obiter dictum

Discord is a Facebook killer.

Finished my first half marathon under my goal of 2 hours. Sleeping Bear Marathon was a very hilly course. Had a great time. Few weeks off then I start preping for a full in June. 🏃🏻‍♂️

Using a PC at work and need to send a text… I suddenly wish I were home on my Mac.

Truestream internet is installed and working great! 1 GB speeds up and down. Amazing!

On Tuesday I will get a 1 GB fiber connection to my home in the country thanks to our local electric cooperative, Truestream. A multi-year project to get fiber to everyone in their rural N. Michigan service area. Many customers had no high-speed option. Thank you Truestream!!

Had the “exam dream” last night - where you forgot you signed up for a course, never went to class or studied, and you have a final exam. Had a musical twist: I forgot I had joined a school musical, I didn’t practice, memorize any lines or choreography, and it was opening night.

Discovered Max and Emiliy’s in Mount Pleasant, MI. Great deli.

Taking the kids camping 🏕 next weekend. Got some new sleeping bags from Wiggys, American made in CO. Great quality and look warm, should be fun!

Monday is made worse by getting to work and logging into a machine running Windows.

Just received my Pfizer shot 💉 Yes!! Great operation set up in my community, very efficient setup, thank you to all the friendly volunteers!

Great to start the week by catching up on the latest Echoes playlist. So much great music. 🎶🎧

Started the Zoe Program today. Involves microbiome, blood, and blood sugar testing over 14 days to see how various foods impact my health. Fun to take part. Hope it will be informative.

As a lawyer I rely a lot on dictation. When I first started practicing, I found it to be very unnatural. They do not teach it in lawschool. It was only later in my career that I discovered what a great tool it is.

When I use the term “dictation” I am not talking about AI “speech-to-text” transcription - that can be useful too, but I’m talking about getting live audio to my secretary who can not only transcribe the text, but follow complex directions, and even give me reminders if I miss something. She controls the playback with a foot pedal.

I did get a copy of the “legal” version of Nuance Dragon, hoping it would help give my secretary a “head start” on transcription. Not impressed. I will say the speech-to-text accuracy was very good. But it is very expensive and takes significant amounts of time to configure and train. Even getting over that hurdle, the software itself was just abysmal. Confusing UI, resource hog, and really unstable. I’ll stick to the integrated voice-to-text options for my quick emails, thanks.

For real dictation, I currently use a “tried and true” Olympus DS-5000 and the accompanying software. The dictaphone is good. The software is functional but clunky. I have tried iPhone apps but the physical switch on the dictaphone is really useful. I have also tried Express Dictate by NCH. Slightly better UI but less functional than the Olympus software.

I would really like a fresh take on dictation software. Anyone else using it?

If I see another Prevagen ad on the evening news I might lose my lunch. What a scam.

My small law firm uses O365, we have been sharing docs w/ OneDrive password share links, would like to have the option to attach files and encrypt within Outlook using S/MIME for convenience. Any suggestions on a SSL cert provider? Or alternative that’s just as easy?

Some new kicks for spring. 🏃 on-running.com

Receieved my Truestream signup confirmation. 1GB fiber coming where 6 years ago dial-up was it. Been using a spotty 10MB WISP. This will be a big upgrade! Thank you to our local electric cooperative Great Lakes Energy for taking real initiative and making this happen! ⚡️ 🖥💻

Found an interesting project yesterday for legal document generation: Docassemble. Many years ago I hacked together a similar engine using YAML, Markdown and Ruby; this uses Python instead. Glad someone went the extra mile to package this for others.

Over the past few days I’ve been able to seemlessly move between computers running Windows 10, iOS, MacOS, and Ubuntu, without any interruption to my law office workflow. Amazing!

🌴Tropical Smoothie Cafe: where have you been my whole life? So good, and healthy!🥤