Fruit Is Like Oxygen

Ok, thanks to me and my stupid titles, I can’t get that old love Is Like Oxygen song out of my head now. I hope somebody knows which song I’m talking about so I won’t be alone. It’s one of those songs that once you hear it, or even think about it, it’s in your head for hours, sometimes days. Oh well, I have no one to blame but myself, and to be honest, I think I’d rather have that song in my head for a hundred years straight than think about what inspired me to use that title in the first place. Speaking of which, I should probably get to that.

I need to apologize to a whole lot of people, so here goes.

To anybody I’ve ever made fun of for buying bottled water, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for saying that paying for water might just be the stupidest use of perfectly good money there is. I didn’t mean that. Ok, I suppose I did, but starting today, if ever you hear me saying something like that, it’s just me talking out of anger or moodiness and not saying what I truly feel.

Furthermore, I would also like to add that you are not in fact morons, idiots, dumbasses or fucksticks. Ok, maybe some of you are, but it’s not simply because you buy tap water and think you’re making a healthy choice by doing so.

So why the sudden change of heart? Simple. I just found out that soon you will be able to buy
cans of fruit-flavoured oxygen,
and quite frankly, any person who would be foolish enough to do such a thing deserves my wrath far more than any bottled water consumer ever could.

Please Don’t Kill Me

I just read that Ontario is now allowing bbusses and streetcars to use the same technology that emergency vehicles are able to use to change traffic signals when they need to get somewhere in a hurry.

The idea is that letting them do so will reduce congestion, speed up bus traffic and get people to their destinations more quickly, which is a fine theory I’ll admit, but the execution has me worried. I do a whole lot of walking and a whole lot of bus riding, and I can’t help but wonder if our Transportation Minister or the CEO of the Canadian Urban Transit Association, both of whom think this is a good idea, have ever actually done the same. Just in case they haven’t, I’d like to share a few observations with them.

  • Any time you manage to save by switching the lights will be all but cancelled out by time spent sitting at a stop waiting for elderly or disabled people to board and find a seat, or by giving directions to people who ask for them.

  • No matter what, transit vehicles are going to find a way to run off schedule.

    • I don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. They’ll run early if they have to if it means messing with somebody’s life, it’s just what they do. But my point is that no bus system in the history of the world has ever been immune to delays, especially ones caused by unexpected circumstances like accidents or stalled cars, both of which happen on a pretty regular basis in most cities.

  • Speaking as a pedestrian, and somewhat more importantly [to me anyway] as a blind pedestrian, I’d like to point out that a fair number of traffic lights aren’t long enough for anybody who isn’t sprinting to make it across the street before they change, and that’s now, when we don’t have anybody other than the occasional emergency response person monkeying with them in order to save a few seconds of travel time.

    • I have no problem with emergency vehicles using this system by the way, I want to make that clear. What I do have a problem with is putting this type of technology in the hands of more people. The more people who use it, the greater chance there is for error, which leads me to my final point.

  • No matter how careful you are, no human is perfect and there’s always a chance that a driver might not see somebody, change the light, and end up running a person down.

    • That’s not to say that once this light changing thing takes off that people are going to start dropping dead left and right, I just don’t think that saving a couple of minutes at most on your way to work or the mall and a person’s life is enough of an even trade to make it worthwhile to take that chance. Besides, if you end up hitting a guy, think of the delays that would cause. We’d probably be right back where we are now, which honestly isn’t that bad to begin with.

Just When I Think I’m Done…

Something compelled me to go visit the other vomit comit and I discovered holy shit, I’ve been tagged! So I have another post handed to me. This one’s going to be hard, but here goes.

Six Things about me:

1. I’m short, and always get mistaken for a 12-year-old. If I had a nickel for every time I heard, “where’s your mother?” or “What grade are you in?” I’d be rich. It does come in handy though. People seem to look out for me, which is cute.

