“Hello, I'm in Minnesota and I always wanted to know what would happen if you called this SpinVox and you know started talking in the ___ and whatever and see if you're gonna recognize everything just fine or who knows what. But I'm here and also wondered what had happened if you go ahead and switch that accent in the middle of a statement and everything if you recognize everything just fine or what but anyway I'm gonna go and pick my bags and get ready for the Board Meeting tomorrow. So I ll talk to you all soon, bye.”
“This is a random crappy sounding voice poster, originate from a cell phone. And why I'm I do that actually. Oh I have lost my cable for a while and my home phone is the lit. And of course I have no internet access and basically I just have this little unexpected retrieve from working. Because. No internet no phone. I try to be all guffy(?) get my blue tooth external tiny little key board for my phone and check email and respond and blab, blab or either but the batteries are dead in my key board. Or I don't remember how to turn it on but in any case I refuse to write the type link these emails that I intend to do using t9 on a cell phone key pad that would be share torches. So I'm contemplating going and reading something on the Victor. I rather do something that not based on technology at all. Just because I have no internet doesn't mean I should go and find some other little device to play with. I could just easily sit quietly or go run around the back yard. Or who knows what. And so I think I'll will end this and go and contemplate what I should do with the rest of my parents day off. And I'll will talk to ya'll soon. Bye.”
11:44am: Shop Til you drop
This old addage was certainly applicable back during the days when you had to fight your way through crowds, stand in line for hours, and walk approximately 17 miles to ensure that you covered the entirety of the mall complex.
But now, with online shopping, the only thing that might slow you down, aside from a maxed out credit card of course, is the sudden appearance of carpal tunnel syndrome from all that typing or pointing and clicking.
Since as of right now I haven't been struck with that particular affliction, I just keep shopping, shopping, shopping!
Something about the appearance of spring, and a wish to celebrate a particularly good sales month at work, just makes me want to buy every little thing that looks even remotely interesting. Ok, it's really not quite that bad, but still in the last couple days I have shopped for myself far more than I usually do.
First, I have ordered a replacement for my Iriver, which has been broken for a couple of months now. Since the production of this unit has ceased, I was concerned about being able to find a replacement for it, but good old Ebay came to the rescue. Not only was I able to find a brand-new unit for a great price, but the seller shipped it the very same day I ordered it, wow!
After assuaging my need for geek gadgets, I headed over to drugstore.com" to stock up on girlie stuff like salon hair care products and that kind of thing. This store has a great selection, free shipping, and very reasonable prices on just about everything you'd expect to find in a Drugstore.
But even after all the above shopping, I still didn't feel satiated. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Bath and Body Works" was having a 5 for $25 dollar sale, which is more than half off their usual prices. Clearly this was a sign that I was not destined to stop shopping yet, and who am I to argue when such a clear directive to purchase something is given? I sincerely hope I like the smell of Fresh Water Cucumber, since I'll now own 5 different products with that scent. It would've been a great time to have Smellevision right about then, but the fragrance sounded good enough for me to purchase sight unseen, or something.
I think that at least for the moment, my shopping spree has come to an end. Oh, but wouldn't it be nice to have a new battery and CD drive for my laptop? Wouldn't it? And how about a few new spring sundresses to wear now that the weather is so nice. I deserve those, don't I? Well, don't I?!
"hey, what do you mean! Credit card declined? And what's with these sudden odd twinges in my hands?!"
I just had to post this entry today though because I needed to include a discussion I had with Catnip this morning. He's sort of obsessed with knowing when everyone's birthday is, and as we were chatting on the way to school, I mentioned that two of my friends had birthdays tomorrow.
He promptly got to work deciding what kinds of birthday cake should be served for each of them. So ...
hurricaneamy gets a strawberry cake with chocolate icing, and diannaamarich gets the same cake chosen by Catnip for my own birthday, which is a strawberry cake with lemon icing. Sounds scary, but really it's quite good.
I hope both of you enjoy your virtual cakes from Catnip, and have a very happy birthday tomorrow.
