Society For The Technological Advancement Of Court Reporting 

Hi everyone.  I am back home after attending the STAR convention in Las Vegas.  Lou Ann Hammes, Mary Ring, and myself attended from Brown & Jones.  We had a lot of fun.  Vegas is full of great restaurants, entertainment, shopping, and did I mention the casinos?  Between the three of us, we managed to hit all of these sectors.  Oh, yeah, that’s right.  The STAR convention!  Yes, we did attend the STAR convention.  A lot of our old friends were there, as well as new ones.  It was especially fun having Brown & Jones’ Court Reporter Mary Ring join us and seeing her experience STAR through fresh eyes, coming as a new STAR member. 

One of the great things about STAR is the chance to learn about new technology.  There is always something new to learn.  I’d like to pass on a few things that I picked up:

1. This has been mentioned by me in the past, but it bears repeating.  The three types of computers recommended by Stenograph are Toshiba Tecra, Acer Travel Mate, and the Sony Vio.  Warning:  Do not let your family play around on your work computer.  Some reporters seemed to have a phobia about going on the internet on their work computers.  It is totally acceptable to go on the internet, but you do need good virus protection.  AVG was mentioned as a good one.

2.  USB ports.   Turn on your computer first.  Once it is fully loaded and ready to go, then plug things into your USB ports.

3.  I am a little embarrassed to say that I am still running XP on my computer.  If you are still on XP, you should update to Windows 7.  When you update, make sure you pick the update feature.  That way, you will go from XP to Windows 7, without losing all of your work.  Of course, it’s always a good idea to back up important data.  Why is XP bad?  Apparently, you are not protected as well against viruses and, also, XP has a habit of jumping from one wifi to another (which has happened to me, many times.)

4.    Case CATalyst support.  If you want to learn about some of the great features of Case CATalyst, go to the Manage Jobs Screen of CC, then go to Help and click on Integrated Video Training.  This is where you will find all of the Cat Clips.  You can study up on whatever you are interested in.  You can also go to Stenograph.com and click on You Tube.  There are at least a hundred uploaded videos there, with a ton of info, all for your benefit.

That’s it for now.  Hope there is something in this blog that you didn’t know about.  This is just the tip of the iceberg, as to the knowledge I gained attending the STAR convention.  Hope to see some of you in New Orleans!  Have a great day!

Jane M. Jones, 
Registered Merit Reporter
Certified Realtime Reporter 

Milwaukee Court Reporters:  Meals For Minds After School Pantry

Submitted By:  Court Reporter Andrea Reichle, RPR 

Brown & Jones Reporting has begun a new initiative for the 2012 year.  We will be volunteering once every quarter for a local organization.  Our first opportunity was on Tuesday, February 28, for Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin. 

Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin was founded in 1982 by the Rotary Club of Milwaukee and is a food bank. Through the warehouses in Milwaukee and the Fox Valley, more than 15 million pounds of food a year is distributed to more than 1,000 pantries, meal programs and other nonprofit agencies that serve 330,000 people in eastern Wisconsin. Through the Milwaukee distribution center, food is provided to nearly 800 nonprofit programs in nine counties. The Fox Valley branch provides food to nearly 300 nonprofit programs in 27 counties.

We participated in the Meals for Minds program, which is an innovative program created by Target with the goal of feeding undernourished children so they can perform well in school.  Since 2010, Target has awarded Feeding America programs nationwide with grant money in order to make this event possible.  Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin is organizing monthly distributions from September through May at Forest Home Elementary School.  During each distribution, each child enrolled at the school receives 22 lbs. of food, of which 25% of that total consists of fresh produce. 

The Meals for Minds event takes place at Forest Home Elementary School, 1516 W. Forest Home Ave, in Milwaukee. The volunteer shift is from 3:15 to 6:30 pm. Volunteers are needed for various tasks including, but not limited to: bagging produce and other food items, assembling and dressing tables, prepping food cartons for distribution, breaking down cardboard, monitoring the food as it is distributed, restocking tables, bringing chilled cases from the truck, and clean up. 

Susan Kay, Jane Jones, and Rachel Gwidt were bagging the fresh produce, which included items like onions, celery, oranges, potatoes, tomatoes, etc., and distributing it once the families came through.  I was helping get plastic bags ready for the produce, and then was in charge of distributing loaves of bread to the families.  Each family would get two loaves of bread per child that was enrolled in the school.  I was told by a Feeding America employee, Gina, that around 500 families received food last month.  Gina is hoping that after the grant that Target provided runs out, they will be able to find more financial support to continue this program. 

The next opportunity is on March 22, 2012.  If you are interested in volunteering, please contact Chad Weston Gardner at cwgardner@feedingamericawi.org or 414-831-6310.

Court Reporters – Take Care Of Your Livelihood!

By Quinn Copeland – Computer Expert

Disk Cleanup

                During the lifetime of a computer, files will be downloaded, programs will be installed, web pages will be browsed and things will be deleted.  These temporary files can take up quite a bit of hard drive space if not managed properly.  Disk cleanup is a centralized tool that will allow you to delete multiple unnecessary files with one easy step. 

