Scribble Scratch Squiggle Smear

[struggle4progress]

Moron that I am, I have cheerfully volunteered to help with data entry, using a list somebody collected somewhere last week

Perhaps if I stare hard enough at this gibberish, I'll intimidate some of this illegible mess into giving up its deep secrets

Ugh

1 vote, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	I made some random marks on that page. What the fuck more could anyone possibly want?
	1 (100%)
	Been there. Done that.
	0 (0%)
	Oh, are you that jackass who mispronounced my name tonight?
	0 (0%)
	Well, we just gotta organize the public we actually have, not the public we wish had
	0 (0%)
	Why didn't anyone ever call me after I signed up?
	0 (0%)
	Yeah, some people are a trip. Some are a long strange trip -- but they're still a trip
	0 (0%)
	Hey! You could at least be grateful I didn't print: my printing is even worse than my scrawl!
	0 (0%)
	Always look on the bright side of life, bud
	0 (0%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[Liberal_in_LA]

1. good luck

[struggle4progress]

3. I ended up using ESP or my superhero powers or some deep unconscious discernment thingy a lot:

stare at the scribbly squiggles until filled with a profound and irrational conviction that the name could only be John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt or whatever; rinse and repeat

[petronius]

2. If it's any use to you, Excel has a very easy to use random number generator...

[struggle4progress]

4. I needed a random name generator

[Electric Monk]

6. Would you believe... there's a website for that?

http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/gen-random-us-us.php

[petronius]

8. OK, go find the results from a bike race or 5K or something with lots of

competitors. Split the first and last names into separate columns, sort them each randomly, and stick them back together.


I'm sorry, that sounds really tedious. I'm reminded of one of my first internship jobs - years ago - was to proofread a whole bunch of Materials Safety Data Sheets that had been typed in by an outside data entry company. Very not fun...

[cherokeeprogressive]

5. As someone who used to teach Data Entry all I can say is sometimes understanding the context helps.

I used to use invoices that were more or less unreadable but when my students understood the context such as hardware store invoices... pharmacy scrips... traffic tickets... we could most times come up with content everyone could agree upon.

[struggle4progress]

7. I knew the context, and the pages were columns allegedly containing various people's

names, emails, phone numbers, etc so they could volunteer to beat back some of the tsunami of craziness washing out of our legislature:

I want to help! Here's my name Squiggle and email Scribble!