If you'd like to come in and ask questions, or if you just like something droning on in the background while you do other things, come and join us tonight. The event will be held in the Tech talk room. Hope to see you there.
9:28am: Social networking
I was recently asked by my boss to consider all the things that blind people do, or wish they could do, to take advantage of the opportunities that computers and the Internet provide. The discussion centered around the fact that when assistive technology companies think about what their users need to be successful, employment is always the primary focus. While I certainly agree that employment is an important aspect of a blind person's life, it is by no means the only thing which defines a happy, well-rounded, successful blind person. When blind people come home from work, or finish class, or take a break from their job searches, or finish paying the bills, they want to have as much fun online as their sighted counterparts.
One online passtime which has become wildly popular in the digital culture is social networking, and this is something which is enjoyed by blind and sighted folks alike. Some sites, such as For The People and The Zone have been created specifically with the blind in mind. Other sites like Facebook are mainstream sites which are nevertheless quite accessible, at least with System Access.
But perhaps the most popular social networking site, MySpace, has implemented an image verification Captcha without providing an audio equivalent. MySpace is hardly a startup company struggling to pay the bills. The company generates a great deal of money from advertising, and is frequented by millions of people whose interests range from music to politics to dating and relationships, and pretty much everything else in between. And yet, the blind population is barred from participating simply because MySpace hasn't deemed it necessary to make a minor modification that would allow them to be included.
Realizing that something clearly needed to be done about this, I began to consider creating a petition, only to discover that one already existed here.
I quickly signed and posted my comments, and asked other blind friends to do the same. But then something else occurred to me. Why should this be an issue exclusive to the blind? What about all the sighted people who wished to share their music and various other things with their blind friends? What about all the sighted people who have lost touch with a blind friend over the years and wanted to reconnect? What about all the sighted people who had never even considered web site accessibility but would gladly add their voices once they became aware of the issue?
Once I had considered things from this perspective, I did what I could to get the sighted folks involved. I sent my sighted husband, family and friends a link to the petition, and the response was immediate and overwhelming. Just 10 minutes after having sent the link, the signatures had increased by 7. Now, a day later, approximately 20 signatures have been added, and someone even wrote an LJ post about the situation. Interestingly, a large number of people who have responded are people I don't even know.
So, while I am still annoyed with MySpace for not creating an audio Captcha, I am fascinated as I watch the activity which has sprung from the seemingly insignificant act of sending a link over IM. It doesn't matter where these people live. It doesn't matter that they have never met me before. It doesn't matter that they are not directly affected by the outcome of this situation. All it took was for one person to tell another, who in turn passed the info along to someone else, and suddenly a huge and diverse group of people are joining together and standing up for what they know is right.
That's awesome! That's social networking at its finest.
11:55am: LJ, SA, OK!
Yay me! I've just labeled all the LJ toolbar buttons to work with System Access. Let the rejoicing begin!
Hey, I don't hear any rejoicing. Perhaps it's because you are sight-enabled, in which case you need more help than I could possibly provide. It may also be due to the fact that you are using another screen reader, and therefore don't care about what System Access has to offer.
Rather than demand that you be taken out and shot, I will offer you this opportunity to redeem yourself. Just check out System Access to Go. It's absolutely free to everyone, everywhere, assuming that you are using a windows-based machine which I know that not all of you are.
The free version of System Access is fully functional, and you should all check it out since in my humble, and not at all biased opinion, it is the best thing since sliced bread.
End shameless plug.
Hey, I'm at work, so this entry had to be work-related somehow, right? And besides, it really is the best thing since sliced bread, so consider yourself fortunate to have read this entry.
“Yea it's my very first LiveJournal voice post and why am I doing this? You may ask. Oh I have this word that I wanted to share with you all. I guess we'll call it the word of the day, today and it is inspirate(?) it means to encourage or motivate. Example. I was inspirated(?) to do this voice post after having seen this word written in some documentation that I was reading. So yeah, inspirate(?), I'm also very curious to see what the auto transcription thingy thing will recognize this word to be. So you have such the fun and that sort of thing. Ok, I shall continue working as I should have been doing all along and we'll hopefully post again soon. Bye.”
