Thursday, February 12, 2009

Equipment meltdown


I was on a real roll at work on Monday and Tuesday. Doing great on the line counts. Getting my hours in. Flying! Then yesterday my headset broke. One of the wires got a funky connection or something, so that I could only hear audio through it if the wire was held straight up at an angle alongside my head. I could wind the cord around the earpiece just so and as long as I didn't move a muscle, it would work. Trouble is, I cannot keep from moving a muscle, and at some point after the wire had slipped for the stimulus time and I lunged for it, my ergonomic keyboard slipped off my lap and landed upside down, and now the 2, the control and the O keys, and probably some others but those were the ones I noticed immediately, don't work.

I quickly ran through the spare headsets I had in a drawer and all of them were worse than nothing. I am currently transcribing with the teeny little laptop keyboard and listening through the laptop speakers. I'm crunched up in a tiny, tense little ball with my arms crabbed up trying to reach the keys and straining to hear the dictations. Really ergonomic! My arms hurt, my elbow pain flared up big time (I'm back in my elastic elbow brace) and I am cranky as all git-out.

Webmedx used to replace these things for me, but I am hard on keyboards, and the last time I broke one, the equipment guys strongly hinted that I am TOO hard on keyboards, so I bought my own. That's the one I just dropped. Tonight I did win 2 spares on eBay which the seller is shipping right out, but it will take awhile. I use the Microsoft Elite keyboard which is sort of wave-shaped. I also have a couple of headsets on order, just cheapos but they work well; they are just like the set that broke.

1 comment:

Connie said...

I thought I was the only one who was so hard on keyboards. Webmedx has replaced a few for me, but the most recent one has gone more than a year without me spilling soup into it (which is how I normally break them).

P.S. I use the same keyboard as you.