Future Aids

I’ve found a new place to buy things. What kind of things? Braille things. Talking things. All kinds of neat things. They’re cheap. They have neat descriptions of their things. Some of them even have instruction sheets you can read. I just bought a talking pedometer, and you can listen to its voice. It only cost me 7 bucks to buy it! They even have dymo-labeler tape for cheap! Wooo! Plus, this place will braille things you want brailled. Business cards, menus, cards, whatever. How sweet!

The people who wrote up the site are wacky. I don’t think I’ve ever added something to my shopping cart and had a dialog appear that says “righto! We’ll add that right away!” ever before.

Something else cool about them is they’re open long, long hours. You could probably call them anytime and have a good chance of getting someone.

The final cool thing about this store is if you’re in Canada or the U.S, they ship their things via free matter for the blind! I have never ever ever seen that before. How awesome is that?

So, if you’re in the market for something blinky, head over to www.FutureAids.com! Maybe they’ll have just the thing for you.

In other technological thing-related news, it appears the BookPort and related support isn’t as gone as I thought. They actually just released an update for the transfer software, and there’s still a faint hope that BookPort II may be made. the support people are going the extra mile to help me solve my problem, as it baffles them too. Oh no. Why do I always find the big problems? But at least I have the BookPort big guns on the case.

Trouble In Paradise?

Ooo! this humdinger conclusion of a wedding night fits into a couple of categories. There’s of course the predictable category of humdinger wedding night conclusions, but also the groom is a dentist!

This story has what the hell written all over it. Why did he Karate kick her? Why did she fight off people coming to her aid? Why heave live plants at elevators? And the one that makes me laugh the hardest, why was he arraigned wearing tuxedo pants, a bloody shirt, and one shoe? I mean, I know booze was involved, but by all accounts, she was more boozed up than he was. Why did he end up in rougher shape? I thought it was funny that one of the hapless victims who came to her aid got a tooth knocked out. maybe, as part of some kind of settlement, the groom can do some free dental work for the person. But would they want that?

Mike’s Hard Lesson

I’m glad we have services in place to protect kids, when they work. It’s too bad they either don’t notice abuse going on until it is too late, or snatch kids seemingly unnecessarily.

Somehow, Christopher Ratte didn’t realize he had bought his 7-year-old son Leo Mike’s Hard Lemonade at a ballgame. He asked for lemonade, and the guy gave him a Mike’s Hard. The kid was drinking it, and then a security guard came and told the father that the drink was alcoholic. He was shocked, but the guard snatched it, called police and then things went straight to hell. they took Leo to the hospital to make sure he was ok. I get that. then they made an order to remove him from the home, and social workers came to get him at the hospital. Even social workers seemed annoyed that they were taking the kid, but they could only follow orders. Uh, what happened to taking everything on a case by case basis?

When relatives came to get the poor, traumatized boy, Child Protective Services workers told them they couldn’t see him until they had a hotel room. They got one, and when they came back, Leo was taken to an undisclosed foster home. What the hell?

Finally, somebody saw reason, and let the boy go back to his mother. But they didn’t completely see reason because they tried to make dear old supposed booze-feeding dad stay in a hotel for a while. Then someone else finished off the ability to see reason and dismissed that bullshit.

What the? It was an odd mistake, but it was just that. It was a mistake. I could think of worse things a parent could be doing to their kid.

Dog First-Aid Course

I figured I’d post this here to spread the word any way I can.

Remember back in that Trixie post where a dog came at us out of nowhere? That really scared the hell out of me. I thought about how isolated it is on that little stretch. I wondered what I would do if a dog ever laid its teeth into Trixie. Would I be able to stop the bleeding? What if something else happened? Would I be able to stabilize her until I could get her to a vet?