2. I managed to rescue two animals and make them my pets. One was the rat from psych. We didn’t do anything dastardly to her, she just learned to do tricks for a few sugary treats. If I didn’t take her, they would have put her down. She must have been pretty cute, because when I told mom I was going to take home our project rat, she gasped, but when she saw Hope the hooded psych rat, she put on the voice she uses to talk to pets all the time. I had that little rat until the day she died, *shiver* I don’t want to think of the next time I have to touch dead flesh again.

The other animal I rescued was a guinea pig. There was a girl in one of my psych classes who really wanted a guinea pig, so she got one. Then she really wanted a Jack Russell Terrier. Anybody see where this is going? Jack Russell Terriers like to hunt, and a confined llittle animal would make a perfect prey. So home came the guinea pig. She was with me, until the day, *sob* I had to give her to my parents, who one day took her outside, penned her in, and she got loose, never to come back. I don’t want to think about what happened to poor Bella the guinea pig. I don’t blame my parents though. She could be a real rascal.

3. I know people from all over the place. That’s what happens when you grow up and go to school most of your life in one place, and then go to a school for the blind for two years where your classmates come from all over the province and then you go to university. It makes the phone bills big sometimes, thank god for email. Now that I look at that one, it doesn’t look all that special.

4. The end of my nose apparently looks like a ski-jump.

5. I was quite the little brat when I was a kid. My parents got called into lots of meetings asking if the things I’d say were things they thought. Once, I accused a teacher of forcing kids to do the floride mouth rinse thing. Apparently my words were, “They’re crying, you’re forcing!” Um…I’m lucky I wasn’t born in an earlier time. I might have taken quite the beating for that one.

6. Because of a weird sickness a couple of years ago, I gained a new appreciation for life. There’s nothing like wondering if you’ve served your purpose on this earth, making peace with anyone you may have hurt, and thinking about making a will at 25. I guess I’m still here, so there must be more to do.

Hmmm…who should I make do this? I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll make anyone do it. If someone wants to, they can. That didn’t take as long as I thought.

>Ah, More Proof!

>Today was the king of random days. All kinds of random things happened to me, some of them I talked about already, a couple are still to come. Yes, I think I am finally running out of ideas.

I was walking down the street past my house and towards a restaurant with a large covered patio, but for the purpose of this post, I’ll call it a gazebo. As I walked by, I heard a voice softly say, “I’m thinking next year I’ll have the gazebo nailed to the ground.” I didn’t think about it at all, and kept going. Then the voice said again, equally softly, “Oh! So you’re just going to keep on walking are you?” Suddenly realizing the voice was intended for me, I turned around. What he said next still has me laughing.

“remember a few months ago when this whole gazebo fell down? You were the first to notice it, at least the first to call it in. We always remembered that and talked about how the girl with the white stick was the only one to notice something was wrong!”

I had to think a while, and then remembered. There was this one windy night. The next morning at around 10 or so, when I tried to walk by the restaurant, something was taking up a lot more of the sidewalk than it should. So, I did the only thing I thought I should. Since this place was right beside my apartment building, actually kind of surrounded by the building, I called the landlord and asked who we should talk to about the collapsed gazebo.

But apparently I was the first and only person to let them know. Considering there are 20 other apartments in this building, and this street isn’t exactly the quietest, um, I’m scared. I’m really thinking people aren’t using their eyes anymore.

Some Things are just Cool.

I don’t know what it is about today, but it’s just full of cool things that absolutely need posting. Take what happened tonight at the women’s shelter where I volunteer, for example. I walked in there for a little appreciation meeting. At the end of it, we were all to reach into a bowl and pull out something we liked. The bowl was full of fridge magnets, decorated by the kids in the shelter. I’m now the proud owner of a cute little turtle fridge magnet!

I know I talked before about the small things about working there that break my heart. This is just one of the many small things that are so wonderful!

And the Absurdity Continues!