                Go to Start, Programs, Accessories, System Tools and click on Disk Cleanup.  On this box, you have the ability to check the boxes of the folders you want to clean up as well as compress old files.

Hard Cleaning:

Fans

                PCs generate lots of heat for something so small.  As the system becomes taxed with more and more, the system has to run harder to keep up.  As it runs harder, it also produces more heat.  It is possible that it can overheat, although most systems have a safety trigger to shut down before this happens.  Fans are built into the case to keep your system from overheating and shutting down.

                When fans are being blocked, proper air flow through the case is hindered.  If this happens, other fans will have to compensate if they can.  If not, your system could shut down while in the middle of something.  Keep a good few inches of space around the case of the computer to aid the fans in doing their job.

                As the fans pull air through the case, they carry anything in the air with them.  Dust, hair, debris – anything light enough to get sucked through the grate will cover the inside of your computer.  All the large items will get trapped on the outside of the fan.  This blockage makes keeping your PC cool a challenge.  Cleaning off the outside of the fan vents is very easy to do.

                While your system is off (so nothing gets caught in the fan blades), use a brush to sweep away any material building up on the outside of the case.  Canned air can work, but you risk spraying moisture inside of the computer and that may burn out your motherboard.  If your case is fairly dirty, it may not be a bad idea to contact the Help Desk to check on the inside of the unit.

                For those with laptops, many models have fans on the bottom of the unit.  If this is blocked, they are more susceptible to overheating.  A flat surface that does not conduct heat is ideal for laptops (unfortunately your lap is not included in this list).  Also, there may be vents on the outside of the laptop to allow hot air to escape.  Blocking these vents prevent this from happening – keep these clear.

Extreme Circumstances

Following these steps will help your system to run at peak performance during the PCs lifetime, but eventually you will notice system slowdowns.  If you experience severe system lag, I.T. can do a full system restore for you.  During this procedure, we will backup your data and do a full reinstallation of software for you.  Sometimes this is the only way to get your PC running as smooth as day one.

                Just know that this is a lengthy procedure and may take a full work day to complete.  Depending on many factors (data backup time, special software installation and data restore) we could have a turnaround of less than a few hours.

Court Reporters And Their Computers – Error Checking

By Quinn Compeland, Computer Expert

                When data is being added to and deleted from a hard drive, eventually areas of the drive may become unstable and possibly unreadable.  When this happens, your system may experience more lag than usual – and it could take a long time to boot as well.

                Error Checking scans the hard drive for bad “sectors” and attempts to fix the sector or move the files off of the bad sector.  If the sector has been flagged as unreadable, the computer will  avoid putting files into that sector.  There are other things that can be done to recover the sector, but they are called low level formatting and destroy all data on the drive.

                When you want to run an Error Checking (also known as CheckDisk), right click the hard drive and choose Properties.  Go to the Tools tab and click on the button Check Now.  Check both of the boxes and click on Start.  Note – this process will not run on the Windows partition until the computer has been restarted – it should prompt you to schedule it after the next restart if that is the case.

                During the next boot, you should see a blue screen appear with a status of the current scan.  The less errors you have, the faster this scan will be.  This scan can easily take one hour to run.

Court Reporters And Their Computers….

By Quinn Copeland – Computer Expert – Part 1

Good day to you!

Computers are a machine, and much like other machines they need fine tuning to maintain their smooth running status.  Unlike your car, PCs do not need lubrication – but they do require cleaning every now and again. 

Here you will find basic PC maintenance tips to keep your system running as best it can!

Soft Cleaning:

Disk Defragmentation

                Computers write files to your hard drive in a way that somewhat resembles an old record being played.  It is linear (at first) and writes in one clean direction.  As time goes on, files get deleted and gaps become present in what used to be a smooth path.  Your computer recognizes these gaps as free space and will fill data into the gaps before continuing the new path.  This causes file fragmentation. 

                Now, imagine a record player’s needle playing a song where the needle had to skip around on the LP/vinyl – first it would sound awful.  Second, it would take you five minutes to listen to a four minute song.  Same concept applies to your hard drive when it tries to read/open a file.

                Luckily there is an easy fix for this – Disk Defragmentation.  Defragmenting your drive is easy to do and can be completed without you being there (preferred).  Right click the drive you want to defragment in My Computer, click on Properties and click on the tools tab.  Finally click on Defragment Now… to bring up the process. 

When you defragment, the red bars show fragmented files; defragmenting attempts to move the files into that linear path for better access/read times.  For best performance, your PC should be left idle.

Can an Old Dog Learn New Tricks?

When I was in court reporting school, I was taught that once a stroke is ingrained in your fingers, it was hard to undo.  I’m assuming this was emphasized to promote accurate practice or something.  I don’t really know. 

