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Thoughts about Self Talk

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Even back about 20 years ago we were talking about self talk.  Self talk is that internal dialogue you have perhaps subvocally with yourself throughout the day.  Sometimes the voice in your head can be condemning.  Often it’s very critical.  Unfortunately it’s often very critical of yourself.  And when your self talk is sufficiently critical of you that could sometimes lead to depression or paranoia.

As a person who lives alone, I admit I talk to myself … often and frequently I do so out loud.  And since I have committed myself to writing a book during the next year, I decided to purchase a copy of Dragon NaturallySpeaking and test whether my talking to myself out loud could be made productive time as it pertains to writing the book.  I said to myself I can capture what I am  saying  as I babble to myself during the day.  And much of that babbling would be potential material for the book.  It would require a lot of editing I’m sure, but it would be better than starting from scratch with a blank sheet of paper.

So I bought Dragon NaturallySpeaking for about 200 dollars.  And I began training it last week.  In fact, I’m writing this blog post with it right now.  For the impatient among you, the Cliff Notes version of my evaluation so far is that it is that I like it very much.  It seems that my speculation about being able to use Dragon NaturallySpeaking to type is proving to be true.  I am able to use it to get text onto the page.  I haven’t reached that point yet that I am completely comfortable editing primarily with voice, but I hope to get better at that with practice.

This must make sense because many doctors use this software and this technology to document their conversations with their patients.  It’s the best way to get that information into the patient’s record.  Doctors are certainly not going to sit down at the computer and go to individual records to type in their comments.  However, at the conclusion of a visit with a patient they will pick up a dictating device and speak their notes into that.  So that way they can just be done with it and go on to the next patient.

I intend to use that same strategy myself.  I have ordered a Zoom H4 which is a professional quality digital audio recorder frequently used by musicians and songwriters to capture the sound moment when they’re working together.  I can use the digital audio recorder to capture interviews of people.  And I can use it as a dictating machine when I’m away from my computer because Dragon NaturallySpeaking has a transcription mode which can transcribe from a digital file.  So when I’m riding along in my car, I can simply speak into the digital audio recorder, the zoom H4, and when I return home, I can have Dragon NaturallySpeaking transcribe what I dictated while riding in the car.

I have no idea yet how well Dragon NaturallySpeaking will transcribe the speech of someone who hasn’t created a profile and trained on it, as for instance when I might be interviewing someone and would like for Dragon NaturallySpeaking to transcribe both sides of the interview.  This combination of equipment, coupled with a Calisto Pro wireless headset, offers a unique new creative environment, and I’m eager to experiment with this new environment as well as use it in producing writing throughout this year.

Interestingly, the more you use it the better it gets at recognizing how you say things, so even if you’re not interested in producing a written record of something for publication, you might consider using it just to continue to train it.  In the future when you needed it it would be better equipped to do what you wanted it to do.

So welcome to my journey along the path of talking to your computer.  I still have much to explore about Dragon NaturallySpeaking, but I am very confident that I can use it and I do intend to use it experimentally as I attempt to write more things this way.  Stay tuned.

Filed in How to, Personal, Technology, Writing | Comments

Blogging 8 years

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Today is the 8th anniversary of the day I first put pen to pixel and created this blog.  It’s been hosted at different locations from time to time, but it has been semi-continuously updated since that first Father’s Day in 2001.  My one-year hiatus last year will be the subject of a book about what I learned trying to lead the team out there in Las Vegas.  I want to reflect on what happened and my complicity in the outcome.

Since I’m mentioning my project for next year, let me point you to the site where I’ll post about it most often  so that you can follow me and be a part of the system I am using to hold myself accountable to achieve this objective.  The site is called Las Vegas MyOptic.  I believe the initial posts there will explain what I have in mind for the project.  The site is my way of keeping my head still in Las Vegas.

Filed in Aging, Blogging, Blogs and Blogging, Life Online | Comments

Recurring events

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Here’s an email I just sent to my son, Jeff.  I ultimately addressed it to both Jeff and Mike, but once I had written it, I wanted to share it with any of the rest of you who might care to read it.

Jeff,

You said this, “I apologize for my lack of contact as I have been having a problem dealing with Mama’s death. This is something I will work through in my own time I am sure.”

It is precisely because you are (or I had thought you may be) having problems with your mother’s death that I wanted to make contact with you.  That’s not the kind of thing you should (or should have to) work through by yourself.  It is when you are dealing with such an emotional issue that you need to reach out to those you know love you and who share your sorrow and pain.  I qualify on both counts.