This led me on a quest for doggy first-aid classes. You wouldn’t believe how difficult this is! I called my vet, and they gave me a number for a company in B.C. I called them, and they offered some classes in Toronto, but nothing closer. Since their classes were 2-day classes, that would mean I would have to stay somewhere. I didn’t think that would work. I contacted them, and asked about what would be involved in scheduling a private class in Guelph if I could get enough people together, and when they found out I was bllind, they just about flipped their lid. They wanted me to attend one of their already existing classes and bring someone along to be my eyes. Uh, how about no?

I eventually found Corinna Bollmann’s site, where she offers the course at Doggie Minder, her doggy daycare in Pickering. I emailed her and started asking her about how easy it was to bus from guelph to Pickering, and explained why I wanted to take the course. To my surprise, she offered to come to Guelph! She said she’d never taught a blind person the doggy first-aid course, but she was willing to try stuff if I was willing to be a guinea pig. In fact, she was hoping to get a group of blinks together to all be guinea pigs for her. She wants a group of four students in the class. I thought sure, if I can get some people together.

It sounds like an interesting course. She even wants to explain what makes a good dogfood, and other doggy health tips that I think it would be great to know. It’s always good to learn about different things that aren’t always discussed by your vet.

So, if you’re interested and can come to Guelph on Saturday, May 10, please let me know. The course runs from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and the cost is $100. Shoot me an email if you want more details.

I’m really looking forward to this course. I hope I never have to use it, but it’s always good to have another tool in my belt.

Skullcrusher Craigslist

That’s just slightly goofy. I just finished posting an ad on craigslist, and there’s a part where you have to fill in the word verification box. They do have audio, pretty good audio that does phonetic spellings for letters so you know exactly what to type, like “h as in hotel.” But you’ll never guess what’s being used as distraction noise around the voice speaking the letters to type. The beginning to Skullcrusher Mountain by Jonathan Coulton! That’s just wacky. I emailed him about it. Let’s see if he knew about that.

Strange Questions In The Google Searches

28 Apr, Mon, 06:20:44
Google:
is superantispyware a piece of shit?

Interesting. It sounds like you’re having a bad run of luck with it. No, it’s pretty good. It found about a zillion cookies that Ad-Aware never found. Plus, if it makes a mistake, you can tell the company so. One time, it thought one of the files in a Kitchens Inc game was an evil Golden Palace Casino file, so I toldit nope, you’re wrong. Now that Ad-Aware doesn’t work with JAWS, I’m all over SuperAntiSpyware. Why did you think it was a piece of shit? You’ll probably never answer me, but oh well.

RG: Really Great If It Works

After reading this story about the testing of an RFID Tag-reading robot designed to help blind shoppers around the store, I am a pendulum swinging from “cool idea!” to “oh shit we’re in trouble.” Come swing with me a while.

Weee! We’re up in the “cool idea!” area. That would be sweet to walk into some big store and say “Can I borrow your RG robot?” and walk around the store in search of whatever I want without having to bug store staff, feel like I’m taking up too much of their time, or decide quickly what I would like without price-comparing. It would be cool to read a braille directory of what was in the store and then go find it.

Weee! After a spine-tingling corkscrew turn, we’re over in the “oh shit we’re in trouble.” area. First off, it claims the robot will guide you around people and things. What if it fails? What if you and 22-pound R2D2 just pound some unfortunate customers into mush because it didn’t perceive them until you did, and told it to stop?

I think it’s awesome that it has a braille directory, but I’ve seen how often things in braille are updated. Has anyone been at a restaurant, asked for a braille menu, looked at it, ordered something off it, and had the waitress go “You want a what? Oh! That was on our menu years ago!” Now imagine trying to buy stuff at a store that they no longer carry, but is stil in the directory. If it wasn’t happening to you, it would be really funny. Imagine you’re a blind man looking for a shirt. RG plants you in front of an aisle full of women’s panties and tries to claim it’s men’s shirts. Oh boy.

