Just A Theory

I am a person who enjoys music, and usually, when I am buying groceries and going up and down the aisles, I do pay attention to and  listen to the music that is being played over the intercom. It's usually pretty tough, but I do try to refrain myself from breaking into dance. There are two reasons for this. The first one being because I don't want to draw attention to myself and I don't want anyone to feel bad about their own dancing skills. But the second reason, which is the most important reason....so actually I guess you could say there really is just one. That reason being because if I even thought about dancing my Ataxia would have me wildly flailing around, I'd lose my balance and take everybody out who happens to be unfortunate enough to be in the frozen food section at the same time as me. The store management would probably think they have a wild hit-man running amok in their store and would most likely call in the swat team to take me out.

Well, I was at the grocery store the other day, and at this particular time, they were playing a song that had approximately four words, of a somewhat suggestive nature, in the whole song. These four words were repeated over and over again, and after the twenty-first time, a theory began to formulate in my mind. I don't know what kind of grades this female artist received in school, but I began to theorize that in a creative writing class at least she most likely had been given the highest marks. I really hate to be so sarcastic towards today's music. I try to like it, I really do and to be honest, there is some good music out there and some very talented musicians. I guess I am just old school and in the words of Bob Seger," Today's music ain't got the same soul, I like that old time rock-n-roll." 

But who really knows what kind of grades that particular female artist received in creative writing, it was just a theory. I'm just an old Ataxian that grew up in the 60's, 70's, and 80's and likes the classics. Now, I know that some of you are older and like music from the 40's and 50's, and what is truly ironic is that someday the music that is current right now will one day be considered classic music, and the music that I like will be deemed to be the moldy oldies.  

    

Dog Days Of Ataxia

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSl7xpKB5TI

    Pavlov's dog? Who among us hasn't heard of the famous experiments from the 1890's by a renowned psychologist named Ivan Pavlov who worked with dogs and came up with his brilliant Pavlovian theory? Mr. Pavlov used a bell as a neutral stimulus and every time he rang the bell he would give the dog a treat. Until the dog began to associate the ringing of a bell with the treat and the reward was no longer necessary for the dog to respond to the sound. Pavlov and his studies of classical conditioning have become famous.They were the first systematic study and showed us the fundamental laws of learning and conditioning.

    Now I am not a brilliant psychologist, and this is not the 1890's, but the 2014's. However, I have trained my dog in what I would like to present to you as the grand Honey Nut Cheerio experiment, which I am sure will go down in history as bringing some crucial insight into the psyche of the dog.

    My theory was that in my dog's mind food would trump everything, including sleep. First, allow me to set the stage for you, so you have a better understanding.   Our little male dog Ollie had been sleeping with my daughter, but ever since she went away to college, he has been sleeping in our bed. Melissa and I always get up at five in the morning or shortly after that.  We get our coffee and then return to our room where we sit and try to wake up until she has to get ready for work which is about 6 am. I let Ollie stay in bed under the covers until that time, and then I get him up and take him outside. I have a recliner in my room that I sit in and as soon as he comes back inside, he runs into the room and jumps up on the chair and curls up and sleeps until 9 am. Nothing disturbs him, and if he thinks there is a chance that you are going to move him, he will give you a look as you pass by.

    Nothing will get him up except for the sound of food hitting the kitchen floor. Every morning I pour myself a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios and even though I am careful I usually end up spilling some on the floor,(that little reference right there was how I justified putting the word Ataxia in the title for this blog). He quickly learned that I do this and he is always listening for it. This morning, however, I was able to fill my bowl without spilling any of the Cheerios successfully, and so he did not bother himself to move off the chair,(the food has to hit the floor which indicates that it is now primarily free food and up for grabs).


    So this is where my experiment came in. I decided to flick a Cheerio onto the floor and see what happened. Sure enough, he came tearing around the corner within about two seconds and was able to zero right in on the fallen object like he had actually witnessed it hit the floor and knew exactly where the little treasure lay. After "spilling" several more Cheerios,( I felt he had made an effort to come so I had to give him a few more), he returned to the chair and went back to sleep. Not only was this an important scientific experiment, but it also served to provide the morning entertainment. Sometimes, it's just about the little things.




           

Enter The Dragon.....So To Speak

here is a link to the audio version, in case you would rather listen to this blog: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5VFlt9raOE

    Based on the title you may think that this writing will be about the great Karate Movie by Bruce Lee, but you would be wrong. However, I have to say that some of my spastic and involuntary moves could easily be interpreted as smooth karate moves. In fact, I'm thinking of opening my own gym, after the highly successful restaurant that I wrote about in a previous blog, Che'SpaZtics, is up and running of course. There I would teach a form of Martial Arts that I will call Attack-Cia Karate. I would practice this form out in public, and I can imagine that the comments may be heard as something like this, "Daddy, look at that funny man, it appears as if he's having a seizure as he walks down the sidewalk." "No son I heard about this, I think he's practicing a new form of handicapped Karate."

    But that has gotten me off subject. What I wanted to write about is not my physical prowess,(I guess that the people who know me well, will laugh at that part), but about my experience with Dragon speak, the program that will follow spoken commands on your computer. I have been using this program for one week now, and so far it has gone very well. In fact, I am dictating this blog right now which is the real reason for the title. Except for a few corrections, which I am sure will get smoothed out over time as I learn to use this program, this blog is being written almost entirely by dictation, (so far the program is about 95% accurate to what I say, of course, that also accounts for about 95% user error).

    The very first thing you do when you set this up is to read to it from some sentences that it provides so that it learns your speech patterns. There are numerous language dialects to choose from including slurred English, which I have mine set on as I sound like I have a mouthful of oatmeal sometimes. Okay that's a slight exaggeration there really is no slurred English, but I do find that the process is very smooth and it picks up with excellent accuracy everything that I am saying. I also wanted to address this issue because as Ataxia progresses, the speech can change, and I had a question about what happens if your speech changes or degrades over the years. I found a setting that allows you to reset the program and then retrain it to your current voice patterns. I should also mention here that Dragon is very particular to the voice that does the initial training and set up. Melissa tried to open a browser which is a simple command, and it would not respond to her voice.  I gave it the same command, and it began instantly. Dragon is also always on your desktop and listening for your voice all you have to do is wake it up by saying, " Hello, or Hey Dragon," which could be quite entertaining at parties. Gosh, I'm starting to sound like a commercial for Dragon! "Amaze your friends, dazzle your family, be the envy of your neighbors"!

    Some of the other things that you can do with this program are to open it up and execute various applications. An example of one of those programs would be Facebook. Dragon will post a status update for you which I have found to be a useful and fun feature.  For it to be able to do that, you have to give it your passwords and account login information, so it knows where to go when you ask it to do specific things. It can also play music for you through the computer by either accessing your files on the hard drive or playing music through Spotify. I do not use any music services like Spotify, as everything I like to listen to is already on my hard drive, so I gave it access to play my music through Windows Media Player. Of course, to do that I had to sink all my music to Dragon, and now all I have to do is say play and the name of a song,(which really backfired just now because as I was saying how to do it, a song started playing on my computer)!

    So that, in a nutshell.....er, greatly eggshell, shotgun shell.....whatever shell, is Dragon. It really has, in only a week, made my life easier. I would recommend it as a digital assistant. Because all though I can still type and coordinate the computer mouse okay, the use of Dragsubstantiallyincreased my speed, and at a time when a lot of other things seem to be on a decrease, this is a good thing.:-)