Since I’m sitting here at the computer late at night and you’ve just written me, I’m guessing you are also sitting there at your computer late at night.  I’d be happy to share a late night conversation with you by phone if you want to call me.  But if you choose not to, then let’s talk tomorrow about a time when we can talk about what you are thinking and how you are feeling about your mother’s death.

One reason we share each other’s sorrows is to make our own burdens lighter. It isn’t just that I want to support you; it’s also that I believe if I can hold onto you to give you strength, it will give me strength too.   I love you, but now I have to love you twice as much to compensate for your mother’s absence.  Your supply of “knowing that you are loved” (didn’t even know you had a supply of that, did you?)  is sort of like gas in a car.  You need it refilled regularly and often, because if you go for long periods without stopping by a “filling station,” you could run out.  When you know you are loved, you can endure more, you can accomplish more and you can relax more and quit doing things to get others to prove to you that they really do love you.

We’ve all been under considerable stress with your mom’s illness.  We need to consciously acknowledge how that stress manifests itself in our lives.  We must be aware that when we feel the need to have that extra drink in an evening or when the need to commit some sexual indiscretion shows up or when we can only see the faults in everyone around us because we are under stress, we can recognize that for what it is — our plea to be comforted and an expression of our need for stress relief!

Life is full of learning experiences.  Carole’s death gives us a chance to learn to deal with loss.  You’ll have several such opportunities during your lifetime; it’s just the nature of things that you will.  Strive to get better each time you cross that bridge; it’s not a one-time event.

Some day you’ll get to deal with my death.  There is no escaping that.   Please resolve to learn from Carole’s death the lessons it has for you in how to deal with the loss of a loved one, and resolve to make sure that when you get to practice what you learned this time around the next time you have to go through this experience, you will use what you have learned to lessen the pain you experience and the pain you cause others because of how much you are hurting.

There is certainly no one right way to grieve.  But grief is a part of every life.  In many ways, it is also a beautiful thing, and though only God could possibly have the wisdom to understand this, a necessary thing.  One would never choose to experience it, but there is an honesty in the pain you feel when someone you love is gone that is purer than almost any other emotion you’ll ever experience.

Remember,  sometimes when you allow yourself to accept another’s attempt to help you, you are also helping that other person deal with his or her own feelings about the loss that both of you share.

Be honest about the pain you are experiencing and permit those who love you to try to help.  You’ll be doing them a world of good.  Suffering in silence only perpetuates the pain and causes pain to others because of your own unhappiness.

Damn!  Aren’t you glad you were born to such a wise father?  ;-)

Love,
Dad

PS  Because I need to say these same things to your brother, I’m going to copy him on this message.  I’m sure you’ll understand.  I love you both with all my heart!

Filed in Aging, Family, How to, Personal, Writing | Comments

If you’ll indulge me for a moment

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

This is a note I sent last night to an audience that’s introduced in the note itself.   I decided to make it my entry for this morning.

Friends,

I’d like to invite you, no let me make that “encourage you,” to view tonight’s entry at my personal blog, because I have made an important and unfortunately, a sad announcement there tonight.  I ask that you watch the video in the post as it will introduce you, better than I could do in any other way nor nearly as quickly, to my ex-wife Carole, who died last night of cancer.

Those of you getting this message are a diverse mixture, but by no means an exhaustive one nor even an adequate sampling, of ex-fellow employees and business contacts and, in the BCC, members of the inner group of my local Knoxville social circle.  I’d encourage any of you receiving a copy of this message to share it with anyone else that you feel would like to receive it.

I thank you for those tears you may shed in sympathy with our family tonight.  There is no greater gift nor any better way for you to comfort us than to allow yourself to feel our pain tonight.  Nothing more than that is required.

Thanks to Jimmy and Cathy, I’m “learning to dance in the rain” with a heart full of gratitude to you both, mostly for the gift of your friendship.  I read the little book you gave me when I was at the dentist’s office this past week.  Its message gives me strength and inspiration, and resolve.

Pete C. if, by some miracle of serendipity that Manpreet simply could not prevent, you actually receive your copy of this message (I had to guess at your address), please forward it to my fellow NA Ops managers.  I no longer have access to their address or I wouldn’t have asked it of you.  It seems that just as Carole slipped away from me before I knew it, so did my opportunity to say an adequate goodbye to that group before I myself became the “dearly departed.” ;-)

Susie, maybe you could make sure, for Pete, that the group gets a copy, since I’m pretty sure you’ll get yours. Thanks.

David S., I hope you have access to all those now in (or formerly in) Indianapolis that might want to receive a copy of this message.  And Jim A., you have access to our mutual contacts on other continents who might want to receive this message.  Please do me the favor of sharing it with them.

I love you all.  You each contributed in a unique way to a wonderful year last year, for which I wish to thank you one and all.

