the capability of working with Bluetooth wireless microphones, but my particular microphone runs on 2.4 GHz wireless technology. Now if you live in a household or work in an office environment where there are a number of systems or phones or microwaves, you may experience some interference with this particular headset. In that case, you will probably be better served with either a Bluetooth headset or a headset that is capable of being plugged directly into your computer through the microphone plug or through USB. I don’t have that issue, and so I do get excellent quality with little to no interference at all.
So if you take an interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and want to try it for yourself, I highly recommend that you get a boxed version of the software which you can order from Nuance online. You can even get a good deal on a Bluetooth wireless headset and a bundled option from Nuance. If you’re looking for entry level pricing, you can start using the software and get a headset microphone for as little as $99.
To put that in context, I’ve taken three typing classes over the years to boost my typing speed and spent essentially three semesters practicing at typing. It wasn’t the only thing that I studied, but I spent a lot of time building up my typing skill. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you can invest $99, invest an hour installing the software (I’m being very conservative with that time estimate) and as little as 10 minutes training the software to recognize your voice before you can be off and running typing at 150 words per minute!
That is pretty amazing, and well worth the value of $99. Not to mention if you spend a little extra and get a wireless headset microphone, you can pace around your room or your office, you can exercise, or do a number of different things other than sit at a computer desk staring at your computer all day long. $99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to type at 150 WPM for $99?
Best regards,
Brett Bumeter
www.softduit.com
My name is Brett Bumeter, and I wrote the article above and 4 1/2 minutes. The article is about 659 words long, and that translates into 144 words per minute. Add in two minutes for editing, and that’s still 100 words per minute!
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$99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to 