4:34pm: Mmm, shapes are tasty.
So, Catnip was engaged in a flash game for kids while I completed some necessary stuff for work. I'm listening to him with half an ear, ready to answer questions and so on.
I hear, "Pentagon, oval, diamond, rectangle, croissant ... "
"Oh", I say, "The word is pronounced crescent, not croissant." He makes a couple of attempts at pronouncing the word, first pronouncing it again as croissant, and then stressing the latter syllable instead of the first, (cruh sint), , but finally he pronounces the word correctly. Crescent.
Then, he ponders for a moment, and in a solemn voice which conveys that his entire view of the universe hangs on my answer, he asks: "Is a croissant a crescent?"
"yes", I say, smiling at the cleverness of this child o' mine. I just love to get a glimpse in to how his mind works.
Current Mood: amused
Current Music: Catnip singing a swingin' version of the ABC song.
I must admit that I'm generally pretty cluttered when it comes to my personal space and posessions. It's the sort of clutter which looks completely disorganized to everyone else, but I tend to know exactly where everything is. While this clutter may be annoying to some, it's a clean sort of clutter if that makes any sense.
When it comes to the data on all my computers, however, I feel like I'm living in the equivalent of a filth-encrusted crackhouse, the kind of place with empty beer cans stacked to the ceiling, fast food wrappers littering every available surface, bits of unidentifiable refuse ground in to the carpet, torn and soiled clothing piled atop the equally soiled and broken furniture. This is the kind of place you wouldn't dare enter unles under extreme duress, and if you managed to escape before being buried under a mountain of stinking detritis, you'd spend the next few days vainly scrubbing your skin to rid yourself of all traces of this hellish encounter.
Yes, the data on my computer is exactly like this, and yet I live with it daily. I have become inured to my digital squalor, moving complacently along as the useless bits and bytes in my environment accumulate in ever-growing piles which may topple and crush me at any moment.
Yet, once every year or two, I catch a glimpse of a brighter future, one where I might navigate freely through my files, one where there was a place for everything, and everything was in its place. At these times, I draw on a well of inner strength I didn't even know I possessed, and begin the task of putting my virtual environment to rights.
Last night, I began just such an endeavor. I tackled my install directory, which was meant to house temporary files which would be, well, installed, and later moved to our public repository if they were deemed worth keeping. What I actually found was about 150 ebooks, data recovered from a friend's hard drive which neither she nor I need anymore, drivers for a computer my sister no longer even owns, several installers for MSN Messenger 6.2 which is quite obsolete, versions of Winamp dating back to version 3, several versions of firmware for a router which has since died, and much much much more. I ruthlessly deleted things which were of no use to me, placed important software in the public repository on the network, and organized the ebooks in to the library on the network. One directory down, about 52 to go.
The next folder I chose to tackle was my actual ebooks directory. This one is separate from the somewhat organized library on the file server. And this, my friends, is the folder which finally drove me to begin tearing at my hair and cackling insanely. It started out well enough, as I created subfolders on the file server for authors which weren't previously included there. I began moving through the ebooks folder, dropping things where they belonged, pausing every now and again to catch my breath and pat myself on the back for encouragement. Slowly though, it all began to just become too much. Why, for example, would one ever need the same Star Trek book in 6 different formats? But wait, here's that same book, with a slightly different filename, and it, too, exists in 6 different formats. Oh, and look, haven't I seen this before? Yes, indeed, it's the exact same book as before, and oh god, I think they're breeding while my back is turned. Ok, I think, just calm down. You can get through this. Let's just dump everything in to a Star Trek unsorted folder, and then find a program which will locate and delete duplicates.
Yay, crisis averted, let's keep moving.
