400 MOST FREQUENTLY USED WORDS

I'm practicing the 400 most frequently used words as a warm-up before I start my practice sessions. Here they are for your practicing pleasure as well. Enjoy! :)

61+ WAYS TO WRITE FASTER

I just purchased the book 61+ Ways to Write Faster: Speedbuilding Tips for Court Reporters and Students. I bought it from NCRA's online store for $14.95 (NCRA member price; NCRA non-member price is $18.95). Click here to enter NCRA's bookstore. Click here to enter and/or download the 2009 Best Sellers brochure from NCRA's bookstore. Although it's a bit dated (published in 1997), the info in here is pretty good. The Introduction is tedious (very wordy!), but after that hill, you get to the 61 mini articles given by court reporting instructors, well-known working court reporters, and speed champions. These mini articles vary in length from three pages long to one paragraph. The book is full of great but conflicting advice on how to build speed. The reason is everyone has their own, specific, personalized way for what helps them eventually write 225 wpm on the steno machine. So you really got to do what works for you! Still, there are lots of great suggestions in this book on how to do just that. Here's #11 of the 61+ Ways, "Make it Fun," written by Margaret Wakeman-Wells, CRI, from Bryan College in Los Angeles, California:

Save a variety of notes from classes and tapes: medical, technical, straight matter, testimony, congressional, "a little too fast," "falling off a log too slow." Always read from this variety. 1. Notes for Repetition: (Five to seven minutes of dictation, no drops.) Read one time daily for approximately 10 days, making no corrections or notations in the notes at any time. At the end of this time, you should be reading these notes at a speed significantly above your writing speed. 2. Notes for Speed Reading: (No more than five minutes of dictation.) Read once and time yourself. Read again and try to cut down the time. Read a third time and try to cut the time again. The idea is to read more quickly each time. Make no corrections or notations in the notes. 3. Notes for Listing Errors: Read the notes and circle (with a glaring color of ink) all errors, including the smallest of shadows. Hold up several folds at a time to see whether there are any patterns. (This is not to catch an isolated error on one word. It is meant to show patterns of errors.) Make a list of fingering errors and practice them. 4. Notes for General Practice: When you come to the first error, mentally or on your lap practice one of the following ways (making no corrections in the notes):

• The word in front, the error and the word after.
• The four or five words in front of the error with the error.
• The error and the four or five words after it

Make corrections right in the notes and mentally set the new outline. When you finish reading a set of notes in any of the preceding patterns, read the set all the way through one last time without pausing to make or practice any corrections.

COURT REPORTERS SITE

There's a new court reporting social network site that's been gaining new members daily -- Court Reporters Site. This is Kelli's website that she created after she and Monti went their separate ways. A few years ago, Kelli, a court reporter, and Monti, a legal videographer, created the original CSR Nation, which has been dubbed the Facebook or MySpace for court reporters. I was super excited about it! (Read here to see just how much!) Sadly, however, sometime last year, there was a riff between Kelli and Monti. Monti left CSR Nation to Kelli in order to create another court reporting social network site -- Court Reporters Connect (CRC). Since then, Monti has had CRC, and Kelli has had CSR Nation. Now there were two social networking sites instead of the original CSR Nation. I stayed active on both sites for a while, hoping that the tension between the two would die down. I was also hoping against hopes that Monti and Kelli would reconcile, and we, the online friends, would get our original CSR Nation back -- it was such a great, fun, informative tool for us all, especially us court reporting students! But the reconciliation was not to happen -- at least not now. Just last week I deactivated my account at CRC, because I personally felt that there was too much negativity on this site. The whining and complaining that I personally saw at CRC was too much for me to handle. Thus, I sent Monti and all my CRC online friends a message letting them know that I was going to deactivate my account with CRC and also the reason why. I told them all that I was joining Kelli's site, Court Reporters Site, because I did not find any bitterness there. Rather, I found it uplifting and more like the old CSR Nation I had grown to love and miss so much! I encourage you to check out both sites and see which one you like better. Maybe you can be a member at both, and that's cool. I was doing that for a while. But for now, I just can't. I would love to rejoin CRC perhaps down the road if (and only if) I find that there is no longer any animosity or bitterness at that site, to the point where I would be very proud to be a loyal member of CRC. I don't wish Monti nor any of the CRC supporters any harm. I am very grateful for all the hard work both he and Kelli put into the original CSR Nation. I still wish we only had one social networking site to choose from. But for now, while we don't, I'll be at Court Reporters Site.

I'M STILL HERE!

Hello, Friends! I'm still here! On Planet Earth, that is. :) I know, I know, I haven't updated in forever. Sorry about that! :P I've been super busy getting ready for THE NEW YEAR!!! Don't you just love that it'll be 2010 so very soon??? I even have a countdown on my laptop! :) So in just 15 more days, we get to say bye bye to 2009 -- with all the good, the bad, the memories -- and say hello to 2010 -- with all the new the good, the bad, the memories! Hehehe. Seriously, though, New Year is probably my most anticipated holiday of the year because that's when we get to start new! That's when we get to make new goals and see how we can reach them! That's when we get a fresh, blank slate! It's exciting to see what 2010 will turn out like! I've already done a bit of a rough draft of my goals for 2010, headed by each month and the following categories:

1. Work
2. School
3. Money
4. Fitness

Those are four categories that I'll be drastically changing in 2010... and I'll share them with you soon enough! (I didn't add Spiritual, Family, Friends, etc. in there, but you're more than welcome to... and I encourage that you do actually! It's just that right now, I know for me those categories won't change much in 2010, but the above four definitely will.) For now, I just wanted to say...

THINKING OF YOU & MISSING YOU!!! I'll be back with more updates, I promise!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Celebrating the best GIFT of all -- JESUS!

HAPPY 2010!!! May it be an even better year than the last because we are all striving to become better in every area of our lives!

WARRANTIES ARE WONDERFUL

Warranties are just wonderful and oh-so-useful! Any chance you get to buy warranty, I say get it! Usually we'll really need to use that warranty down the road... and you'd rather be WITH it than WITHOUT it then, for sure! Just yesterday I went into Macy's to exchange my luggage roller (read about why I purchased a regular luggage roller rather than a "specialized" steno machine roller by clicking here) with a brand new one! My beautiful blue Ricardo luggage roller handle broke off completely after only 3 short months of use. I guess I was putting way too much stuff in it? (I'm sure I was because the roller would bend toward the floor! Oops!) Well, lesson learned. I won't overstuff my roller anymore, and I'm so glad that this luggage roller came with 6 months of warranty! WHEW! Also, just yesterday, my Dell laptop came back from the "laptop doctor" (my technical term for saying that it came back from the manufacturer after a little bit of fixing! :P). The caps key was coming loose and messing up not only that one very important key, but other keys around it! It was very annoying, especially since to even get onto my laptop, I need to key in my password, which is case sensitive... of course. On top of the caps lock problem, the fan in my laptop was sounding so loud. By the time it was sounding like a helicopter (ok, maybe not quite, but, really, loud enough!), my boyfriend sent in the pink Dell laptop he had bought for me back to the manufacturer to get it fixed. He bought 3 years' worth of warranty for my laptop. I DEFINITELY RECOMMEND getting warranties for laptops because these on-the-go computers have a much shorter lifespan than a desktop computer. Plus we're always banging our laptops around, carrying it from here to there. They go through a lot of beating! So the warranty you buy for your laptop is well worth the money! TRUST ME! Better to be safe than sorry!