And so with this message,  I bid you a fond adieu,

What I failed to say in that note but wish I had, was “Oh and please buy a copy of my book about the experience when it comes out next year.”

Note to self:  Remember to add that to my closing whenever I am speaking in public throughout this next year.

Filed in Asides, Blogging, Family, Humor | Comments

Carole passed away last night

Monday, June 8, 2009

After a long struggle with cancer, Carole left this life last night at 9:45 p.m. EDT.

Though I miss her already, I’m glad she has gone through that necessary door and is now past the pain.  For those of you who didn’t have the privilege and joy of knowing her personally or of seeing her very often, this 3 minute montage will suggest something of what we all loved so dearly about her.  She was a beautiful woman in every positive sense of the word.

The funeral will be held on Wednesday June 10 at the Living Mission Methodist Church at 7289 Belton Bridge Road in Lula, Ga.    The family will receive friends today (June 9) from 3 to 5 and from 7 to 9 at the McGahee-Griffin and Stewart Funeral Home (706 778-8668) at 175 VFW Post Road in Cornelia, GA.

Filed in Family, Personal, Pictures, Travel | Comments

Thinking of you

Sunday, June 7, 2009


Thinking of you

Originally uploaded by Dr Reelgood & Co..

And keeping watch.

Filed in Uncategorized | Comments

Hello, Knoxville.

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Yes, it’s me and I’m back in town … for the moment anyway.  New Mexico welcome sign

The contract I was managing in New Mexico ended on May first and I got back in town on the 15th.  I’ve been shuffling the junk around my condo into meaningful groupings in what passes for my idea of a “decorating scheme.”  I’ve begun printing some of my pictures from New Mexico to display around the house and I have a plan about what to do in the coming year that I’ll say more about as I go along.

Today I’ll be going to visit my ex-wife Carole in Georgia.  Mike and his children are there (Kaitlin is at least) and of course Jeff lives across the street from her.  During my time there I’ll be out of regular and consistent contact with the Internet so updates, though infrequent in the next few days will be a lot more frequent than during 2008.

I purchased a new HP Mini computer, a so-called netbook, to replace the company laptop that I had.  So far I give it mixed reviews.  It’s like having a new puppy.  Everybody stops by because they think it is cute, so it’s a great way to meet “chicks” as some would say.  That’s provided your idea of a “chick” is a geek, master’s degree candidate desk clerk named Shiva from India in Oklahoma City.  At any rate, the “cute” computer attracts attention.

I’m sure I’ll wax eloquent at great length over the next year about how I felt about my experience there, but I’ll sum it up for now by saying this. I spent a year out there being a Tennessean in New Mexico, but when I got into the U-Haul truck to drive it back to Tennessee, I knew in my heart that I was New Mexican headed back to Tennessee … temporarily!

The bottom line is I have returned.  I will be posting again as the spirit moves me and as I have something I want to say.  Stay tuned.

Filed in Family, Knoxbloggers, Life Online, Personal, Travel | Comments

Leaving Las Vegas

Friday, May 8, 2009

Leaving Las Vegas is going to be a whole lot harder than I thought it would be!

And I’m not referring to closing the business or even to packing up the clothing and personal goods for the trip home. I’m talking about leaving the life I have here, the friends I have here, the freedom I have here and the fun I have here. Knoxville is where my younger son and his family live. My other son and his family have a home north of Atlanta.

Of course, I own a home in Knoxville and that has been the place I call home ever since 1979. By default it seems, because so many of my possessions are there and because some of my family and friends are there, and maybe just because I have been around there for so long, Knoxville is my home. And that’s where I’m headed, come Tuesday morning (the good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise!). I’ll be going back to Knoxville towing my car behind me.

But in many ways my life in Las Vegas was more fulfilling than my life in Knoxville. Brodie has said that the alternate name for the “Land of Enchantment” is the “Land of Entrapment.” In some ways I can see what he means, because New Mexico is Enchanting to the point that one could become Entraped here. I’m feeling a connection to New Mexico that I didn’t expect to feel, and that is causing me to wonder how I could start over, since I’m going to have to do that anyway, but from here.

It is for me an interesting twist to this saga that I didn’t expect to have to deal with. Maybe it’s only a tremor; but one never knows which tremors are the beginnings of upheavals.

Filed in Blogging, Personal, Travel | Comments

Cast in a new role

Sunday, January 27, 2008

In what felt a bit like an unexpected call in the middle of the night, back in October, the 21st to be specific, I received an email from a former client of mine with whom I have consulted off and on since around 1988 asking whether I’d be willing to consider “an assignment for a year or so in New Mexico.” Having already retired and, I’ll admit, having begun to resign myself to the inevitable decline that leads to the end of life, I was surprised and invigorated by his suggestion so I followed up with him just to learn what the possibilities were. That conversation and subsequent events have now led to a new opportunity for me, a new role. And just this last week, I received a formal offer to become the Call Center Manager for the Vertex Outsourcing call center in Las Vegas, NM — not Nevada mind you, but New Mexico.