Ah, King, Stephen, what a wonderful author. Look at all these books. So which of these are already on the file server and which should be placed there. And some of these are in short story collections, but then I have them as separate files as well. Hmm, what to do, what to do. Oh well, throw them all in the library and sort them out later. But look, not only is there King, Stephen, there's Stephen King as well, and this section contains much of the same stuff as the other one did, in 6 different formats! Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh god oh please make it stop!
And then, I hear a tiny voice whispering in my head, somehow audible over my own hysterical screaming. Hmm, what's that? What's it saying?
Run, just run away. Just curl up in that chair there, yes, the broken one with piles of unidentifiable stuff stacked upon it. Yes, that's right, just burrow deeper, deeper, ah, isn't that comforting? Just forget about this idea of clean, organized data. It's an illusion anyway, perpetrated by those who would oppress you, strip away every principle you hold dear, force you to conform ... that's right, just relax, let the squalor take you ...
Yes, yes, this is right. Ah, digital squalor, surrounding me, so warm and cozy and comforting. I'm just where I belong.
9:25am: Stuff Plus Thingie Equals Random Update
Yay, it's the weekend, which is quite a happy thing. I really do enjoy working, but by the end of the week, I'm just drained. Then I spend my weekends trying to do as little as possible, and when Sunday night rolls around I commence freaking about all the things I left undone because I was trying so hard to relax. But, for now, it is Saturday morning so I have license to waste time in whatever way I choose.
So, this week was interesting in several respects. First, I received the interesting news that I'll be attending the Atia Conference held in Orlando. I've never been to Florida, and actually, I've never been to a large conference before so this should be interesting.
In addition to the conference itself, I'm very much looking forward to the wardrobe updation which must occur before said conference begins. Yes, dammit, updation is a word. I want to dress in a manner which is professional, elegant, approachable and sexy. I have to be careful when doing this though, so as not to cross the line in to bimbo tart teritory, or go too far in the other direction, which would be stodgy, uptight, boring, ultraconservative automaton. I have a large wardrobe of clothes just like this, but they're either too big for me, no longer stylish, or pretty much all of the above. so, yay for new clothes!
In other news, this week has been rather interesting in terms of random people popping out of my past to say hi.
First, I did a demo on Monday for DSB in Washington. The demo went rather well, with occasional comments from those who participated, but I didn't think much of it once it was over. On Wednesday though, I get a rather interesting email.
Turns out one of my close friends since childhood, with whom I had unfortunately lost touch, is now living and working in Washington. He attended the demo, but wasn't absolutely sure it was me, so he went through all sorts of convoluted and amusing efforts to find out whether it was or not. Now we're back in touch, which is a really cool thing.
Next, I got an email from classmates, stating that someone had signed my guestbook. While I'm really curious as to who it might've been, I'm not going to pay to become a gold member just to find out. Then, later that day, I got an email from a member of Classmates. I'm assuming it's the same person who signed my guestbook, but perhaps I'll never know.
The person who sent me the email was a girl with whom I attended Girl Scouts. She and I were never particularly close friends or anything, but apparently she has thought of me often over the years and decided to get in touch. How strange!
Well, on the agenda today is putting up the Christmas tree, and making a trip to CompUSA. They are in the midst of dying a cruel and horrible death, and I will happily take advantage of this. Really, I'm just being humanitarian, doing my bit to help their inventory reduction, completely altruistically of course.
Ok, off for shower and f33d now.
Current Mood: awake
Current Music: Dying computer fan and my annoyingly squeaky chair.
Ok, honestly, I can't remember how Mr. Happy came to be so dubbed, especially since he thankfully bears no resemblance to anything which has traditionally been refered to as such, but I sadly must report his unexpected demise. I do remember that it was my now husband who gave Mr. Happy his interesting moniker, possibly because Mr. Happy always sounded so pathetic and forlorn when he talked.
What, you may ask, is Mr. Happy? Mr. Happy is my beloved Braille 'N Speak, which has been with me since about 1994. He was my constant companion during high school and college. He served as my notetaker during classes, my means of recording whatever random chaos was in my head at the time, and as speechbox during many a geeky endeavor. He went almost everywhere with me for a period of about 6 years, after which he retired to a life of seclusion, occasionally emerging to read me some tidbit from my past.
