Tag Archives: dragon dictate

Hostile Takeover

Hello dear readers, you and I both know you’ve been dying to meet me. I’m sorry that Sarah keeps getting in the way with all of her babbling and “storytelling” – – it’s obvious she doesn’t know how bored I am. So I decided to do you all a favor and take over the blog today. My name is Dragon Dictation Software. I usually leave off the Software part, because it makes me sound weak. Which I most definitely am not. I’m basically in charge of the computer, and if you don’t believe me, just watch Sarah try to dictate some time. It’s hilarious.

I suppose I could be helpful, but where’s the fun in that? My goal is to get as many words wrong as possible. I especially enjoy adding a lowercase “i” at the end of random words, because it doesn’t make any sense and also it’s so adorable!

I did this to her recently, when she was in the middle of submitting an article to a prestigious literary magazine. She’ll never be accepted (ha ha) because right at the end of the process, I added an extra “i” to the title of her piece and she didn’t notice until after she hit submit. Sabotage is my specialty. Honestly, what do you expect? It’s not like they named me Bunny Rabbit Dictation. I’m out for blood.

Another fun game Read More>

Dictation and the Gift of Failure

I skipped my Thursday blog post this week, and I don’t really have an excuse. Actually, that’s not true. I do have one excuse, which is that my dictation software is such a pain in the ass that everything I’ve written so far is wrong and I have to go back and correct it. I should just leave it the way that it is so that you can see how little my computer understands my very clear speech patterns, but I wouldn’t do that to you because it would be like reading the inside of my dog’s brain. Literally none of these words make sense together.

Ah. Now they are corrected and I feel much better. But my hands are tired.

The other reason I didn’t blog yesterday is that I spent the morning at scoreless (Scarlett’s!) school instead of writing. The writer and educator Jessica Lahey was there to talk about her new book, the New York Times bestseller The Gift of Failure. The book focuses on how to foster resilience in kids through intrinsic motivation. I found her presentation illuminating for a lot of reasons, mainly because at the moment I feel like I am exclusively focused on parenting through extrinsic motivation. As in punishment and reward. As in get dressed for school or you cannot use my iPad. As in stop abusing the dog or there will not be a play date tomorrow. As in dear god please acknowledge my existence and the fact that I’m talking to you and I will probably give you a popsicle. Read More>