today's project

I'm not transcribing for the moment. The audio for the conversation I'm about to transcribe is on my digital voice recorder; the file can't be transferred to my laptop because the I need to install the recorder's driver software first. The CD for the driver is... in Virginia.

I asked Dad to find it and FedEx it to me ASAP along with his version 4 copy of Photoshop Elements, but he said the driver CD was nowhere to be found. So I'm going to hunt online for some freeware that'll at least get the files from my recorder to my hard drive in playable format.

The reason I'm not transcribing directly from the recorder is that the recorder's "rewind" feature takes you back in increments that are too long to be practical. I tend to transcribe sentence by sentence, not paragraph by paragraph, and the "back" button on the recorder can send one back anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes, depending on (1) where one is in the recording, and (2) how long the recording is overall.

So instead, I'm sitting in the Penrose library on Whitman campus, typing this entry, mulling over how I'm going to screw with undergrad minds (cackle) at 4 o'clock, and planning my late-afternoon project: the acquisition of an ice bag from the local Albertson's.

We don't have Albertson's in northern Virginia, and I spent most of the first two hundred miles of my walk wondering what the hell an Albertson's was. It turns out that it's not so different from a Safeway or Wal-Mart: it's an omnibus store, carrying a little (well, a lot) of everything. I was passing through the pharmacy section the other day when I saw that ice bags come in two sizes: large and small. The smalls are about $6; the larges are around $12. I'm gonna get one. Haven't yet decided which size it'll be. Small might do the trick; the knee problem covers a pretty restricted area.


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