On top of that, there are a lot of places where other people are going to screw up its ability to work. As of now, it can only take you to the colgate aisle and tell you what part of the shelf holds the thing you want. If someone moves it, or throws something in there that isn’t Colgate, it has no idea. Just think of how many times customers and staf rearrange things.

And, what if the battery fails or you just can’t seem to get the message through to RG. Will it have a “call a staff” function? People love their independence, but they won’t feel so independent marooned in the women’s panties aisle trying to talk to this stupid machine who insists it’s men’s shirts or can only beep “battery low, please recharge.”

Next, I wonder about RG’s durability. If he’s always in the shop, he’s not practical.

My biggest fear is that stores will be of the opinion that RG will replace customer service for us. They will forget that some of us might not read braille. Others may not understand the voice. Others may need something complex that RG won’t be able to provide. I think it’s a great option, as long as store staff see it as such. It is an option. It is something else to try.

I read this post, and I feel like an old fart. I hear another part of me saying “Without people trying new things, you wouldn’t be typing on this computer. You wouldn’t have a cellphone that talks. Hell, you may not even have a white cane! Stop raining on RG’s parade.” I’m not trying to say it sucks. I just worry that there is too much potential for human error to get in the way. If Vladimir Kulyukin and his team of researchers can eliminate some of that potential for failure, I’ll march into my nearest store that uses one and proudly try out Mr. RG. Now that would be cool. The poor robot would have to contend with a sniffing dog at its heels…which brings me to another question. Are the developers considering guide dog interactions? Could you even manage a dog and it? Both are trying to guide you. even if you heeled the dog, what if RG perceived the dog as an obstacle? Or worse, what if it hurt the dog because it didn’t notice it’s sniffing nose and trampled it? Isn’t there a lot of risk of traumatizing the dog?

All I’m saying is I hope blind folks are having some input into its design so we can think out some of the potential flaws. Until then, I’ll stick with a human customer service rep. Humans don’t usually spout out error messages or strange codes.

Bad Poetry

I said I would find this old poem. It appears I have. Probably no one will find this funny except Steve and me. Oh well.

I was on that user’s list of folks who used the ELba, and one of them got all mushy gushy about his ELba. I believe he was from Germany or something, so his English wasn’t so good, which explains the, well, bad English in his poem. He wrote:

Braillex Elba

Come on as you like to be!
Come on get your efficiency!
Cause this Braille display is fine,
It is an Efficiency line.
Move as quickly as a star,
With its easy access bar.

In the conference room, not in the road,
It is easy to take a note.

This device is not a trap!
You can easily browse the web.

And whilst snake mail will some times fail!
Check and read your email in Braille.

Through big calculations you don’t look through,
The calculator will work for you.

On the train, not in the station!
Do your spreadsheet calculation.

Some times you forget a date,
And some times you come too late!
That all will be over, now!
The Dayplanner will show you how.

Read in peace, not in the road,
Use PC, combined and navigation mode.

Papenmeier is always fair,
A virtual cursor is also there.

On the Elba things are easy to reach!
Easy configurable Braille and speech.

Operating is an easy dance!
Do it, using Linux commands.

I believe after I read that piece of, well, something or other, smoke came out of my ears. Why I couldn’t be content to let him have his glorious view of the thing, I don’t know. I mean, he wrote a poem about some computer device. That speaks volumes for how rich and full of human contact his life was. But this was too much for me to bear. At the time, I was not a very happy person, and this whole experience with the ELba wasn’t helping. Steve, in an attempt to keep me from hoofing it to either New Jersey or Germany to kick some ass, told me we should try and write our own poem. This seemed to bring things down to a reasonable level. I wrote the following:

I just read the poem from you,
And I don’t doubt your words so true
But now please hear this poem of mine,
The words herein are not so fine.

I sent my ELba for repair,
Off to New Jersey, way down there.
The flash card would not activate,
And I thought they could set it straight.

For several weeks it languished there,
In a state of disrepair.
The stories they were told to me,
First the fault of New Jersey, then Germany.

