Stupider
March 28, 2008My bestest best friend had to transcribe three interviews from a voice recorder to plain paper. She hadn’t a clue as to how the thing worked, so whenever she wanted to turn it off, she just yanked the battery out of the poor thing. She didn’t use any of the buttons since she was afraid she’d erase something.
But despite this crude but effective safety measure the universe still found a way to fcuk with her. It let her accidentally press the dedicated ‘erase’ button, resulting in the loss of a 30 minute interview.
I couldn’t help but laugh when she told me over the phone a few days ago. Usually I’m the one who performs brilliant actions like this. Or so I thought.
I also remembered how about a year ago, I let a customer walk away without having payed for the 800 EUROS WORTH OF WOOD MY COLLEAGUE WAS LOADING IN HIS TRUCK ‘ROUND BACK.
The moral? I can counter every act of stupidity with something stupider. You get used to it.
I have a good quality voice recorder. I don’t use it though. It scares me. I can’t learn the multiple buttons how they work, and most importantly, the double meaning they have when you have something else activated.
That’s why I still use my PDA’s voice recorder. It’s a simple touschreen based record/stop interface, and it feels to me 1000 times easier to use than a dedicated one. Easier to transfer the mp3 files on the PC too.
Comment by Eugenia — March 28, 2008 @ 9:32 pm
Who in their right mind transcribes directly from the original recording? That’s just asking for trouble.
Comment by Irony is thy name — March 30, 2008 @ 4:33 pm
It’s not the original or single recording. Just the only one she had with her.
Comment by Administrator — March 30, 2008 @ 5:16 pm