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 By Argile Stox Mar. 4, 2006 Well, I admit it. I am a full fledged geek. Since Tracy purchased The Microsoft Professional Office program which contains Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Publisher, the kitchen sink – and etc; I used it about a dozen times, and it’s a great program. However, I’ve always wondered about those little icons that appear at the bottom of the screen; you know the ones – the microphone, dictation, etc. So what do I do? I go down to my local Best Buy in Rapid City and purchase a headset with a microphone attached. I was in seventh heaven, for a while. As usual, my computer decided to be cranky again. It was a simple process, you unplug the speakers, you plug one of the light green jack’s from the headset into the selected speaker sockets, plug the pink jack into the computer microphone socket, and Walla, you’re supposed to be able to dictate. However, there’s always Air Force Sergeant Murphy’s Law: “If something will go wrong, it will go wrong, at the worst possible moment.” Now I am all excited! I went to “control panel" – clicked on speakers, voice, etc; clicked on the two heads for dictation, and a dialog box came up – and guess what, the default setting was missing. I could not train the dictation program for my voice. I figured that this would be an easy problem to solve. I Googled the problem and came up with a ton of Web Sites that guaranteed that their fix would solve my problem. I tried every single one of them, and they failed to produce the desired results. OK, so now I have been on the computer for about five hours trying to get the default voice in the dialog box, so that I can train the program to recognize my voice. Nothing worked. So, what would you do if you are in that situation? Would you take your box down to the local best buy and have the geeks at the store fix the problem, or would you take out your chain saw and mangle your computer? Well of course, I didn’t do any of that. I searched on the Web for Microsoft‘s toll free number, and I called them. The time was 7:00 in the morning, South Dakota time. Well of course, just like every big company in the world – Microsoft has outsourced their technicians and I began speaking with an Indian guy –who, by the way, was a very nice guy. I explained the problem to him and he gave me a couple solutions, and they all failed. So, I had a brilliant idea, I said, “Here is what we’re going to do. You guys in India are going to take control of my computer through Microsoft’s Net Meeting.” At first, the Indian technician was hesitant about employing that particular technique. He had to go and ask his supervisors. So, there I am, with my portable cordless phone in my hand –waiting for about 25 minutes for the technician to use the Microsoft Net Meeting program. The technician gave me the link, I put my name in, I put in his code, and a password. After configuring the Net Meeting program and clicking on “take control of my computer” –the computer technician in India was happily moving the cursor around my computer, opening and closing up every program and tried to fix the malfunctioning speech dictation program. After about an hour, he gave up. He then transferred my call to a different department. The other Indian technician then used Microsoft’s Net Meeting program again, to roam around my computer –and see if he can fix it. After about another hour and ½, he gave up –and transferred my call to Canada. The woman technician in Canada, who was head of the XP department said, “We will fix this problem today!” Well, she also used the Microsoft Net Meeting Program, and took control of my computer. She roamed around my computer, looked at all the programs, every nook and cranny, and still couldn’t fix the problem. “Listen, Argile,”she said, in pleasant voice, “Our head technicians are very interested in your problem. Would you mind if one of our technicians called you back tomorrow at about 1:30 in the afternoon?” For a moment, I was stunned. After all, I have been working on that computer for at least twelve hours – and I was tired. “Alright, have a technician call me back at 1:30 in the afternoon, and we’ll see if we can solve the problem.” After I got off the phone with the woman technician in Canada, my brain was Jell-O. I figured if the two technicians in India could not solve the problem, and the technician in Canada couldn’t solve the problem –then the only way to solve the problem was to completely install a fresh copy of XP on my hard drive. Since I had every single backup disk in my inventory, it would be no big deal to just format the disk, wiping out everything on my hard drive –and install a fresh copy of XP. So now I have been up for 26 hours. I formatted the hard drive, put in the XP disk, and installed a fresh copy. At about 4:30 in the afternoon, I get a call from one of the technicians in India. She just wanted to know and confirm the appointment for the technician in Canada to call me at 1:00 in the afternoon the next day. Needless to say, while the operating system was reinstalling, my mind was no longer Jell-O –My mind had turned into vanilla pudding. “Hi, there!” I said, in a very sleepy voice. “I came to a very important conclusion. If two of your technicians in India and one of your technicians in Canada could not solve the problem, then the only option I had was to reformat the hard drive, install a fresh copy of XP, and all of the backup programs.” The technician on the other end of the phone line from India was speechless. “Well, sometimes there just isn’t a work around to solve a problem. You did the right thing.” Another Indian technician (a Supervisor, yet) called at about 5pm and we had nice conversation for about another half hour. During the call, I regularly checked on the progress of the installation of the XP operating system. About two hours later, the installation of the XP operating system was complete. But as time wore on, I had been awake for about twenty-six hours. I was not about to start installing programs. So, I registered the XP operating system with Microsoft - again, pulled the plug on the Internet connection –and slept for about 23 and one half hours. Today, I finally installed every single blasted program and backup disks on the hard drive, and it is now working fine – again. The speech program which started this entire mess, is working great! I spent about half the day training the speech program to recognize my thick Jewish Brooklyn accent. Except for a couple of mistakes here and there, the speech recognition program is working fine. In fact, this entire article was written with the speech recognition program. I will tell you this much - the Editor of Useless Knowledge Magazine is going to be very pleased with this article, because there aren't any spelling errors! I will of course reread the article and make sure that there are no errors. I still have to play around with the voice training program, so it can recognize some other words I say. Sometimes, I have to type in the words because the speech recognition program does not interpret the words I am saying correctly. So, I use a keyboard to correct it. Picture this, I am sitting here smoking a cigarette with my eyes closed and dictating this article. The only problem that I have occasionally is that the speech recognition program does not understand the words I’m using. So, I just correct it on the keyboard. Other than the speech recognition program not understanding some of the words I’m using, and correcting the errors on the keyboard, I am having a wonderful time dictating this article. It usually takes me about three hours to compose an article. That’s because I have clumsy fingers and I hit the wrong keys. Then, I would have to go back to sentences I corrected and lose my train of thought. Now, if I notice an error or a screwed up a few sentences –I just correct it with a couple of keystrokes or just use the speech recognition program to delete the sentences and rewrite it. This speech recognition program is the ultimate in lazy writing. I can sit here all day and jabber a way, saying anything that comes to my mind. I just have to learn to talk a little slower. The speech recognition program has yet to recognize the cadence of my speech. So, I will talk slower. Well, that is all I know for now. Have a great day! And if you have the extra bucks, go out and buy the Professional Microsoft Office program, and buy the head set with the microphone. You will have a blast! ------------ Email Argile Stox: argilestox@gmail.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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