The tall tales they would change each day,
For why it was not sent back up here, eh.
After 6 long weeks, the package came,
Good as new, or so they’d claim.
But discovered I, to my shame,
Alas, the unit still was lame.

I tried to see if my problem was gone,
But alas, it would not power on.
For a while, I tried and tried,
Hoping that it had not died.

I called New Jersey for support,
But all I got were odd retorts.
They told me the reason it had died,
Was because I pushed the card inside.
They said reflashing was the cause
A remark that truly gave me pause.
For if this were true I say,
Wouldn’t something be on the braille display?

They told me the charger should have a buzz,
But I don’t recall that it does.
They told me I did not need a new case,
They told me this right to my face.
But the current one with Velcro wrong,
I know won’t hold out very long.

The repair requests that we had sent,
I wonder where the heck they went.
No fax, no phone, and no email,
Did all three systems truly fail?

Now they’ve shipped me a power chord,
But I fear I need a circuit board.
For with this new one being used,
To power up, it still refused.

My ELba’s not quick as a fox,
As it lays dead inside its box.
That’s my story I do say,
How much are Braille Notes Anyway?

Oddly, after that little piece of poetry, everybody hated me on that list. But it got the attention of the company in New Jersey, and much more success than I had been having. So there, there’s the silly poem I was referring to. God I feel geeky today.

Jibber Jabber, Chit Chat, and Tech Talk

I don’t know what’s up with me right now, but I’m full of this unfocused, nervous energy. I’m about as distracted as Trixie after she just saw a pup she likes. I thought maybe, just maybe, I could write a post and get that energy out. So here’s some randomness…ooo! A squirrel!

I find the latest commercial slogan for Swiss Chalet really disturbing. IT is “family happens at Swiss Chalet.” Uh, what’s in the sauce? Is it an aphrodisiac? I don’t really want to see tables of folk making family happen. Ug. Maybe I’m just weird, but I don’t think that was the image they were going for. Oh, and those fake Swiss Chalet hotline clips are so beyond fake, especially knowing how zombified the Swiss Chalet phone drones are.

What is with us liking the concept of failure piles? I saw a commercial for the Burger King breakfast wrap. It had bacon, eggs, and hash browns, covered in a smoky cheese sauce. A what what what? I was cool with the bacon and eggs, I was starting to raise my eyebrows at the hash browns, but smoky cheese sauce? Why not just melt some cheese on it? What’s with the sauce? What’s with the need to turn everything to mush? Has anyone tried one ? Is it good? It has the famous/chicken bowl effect. I almost want to try it, then recoil at the thought of smoky cheese sauce.

So if you live in Toronto right now, you probably want to track down and strangle every Toronto Transit Commission worker you can find. They said they came to an agreement, and now, without warning, wammo! They went on strike! The story on the news was the usual cross-section of people cursing the drivers, not caring, saying they’d walk to work, yada yada yada. Then a TTC driver came on the TV, and showed himself to be douchebag of the hour. He said, “I sympathize with the riders, but I have to do what’s right for me. It’s my livelyhood. I mean, they aren’t paying my mortgage.”

Uh, er, yeah they kind of are. Let me sum it up for ya real quick. No folk buying bus tickets or subway tokens = no fucking bus service = no fucking job for you. Hey, go ahead and strike if you feel you have to, but to say that statement onTV makes everybody hate you more. And you’re probably one of the assholes who still don’t speak the stops out loud even though you kind of have to by law. What a douche. If you were one of the union reps, you didn’t help win public sympathy, that’s for sure.

I have to write this down, because whenever I think about it, I feel bad for my friend. the other day, I ran into a friend. She said hello to me, and said a quick hi to Trixie. She didn’t even change her voice or make kissy noises or try to pet her. She just said hi. Trixie knows who she is, but didn’t flip out or anything. We talked for a bit, and thenI went on my way. Then I found out later that after I left, a woman charged up to my friend and started screaming at her that she’s not supposed to talk to my dog etc. I appreciate the concern, but I really wish others would stop speaking for me. I had one woman ream someone out for talking to me because she was keeping me from counting steps. Uh, I don’t count steps. If I seem to be in no distress, then you shouldn’t be either. If you’re worried, ask *me* if I need help.

