I am dictating this blog on my new iPad .

Unlike James Patterson and the woman who writes the Stephanie Plum novels, I am not comfortable with dictation. If I had been writing this, I would have googled the woman's name but I do not know if googling is supported on the voice wrecking. I see that it has substituted wrecking for recognition. I wonder if it does this all the time?

It also seems to take about 30 seconds to process every sentence I dictate.

Let's see if it knows some good old English vernacular: shit, fuck, asshole. Oh good! Now I can dictate that letter to the Toyota service department and participate in the next open salon dustup.

Here is why I decided I needed an iPad:

Kathy(not the way she sells her name), my wife, is retiring at the end of this week. I have been retired for the last 3 1/2 years. We will be together 24 seven for the first time in the 41 years we have been married. I am sure we will get along fine but I'm also sure they will be areas of conflict. One such area will be computer access. We recently purchased an Apple laptop and now it is the only computer that either of us use. I mainly do my writing blogs etc. on the Apple and she does whatever she does on the same computer. It is not an issue now because I use it during the day, and she is usually on when she gets home in the evening. (I am learning that if you speak in big chunks, This thing processes just as fast as if you speak in short bursts. So I guess I will be speaking in big chunks though I am strictly a little chunk thinker.)

I decided that since most of what I do is wordprocessing or playing around on the Internet, an iPad might be the answer to our problem. So off I went to the Apple Store to hook myself up with a new toy. I realize upon arrival that the week before school on a Saturday afternoon may not have been the best time to shop. The place was jammed. But, fortunately, there seem to be as many geniuses as loitering teenagers.

Soon I was assigned my own genius a very nice young man who is also the pastor of a storefront church in Bridgewater New Jersey. I described my needs and said that I thought they could be accommodated by an iPad and a Bluetooth keyboard. He felt, however, that I might need a new computer. I said that I have a $700 budget for this project and that a new  PowerBook would cost at least three times this amount. I was convinced that iPad, a good word processing app, and the right keyboard would solve my problem. I felt I needed a full keyboard because as awkward as I am dictating I am equally awkward typing. After an hour of trying various keyboards and various means of supporting the screen I settled upon a full-size keyboard and something called an origami keyboard case. After consultation with my genius and several others, I learned that the only real word processing app is Apple's pages. It seems that Microsoft in its wisdom wisdom does not make a word app for portable devices. The good news here is that you can save pages documents as word documents so that I can access them as word documents on the PowerBook computer. The pages app can also open word files so that I can move files from my PowerBook to the iPad. Currently, the only way I can move documents back and forth between the two machines is by emailing them to myself. However, I am told that with the new upgrade to the Apple operating system, Mountain lion, I will be able to move documents to the quotation marks cloud and quotation marks.

I purchased the pages app for $10. So far the set up has proved to be more than then I could have expected. This dictation thing is a bonus. After doing one blog in this format I am not so sure that I like it. I just don't think this way. A sad commentary I suppose on my abilities as a conversationalist.

I have decided to let this thing run pretty much the way it came off the dictation program. I cleaned it up where either my pronunciation through (like here) the program off or where I double clutched in the middle of the sentence. Tenses and contractions give it a problem.I guess with a little practice I will get better at this but quite frankly don't know whether it's worth the effort. Hopefully many of you who have issues with typing might find this a useful way to go with your blogging. Although you all probably know this already. By the time I get onto some new technology it is already on the way out the door.