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Another Day in the Life - Blackouts

So we're going merrily along and all of a sudden the lights go out. Darn it!! Long story short, there was a black out.

I have recently had my writer shimmed and made paperless. Also, I have a Stentura 8000. The battery is shot. I always run on electricity. I got it refurbished about a year ago, but then it ran down again and will no longer hold a charge.

So basically, I had about 2.5 hours on my laptop. I think there were batteries in my digital recorder, but I could not write to my writer. Nor did I want to honestly. There was no way I could do manual. My writer was shimmed so the platen doesn't advance very far at all. And then I would have had to use my paper notes to produce a transcript. I've gotten very spoiled. The thought of having to go through the paper notes to produce my transcript made me shudder.

So we had to adjourn and come back the second day for Volume II. The attorney said that he only had a half an hour left. Hah!!. Three hours and 119 pages later, he finally concludes Volume II.

So if we had continued on the night before, I would not have gotten done until after 8:30 p.m. My laptop probably wouldn't have lasted that long w/out power. My battery only lasts about 2.5 hours with heavy usage. And using our realtime software is heavy usage.

Also, they wanted rough drafts and a 1-day and 2-day expedite on everything. There's no way I would have been able to do that from paper notes.

So things to learn.

When an attorney says he has half an hour, don't believe them
If the power goes out in the building, call it quits.

On a positive note. At least the elevators were working and I didn't have to haul equipment down 9 flights of stairs.

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Comment by kathy - iamwrdsmth on September 21, 2009 at 22:01: wow!! all your stories makes me think about backups, too!!
I have the disk in my writer, and my computer.
hummmm perhaps I need another?
kathy

Comment by Sharla Preciado on September 21, 2009 at 21:31: I was thinking it would be overkill to e-mail my eclipse file to myself before leaving a job, but after reading those horror stories, I'm thinking that's not such a bad idea. At least then my notes would be backed up out in cyberspace waiting for me in case of a computer crash or automobile crash on the way home that destroyed my writer and/or laptop.

Comment by Kyung on September 3, 2009 at 8:08: Oooohhh. So sorry. I never erase the notes from the disk until job is done and paid for. I also back up. I've had my computer crash too.