Then I went to work for Brown & Jones Reporting.  When I first started out as a court reporter, I was unhappy with my “messy” writing, but I didn’t know how to go about changing it.  I wanted to write cleaner.  Jane told me about how she had changed her writing years ago in an effort to write real time.  I was very impressed, but I scoffed at the idea at first, thinking it would be too hard to do.  I figured Jane was just an exceptional writer and probably out of the ordinary.  I thought, well, she may have been able to do it, but there’s no way I can.  Then she suggested a pretty straightforward way to go about it.  Basically, I just printed out a weekly list of things I wanted to change and taped it to my laptop.  During my jobs, I would stare at the list.  I would try and really THINK about what I was doing instead of just writing in auto pilot.   She also told me to take the old way out of my dictionary and enter the new outline.  That way, whenever I screwed up, I got instant feedback.

Even though the theory I learned in school was real time, a big thing for me that I wanted to change was I had been taught to write all my numbers out.  Eleven was LEFN.  Twelve was TWEFL, and so on.  We were given the option of whether or not to use the number keys.  I opted not to, and found that later on, I felt like I would be better off utilizing the number keys after all.  It seemed much handier for dollar amounts and dates, et cetera.  It was difficult to adjust to at first, but now I’m completely used to writing my numbers from the number bar.  Once I mastered that change, I realized with the proper effort and attention, I could continue to make changes to my writing, no matter how big or small.

Obviously, changing anything about one’s writing is an individual, personal choice, but I guess the long and short of what I’m saying is no matter how or when we learned to write, we have the ability to keep honing our skill.  Real time is definitely the future of steno, so I will continue to work on passing the real time test and becoming a certified real time writer.  I am really lucky to work for a company that has so many talented writers that are such great role models.

Rachel Gwidt, Certified Wisconsin Court Reporter

Andrea Reichle’s Mission Trip To Haiti

On January  12, 2010, a 7.0 M earthquake hit the country of Haiti, near the Port-au-Prince, which is the capital.  By January 24, at least 52 aftershocks measuring 4.5 or greater had been recorded.  An estimated 3 million people were affected by the quake.  The 2010 earthquake has been rated as the third deadliest in history. 

In June of 2010, I was able to join a group from Elmbrook Church who were going to Haiti for a week to learn of some opportunities to be involved with doing mission work.  Our group split up once we arrived in Haiti.  I was on the team that went to Jeremie, which is at the western end of the Haitian peninsula.  It is a 45-minute flight from PAP or around a nine-hour drive from PAP due to the road conditions being so poor in parts.

While we were there, we worked with a doctor, Dr. Katie Wolf, and a nurse, Cherlie Severe.  Their non-profit organization is called Friends for Health in Haiti.  They currently have a small clinic that is located around 11 miles outside of Jeremie in a village called Gatineau.  It takes about an hour, hour-and-a-half to drive there due to road conditions.  Their patients are generally within a four-hour walking radius of the clinic site.  On clinic days, which is now Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday, there are around 40-50 people that come for treatment.  One of our goals was to figure out a solution for designing a bridge over a creek to build a bigger clinic facility.  There were a few medical people on our team, as well, that got to help in the clinic one day.

Over the last year and a half, plans have been in the works, and the construction has begun on the land.  I recently got to return to Haiti with a group of nine men.  The men had various degrees of experience in construction and were put to use right away.  We built a hut to be used as a temporary pharmacy, chairs and benches that will be used at the clinic, shelving, etc.  There will be future teams going with construction and medical experience.

It is important for Americans to remember those around the world that don’t have as much as we do and to help in a way that will be beneficial for the people and the country.  Little has been done with the money that got donated to the country shortly after the quake.  There is still much poverty and devastation from the earthquake in Haiti.   Do your research before donating to an organization.  Consider taking a mission trip to a third-world country to open your eyes to cultures around us and how you can make a difference. 

COURT REPORTERS – DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THE LEGAL COMMA?

Bad Grammar/Good Punctuation – Margie Wakeman Wells

Though we may not see the final comma in various print media, we need to make it a practice to use it.  In reporting, it is important to clearly distinguish between the possibility that the last two members of a series are distinct things (and therefore need to be separated) or that they form a unit (and therefore should not be separated).  Thus, we want to always use the comma before the conjunction when the two elements are separate and distinct so that not using the comma ties the two elements together.

Ham, tuna, egg salad, and turkey ….. where there are four choices.

Ham, tuna, peanut butter and jelly….where there are three choices.

The use of this comma in court reporting has a basis in law.  A case in New Jersey many years ago found a man arguing that he could not be found to be serving liquor to a minor because he did not own any of the establishments mentioned in the law.  The law read along the lines of “…liquor cannot be served to a minor in a cafeteria, a diner, a lounge, a restaurant…” and ended with the words “bar and grill” without the comma.

The man argued that he owned a bar and that bar was not on the list, that only bar and grill was on the list.  He won.  The law was actually sent back to the legislature for the insertion of the comma.  A similar case involved “parks and recreation” and was similarly decided.  For this reason, this comma is often called the “legal” comma.

Examples:

..….cafeteria, bar, and grill… where there are three separate elements.

……cafeteria, bar and grill…. Where there are only two elements.

If we always use the comma with the final conjunction when the items are separate, it will be clear that no comma means the two items form a unit.

Jane M. Jones
Registered Merit Reporter
Certified Realtime Reporter