Here’s a note to the folks who make the Book Port. I love your machine and I’m sad that I think it’s essentially reached the end of its evolution. But when you make a manual for it, you cannot assume that it will work perfectly. Please, please, please, for the love of Pete, include a troubleshooting section. I’ve run into a problem, your manual doesn’t help, and google has no answers. But every problem I’ve run into, I’ve had to go to google, because your manual does not have anywhere to go to find the solutions to error messages. If your machine makes error messages, explain them, please!

This is the problem I’m having right now, in case anyone knows or cares. I’m trying to copy a Daisy book. The BookPort sees the ncc.html file that has all the info about where all the chapters are, etc. It says, “How much of the book do you want to copy?” When I select what I want to copy, it yells the following:
“ffmp3. Unable to open c:\docume~1\my user name\locals~1\temp\BTDTBConv.mp3. Ok.”
Well thank ya very much. Would you like to tell me what to do about it? No? Damn you! I’ve tried copying smaller and smaller chunks of the book, to no avail. So I’ve now joined another list where hopefully I will find my answer, and when I do, I’ll post it here, so if someone else has the same problem, google will know the answer!

What is it with me and buying technology that eventually bites me in the ass? That has become a trend for me in recent years. Years ago, I heard about something called a Braille note. It was basically a super PDA for blinks. My first response was “I want one I want one I want one!” It could do email, internet, you could write documents in something more sophisticated than txt, it had a braille display, which meant possibly all my French and stats I was taking at the time wouldn’t have to be in bulky braille volumes, and if you wanted, you could get a GPS receiver and it could do GPS! Then I saw the price tag, 6 grand, and realized that this would take more work.

I started to do some research, and stumbled into meeting a guy who sells this stuff. I had heard good things about him, and he seemed knowledgeable and patient. He was also blind himself, so it seemed he wasn’t talking out his ass. Or so I thought.

He told me I shouldn’t go with a Braille note. I should go with the Braillex ELba. It was made by Papenmeier, a company who I’d heard good things about. It was slightly cheaper than the Braille Note, more updates were supposed to be free, it was to be more durable, and its software applications were things that regular sighted linux geeks would use, like Pine, Lynx, Pico, all that jazz. So, I thought I could get broader support. It had more things built into its hardware that the BN didn’t have, like an RJ45 port, stuff like that. I even read the manual! It looked like a pretty good option.

Since mom and dad were helping me get this thing, I figured I’d better make double triple quadruple sure I was making the right choice. I joined a list of users of the ELba, and asked a few questions. Everyone was googoo gaga about how much they loved their machine, and how they were using it as their primary machine when their windows machine was out of commission. One guy even wrote a, um, poem, about his, which I may post later because I wrote my own disparaging poem afterward. I just couldn’t resist.

Anyway, I bought the thing. That’s the point of this rambling mess. As soon as I bought it, I started noticing problems. The thing didn’t follow the manual’s description of what it should do. I couldn’t activate the flash card, and that’s when the vendor who sold it to me got snippy and impatient. He told me all of this must have been user error. Eventually, I convinced him that the slot in fact was broken. I sent it away to be fixed, and it came back even more broken, i.e. refused to power on, than it was whenit left. I sent it away again, and convinced mom and dad that we needed to go physically pick it up when it was repaired. Note: It was being repaired in New Jersey, because the Canadian vendor from whom I bought it conveniently didn’t have his license to fix the product he was selling. Mom and dad, let me say publicly that I love ya.

