Mission Control – writing a Harvard thesis

I’ve been using Dragon Naturally Speaking as my solution to elbow and wrist tendonitis. The problem is Dragon is a nightmare. I used to love it when it worked but it’s so glitchy that those moments of bliss are rare. It hangs up when I have a pdf open too long (”document is not tagged…” baloney), it won’t capitalize (it puts completely different words in and won’t cap no matter how hard I try), it begins putting each word in caps out of the blue, it arbitrarily starts putting extra spaces between each word as if it’s “right justified” but it’s not. I’ve got Dragon 9.0 on my Dell Inspiron and have used it for a couple of years off and on. Then I got a Dell Vostro and put Dragon 10 on it. Problem is: Dragon 10 goes with the Word 2007 program I loaded but it turns out I find Word 2003 is just simpler and easier. I’d actually have to learn Word 2007 (there are way too many choices and finding simple, quick commands is a chore until you learn where/how everything is).

Don’t get me started on the ultimate hassle of “dictating into a non-standard window”. That happens randomly.

Even when I shut the program down (not a good sign if it doesn’t ask you if you’d like to update your program before it quits) and reboot it, that doesn’t mean it found its brains again. Sometimes the reboot is just as retarded as the first try.

For such a powerful program, it fall so short.

Did I mention that tech support is “fee-based”, even the first call? All I can say is that the tres expensive legal and medical version must be less buggy. If they are as unpredictable and frustrating as the Professional version, the staff assistants who use them would be bald.

I heard the news today. Oh boy : (

I was in the Wellesley Booksmith when a salesclerk announced it to a few people at the counter. One of the customers said “that’s the end of Harvard Square…now it will just be like a lot of other places”.

I agree with her. Old, locally-owned stores have been closing too often in recent years around Harvard Square.  Each of those stores was one element of the tapestry that made the Square a community. Out of Town is the place to go to find a far-flung paper or magazine.  It just is Harvard Square. The aggressive rehabbing of the Square has brought in homogenized retail chain stores at the expense of the local places. The new stores are about the money, not the community. It’s kind of soul-less.

Good news is that the Harvard Bookstore didn’t go down that road. The new owner has been a customer for years and intends to keep the local flavor, the focus on the quality of the book-lover’s experience, and sense of community.

My family was in the retail community store business for two generations and customer service was  everything.  My father and grandfather knew all their customers. The regulars had their own in-store credit accounts. The stores were part of the fabric of the community and local charities could count on them for support as well.  In my town, there are two stores that come to mind that fit that bill. Both are family businesses. The sales clerks like their work; they care about customer satisfaction and repeat business. They understand the importance of “meeting and greeting” and chatting you up at the register; and, the staff has the social skills to do those things. Spending time in those shops is the complete opposite experience of the sterile, often annoying and anti-social experience at a CVS.

So something important will be lost when Out of Town closes in January. I expect they’ll have an uptick in business in December as many people will want to be in there one last time before its too late.