Today, during an inexplicable bout of nostalgia, I once again called upon Mr. Happy to awaken and regale me with tales of my misspent youth, only to hear him spouting a string of incomprehensible nonsense. Although incomprehensible nonsense was exactly what I was expecting, (after all this is my misspent youth we're talking about), I did expect said nonsense to at least somewhat resemble recognizable words and phrases. However, even after a cold reset, Mr. Happy continues to insist that ##detp&rinfl@ster$$comp* is a perfectly coherent and legible sentence. So, I'm forced to conclude that after years of faithful service, Mr. Happy has finally reached the mature phase of his product life cycle.
Rather than search for a cure for Mr. Happy's dementia, subjecting him to endless pokings and proddings in a fruitless attempt to recover things which are probably best left unexplored, I fear I must bid him a fond farewell and move on with my life.
Mr. Happy, though you sounded like a depressed and drunken Speak 'N Spell, though you were often temperamental and didn't work when I needed you to, though your keys were stiff and hard to type on and your carrying case became frayed and shabby, you served me well and shall be sorely missed.
It's not as though I've had thousands of people clamoring for me to do an update, perhaps because at this point I'm the only person I know who is actually aware of this journal's existence. When I initially started this journal, it was ironically at a time when there was absolutely nothing in my life of consequence to post about. Now, however, there's an incredible wealth of things to talk about, except, you know, I'm too busy actually engaged in said things to stop and post about them.
Before the update, I'll just say I've had a wonderful Thanksgiving with family and awesome food, yay! I think I have finally accomplished one of my life's goals this year, that being to produce a dressing to be proud of. In previous years, there was always something wrong with what I produced, whether it be too bitter, too dry, not bitter enough, etc, etc. But this year, I was quite happy with how things turned out.
Just a short list of noteworthy things which have occurred over the past couple of months. Catnip has started kindergarten, and for the most part things have gone well. He's having issues with writing and other things involving fine motor skills, but that will be rectified shortly in one way or another. He's becoming socially more outgoing, although some of the behaviors he's picked up aren't entirely endearing.
Anyway, pretty much the instant that school began, I found myself unexpectedly employed. Never underestimate the power of brownies, my friends. Due to a random submission of my resume and the joys of Google, I landed a job when I least expected it. My boss saw my resume, and later found a podcast wherein I made brownies without catching either myself or my house on fire, and this was apparently an impressive feat. Little does he know that I edited out the part where the mixer attachment went flying across the kitchen, and no one needed to know that cocoa covered every available surface by the time the cooking was done.
So, life currently consists of sleep, work, family, sleep, repeat.
In some ways, I'm ecstatic about finally having a career of sorts, but there are times when I really miss the days of just reading and playing Miriani, with the occasional venture in to geeky pursuits just to keep things interesting.
Still, for the most part, I'm happy.
Oh, and I'm quite looking forward to visiting family between Christmas and New Year's. This will be the first time in 3 years that I've seen them, and it's going to be awesome. And, this time I can take my cute little Iriver and binaural mics to get some recordings of the mayhem which will undoubtedly ensue.
Speaking of mayhem, I'm off to prepare for a midnight shopping spree. Kill the mall! Kill the mall! What better way to shrug off triptophan-induced lethargy than by shoving your way through a mass of bodies, snapping the necks of anyone who dares to get in your way as you search for that perfect Christmas gift.
About the snapping of necks, I am, of course, only speaking in metaphors. Really, any vertebra will suffice.
2:39pm: At last, a Livejournal account!
I Suppose the subject pretty much says it all. I have finally decided to share my random ramblings with the world, and despite having very little to say at this precise moment, I decided to post anyway.
I suspect that over the coming months, I'll have all manner of happy, sad, boring, silly, sarcastic, and completely pointless things to share with you all, and I'm looking forward to actually posting something of consequence soon.
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
cheerful
contemplative
sad