It came home ok, but we still had problems. Nothing followed what the manual said it should do. It couldn’t keep time worth a shit, which is important when you’re using its alarm and day planner functions. The sound card would randomly crackle and make horrible staticky noises. So much for being durable there, dude. Then, after receiving one firmware update, the whole product was discontinued! Should one expect that the final version of a product would be 1.3 after the company expects each customer to lay out 6 grand for this thing?

So now, I own a braille display that I rarely use because it’s big and clunky, the functions don’t do what they say they do, I still have an email in its outbox that I composed to Steve at least five years ago that I never managed to send, and my parents andI paid a heap of cash for it. And, I had done my research.

That was my biggest blunder in the technology arena, but oh I have more. I bought a daisy-player/recorder called a Plextalk that I had actually laid eyes on and thought was cool. I soon learned that if there is even the slightest imperfection on a CD or a card, it won’t read it! It’s voice quality sucked for recording, and the manual sounded like it had been backtranslated from German to English using babelfish. Ug!

Next up was this horrible excuse for a computer. This one really hurt. I bought it from a guy who I had had years of experience with. He had repaired my Braile ‘n Speaks for years. Hell, he took one whose circuits had been fried by electrical current when the control circuit that only allowed in enough voltage to charge the battery bit the big one and turned it from being a dead piece of metal that smelled like smoke and fire and had lumps at the site of the battery to a completely working unit with all my data intact and no lumps! I thought he must be pretty good at what he does. He even refused to sell my dad a piece of software that ddad wanted to buy. It was an old screen-reader called Slimware Windowbridge. Anybody heard of that now? No? Didn’t think so. He told dad he wouldn’t sell it to him because it sucked. Dad argued, and he still didn’t budge. He was right. It did suck. I got to use it when I was a camper at SCORE 95, a computer camp for blind and visually impaired teens at CNIB. It was so bad that when we tried to show the founder how well we could use it, it locked up two computers.

So when it was time to get a new computer when my old beast had been with me for 5 years, I thought “Great! This is the perfect vendor. He’s honest, and he knows his stuff.” Well, not when it came to computers. I swear this machine was cobbled together using the most substandard of parts. I blew a couple of regulators, the main fan whined like a jet engine and had to be replaced, I had to replace the onboard sound chip with a sound card, the scanner ceased to function almost immediately and it still doesn’t work right, when I went to buy Ram for this lagging beast and I showed the specs to some good techs I know, they said “What? It runs at what speed? Hmmm. I don’t know what ram it would support.” They eventually found an old stick that might work and gave it to me for free. That says two things: These techs are sweet, and good lord this thing uses weird Ram. As of now, the computer is still sluggish, and I hear screeching of ball-bearings inside which disturbs me, but no one else can hear it. Thankfully, this machine only has to stagger along for another year before I can get a new computer, and I’ll be going with Star Computer Services. If they screw me over, I’ll have to pick my jaw up off the floor.

Now, my cell phone has been good to me. But, I’m slo on the draw, because that whole generation of phones is becoming obsolete. I’ve only had the damn thing for 10 months, and Talks, the screen-reader it uses, is no longer producing updates that will work on it. I’m thinking about getting a Nokia N82 because it’s a newer phone and it has some kickass features, but no cell phone provider sells it directly, so I’d have to buy it elsewhere, and I wonder if I should. Will I be heading for more trouble? Should I just be glad for what I have and not try and buy anymore gear? It’s a good thing I didn’t go out and get Wayfinder Access for this phone.

So this brings me back to the BookPort and its problems. I pray they’re minor, but I’m worried, and now I hear the listserve I joined is no longer populated with anyone to help. I just joined a listserve of maybe 3 people, one of whom is out of the office, as I got her out of office autoresponder replying to my message. Dandy.

Well, that random post became less random and more whiny real fast, didn’t it? I guess I should get my ass off this chair, take Trixie out for a pee, and then come back and find those silly poems. Ah, nostalgic emails that I’ve saved for way too long. I guess they did serve a purpose after all. Have a good Sunday. Hope it doesn’t rain.