Las Vegas, NM, is a relatively small but historic town nestled in the northeastern quadrant of the state at an elevation of 6,424 feet, higher even than the Mile High City of Denver. This site was chosen as the location for the call center because of its lack of disruptions due to weather (316 days of sunshine a year) and because of the work ethic and skills of its bilingual local population. However, this small, historic (which also implies old) town became something of an obstacle in locating a qualified individual to move there and manage the operation. And that, it turns out, was what caused my friend to think of me. Because I am 66, unattached and don’t have small children who would have to attend the Las Vegas school system, my maturity and prior experiences made him think of me as a desirable candidate who might be open to moving there.

“A year or so,” as originally suggested by my friend, has actually turned out to be two years when we got down to specifying the details of the agreement. I will move to New Mexico, maintain my house here in Knoxville, and return here after the two year contract is up. My objectives are to develop and sustain a culture in the center that causes the employees to feel valued and respected and that results in their conveying those same things to the customers in the calls they take from them. Although there are of course performance metrics that must be met as well, the primary objective for me is to nurture the kind of environment that is rarely sustained in a call center, so that customers are treated as valued assets rather than interruptions in the representatives’ busy, stressful and sometimes monotonous day. That’s an interesting challenge that I have often tried in my consulting assignments to help other managers achieve with, I will acknowledge, varying degrees of success. Now for the first time in my career I’ll have the authority and accountability to do just that myself. I welcome the challenge, and I believe I’ll find it both educational and interesting.

The other major goal I’ll have while there is to identify and train my replacement. Through modeling the behaviors needed to run a call center in this way and by coaching this potential replacement in his or her use of those same behaviors, I’ll seek to create an environment that can keep going without interruption when my time on site is up.

I haven’t yet decided what this move will mean to my blogging. Since beginning to discuss the possible move, I’ve chosen not to update my blog because I didn’t want to discuss these events online until they were firm enough to be revealed. And once I do assume the new role, I’m not sure how much I want to blog about what will surely occupy most of my thinking throughout the day, nor do I know how much time I might have for an activity like blogging. I suppose I could keep writing about technology as I’ve done through much of the last couple of years, but there are other blogs that already do a better job of that than I do. So my blogging may be a casualty of my new role, but that hasn’t yet been decided and remains to be seen.

At least now you know what has been going on with me for the last several months and why I’ve not been posting here as frequently as I used to. I’m about to embark on “Perry’s Excellent Adventure” in New Mexico, so if you happen to be traveling through the southwest feel free to look me up. I’m sure I’d welcome seeing a face “from home.”

Filed in Aging, Blogging, Personal | Comments

More on the Gutsy Gibbon saga

Monday, December 10, 2007

This morning Justin left a comment on the previous post in which he requested that I post the results of issuing the lspci command on my current computer on the theory that perhaps something about the IDE controller might be causing my system not to see the Windows XP installation.  So now that I know to add the all_generic_ide switch to the boot command on the Live CD (thanks to Tomcat–TC) and I can get into Gutsy without my previous problems, I booted up under that this afternoon and took a screen shot of the results of issuing that command.  Though I don’t know if this will give Justin what he thought it would, I’m going to post that screen shot below for his and anyone else’s scrutiny.

lspci info only

 

As you can see the IDE interface is the SiS 5513 from VIA Technologies, Inc., so it does not appear to be the ICH7 or ICH5 IDE controller that Justin was anticipating.  I don’t know where that leaves us, Justin, but there you have it.

While I was in the Live CD, I went again to the install program and to the manual install section of the partitioner since I didn’t want to use the guided installation to use the full HD.  Here is the screen shot of the point I got to when I decided to bail out because the installation wasn’t seeing my Windows XP installation, though it does recognize that the partition on which it is installed is formatted as NTFS.  Here’s what the partitioner shows:

Screenshot-Install-Ubuntu

The two HDs are shown and the type of file system is accurate for both of them.  The 137 GB partition (/dev/sda1) is my C:/ drive and has Windows XP on it, and the 26.5 GB partition (/dev/sda5) is partitioned as my F:/ drive.  I’ve gotten to this same point before but haven’t had the courage to monkey around with /dev/sda1 because I don’t want to risk losing my Windows XP partition.  Any advice, encouragement, reassurance or other mojo-enhancing words anyone would like to share in the comments will be welcome.

Filed in Linux | Comments