I sat down to work around 11:51p and struggled with the first HIT I settled on for the night. Took me a little over 22 minutes to transcribe a 3:38 clip. A little deflating, but it wasn't a big deal. I decided not to do anymore of that series to see if I could find something quicker. Early on in the proofread for the next HIT, my DSL went out. I finished the work, sat and stewed for a few minutes, then decided to transfer my work to my laptop and hit the road. There's a library with free public WiFi about ten minutes away that uses a different ISP, so I was hoping I'd be able to connect from the parking lot tonight when I hadn't been able to earlier in the day. The car dashboard said it was 29F outside when I pulled up and I wasn't looking forward to standing in front of the doors with my laptop shining like a beacon, begging to be stolen. Plus it was cooooooooooold. But I did get a signal from inside the car, weak as it was. I sent my transcript to mTurk and checked my email before heading home. Waiting for me was a grade 9 bonus for that first transcription. That totally made the drive worth it. I came home and the DSL was back on. Not too long after, another payment rolled in for the work I had sent to mTurk from the library parking lot. It was another 9. All made possible by a great library that leaves its free WiFi on at night, and the 3.5 hours that CastingWord gives you for all their transcription HITs. Yeah, it was a 10 minute drive that worked out. But had it not, it was half an hour to the next public WiFi and another half hour to get back home. All in all, not a bad way to start the night. Eventful, if nothing else.
It so is. And yay on your 9s! Nicely done all around. If only they gave you bonuses just for physical effort, too.
I've had power outages when I've had a stack of work lined up. It was NOT fun. I ended up crossing my fingers hoping that the power would come back. CW is usually understanding about this kind of thing as long as you let them know what happened. I've even had a couple times when I accidentally submitted a blank HIT, but I emailed them the work in the file format they use and all was good.
Had the DSL go out again this morning. Was out for three hours before I rebooted the DSL modem and it came back. Got the HIT in under the timer (by 20 minutes) but with three hours wasted, my window for working was gone.