Last Updated on: 21st April 2015, 04:32 pm
Here are a few things I’ve been thinking about. I thought about putting some of them in my last monster thoughts post, but it was starting to take on a life of its own, so I figured I’d best save them for another time.
My friend told me a story about something they saw while out at Wal-Mart. My friend saw someone, I can’t remember if it was a dude or a chick, come into Wal-mart with a yapping small dog in a crate. when the greeter said the dog couldn’t come into the store, the person claimed it was a service dog, and then shoved past the greeter, running over his feet with their cart!
Ok, first of all, what’s a dog going to do for you if it’s in a box? Never mind that it’s acting like a tool, how is it going to perform a service while in a crate?
And second, none of us have the right to shove past people and just barge into the store, running over the greeter. In days gone by, when things were still being fought for, people had to do that a lot more, but that was a different time. Even then, I doubt anyone would physically bowl folks over. If the person had a real service dog, they would have either called the police themselves or asked to speak to a manager or something. Crunching the greeter’s feet with the cart just isn’t acceptable. But this does make me ask a question. What if the greeter calls the police on person with yappy dog in the box, and because police have been educated that service animals are granted access, the police tell the greeter they can’t be the judge of whether or not a dog is a legitimate service animal, so they have to let the dog in? Would that happen? Or would the police be able to ask questions like “why is the service animal in a box?”
I don’t know why each case like this bugs me so much. Hopefully all this crap can get straightened out and, when the dust settles, there will be very few legitimate service dogs who get denied access when they shouldn’t.
Remember when I was talking about my troubles with Meetup? Well, I think there might be some progress. they said I should talk to the manufacturers of my screen-reader, so I did. I then spoke to Meetup to ask if there was a way for them to give my screen-reader developers a dummy account so they could see the page that was giving me so much trouble. After much back and forth, to the point that I had to get snippy and ask that they please read my messages before responding, I think we’re getting somewhere. They agreed to give a coupon to the good folks at Freedom Scientific. Now all I have to do is get the folks at Freedom Scientific to follow through. We will see.
This brings me to a small tech support pet peeve I have. Lately, when you open a tech support issue with any company, you are given a ticket number, and “in order to expedite things,” you are supposed to use this ticket number when sending any emails to do with said issue. So, why is it that when I do use the ticket number, half the time, I get responses that look like the support person hasn’t read the whole history of the issue? isn’t the reason for the ticket number so that the tech support folks can quickly track the history of an issue? If they’re not going to track the history, why bother having these ticket numbers? Then tech support folks wonder why they get messages that say “Please read my message fully before responding.” I know I sound like a bitch, but if we’re supposed to be improving efficiency, let’s improve it. I usually don’t get mad until I’ve gone back and forth on an issue a few times. Then I wonder why I’m keeping this number at all, and I get a little mad. If there was no reference number, I would be more understanding. But there is a system in place. People, use it!
I complain a lot about people, but I’d like to thank a lady who I ran into the other day. It was that hot day when I saw those dogs in that hot car. Stupidly at the last stop, I hadn’t gotten some water for Trixie. I had her dish, but I just hadn’t asked for water. Suddenly, Trixie was asking for water. This side of the street was pretty residential. I could have crossed back over, but that parking lot was insane, so I didn’t relish doing that. So, I got under a tree and waited for someone to pass so I could ask them if there was a little store nearby that I could nip into and get Trix some water. Soon enough, a lady came by on a bike. I asked her, and the news wasn’t good. But she said she only lived five houses away, so she’d just run home and get some water. For that, I was eternally grateful.
It’s funny. Whenever I do any of these little jobs testing a website, noone can understand what I do. It’s like they ask me what I do and then get confused or tune out half-way through. It was especially bad the last time. People would sort of get that I made sure a website worked well with JAWS, but when they asked me what that website was, they were super confused. I would tell them it was more than just a website, it was the system used by lots of schools to handle their online course stuff. So the schools would make the courses, this company’s system would make the courses’ online stuff run. And then I’d get a blank look. I should just say I do computers or I do internet things. I think that might work.
I think that’s about it for now. Hmmm. that came to a quick end.