Ok, I’m going to bitch for a little bit and then continue my pile of posts of happiness. Yes, I have more. Anyone scared yet? Or are you just asking me what’s in that cuppa soup? Honestly, I’d like to know as well.

I got this from a friend who got this from a friend who…got it out of Associated Press.

> > Slow-walking woman, 82, fined $114
Apr. 12, 2006. 01:00 AM

LOS ANGELES-An 82-year-old woman received a $114 (U.S.) ticket for taking too long to cross a street.

Mayvis Coyle said she began shuffling with her cane across a busy road when the light was green, but was unable to make it to the other side before it turned red. She said the motorcycle officer who ticketed her on Feb. 15 told her she was obstructing traffic.

“I think it’s completely outrageous,” said Coyle, who described herself as a Cherokee medicine woman. “He treated me like a 6-year-old, like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

Los Angeles police Sgt. Mike Zaboski said police are cracking down on people who improperly cross streets because pedestrian accidents are above normal. He said he could not comment on Coyle’s ticket other than to say it is her word against that of the citing officer.

“I’d rather not have angry pedestrians,” Zaboski said. “But I’d rather have them be alive.”

Others, however, supported Coyle’s contention that the light in question does not give people enough time to cross the five-lane boulevard.

“I can go halfway, then the light changes,” said Edith Krause, 78, who uses an electric cart because she has difficulty walking.

Councilwoman Wendy Greuel said she has asked transportation officials to figure out how to accommodate elderly people.

There are a few things that piss me right off about this, and they’re all sort of connected. I can se why the law was designed. It was designed for people who can’t seem to see whether it’s red or green, go or stop, and just tear across, or worse yet, stroll across as if they own the road. if you’re whistling a merry tune and taking your sweet time while eighteen-wheelers go meep meep and desperately try to avoid turning you into a road pancake, then you deserve a big ticket. But this is a sweet old lady, or at least an old lady, who is trying her damnedest to get across a street. Why wouldn’t the police officer do the right thing, get off his fucking motorcycle and help her across and leave it at that? There is the letter of the law and the spirit of the law. Why couldn’t the officer understand that this is one of those times that the letter of the law doesn’t work? OR, is it that these police are so strictly governed that they have no choice but to enforce the law even if they know it shouldn’t be enforced? Somehow I doubt that’s the case. He could have just helped her across and not said another word. There is always room for human free will, especially when it comes to this kind of thing.

Also, that last comment at the end just did me in. The city councilor wants transit to “figure out” what to do about elderly people. In response to this, I ask, why do they pay the woman the big bucks? There needs to be an election held immediately so she can be replaced with someone who has a functioning cerebrum. What you do is be a decent human being and help them across! There is no figureing to be done! The best possible spin I can put on her comment is that when the reporter asked her what she thought of the whole thing, she realized that it was a sticky situation, so that was her best attempt at PR.

Ok I’m done bitching. I should just be thankful I don’t live in LA because here, we don’t have stupid laws like that. But that must be immediately followed up with, for now. It is only a matter of time before some poor senior is paying a hefty fine for just trying to get around.

A Question for Anyone who Might Know

Can we get any more vague than that? I don’t know. But here’s my question. I have a friend who’s sister is blind. Let’s call my friend’s sister Suri since I can’t remember what her real name is, don’t want to accidentally use it, and no one from this side of the pond except Tom Cruise would name their baby Suri, *gag*. So anyway, Suri lives out in B.C., has lived at home all her life and unfortunately didn’t learn some basic survival things like cooking and cleaning and such. She is now over 21 and my friend really wants her to learn and the only way she can think to help her do that is to find a place where she can stay and learn these things, like a residential school for the blind or something.

But here’s the problem. There are a few around, but they are only available to people under 21, leaving Suri out of the game. So does anyone know of a place in Canada that could help someone learn some daily living skills so then she could learn the rest independently? Or maybe a place she could live that’s almost independent that has staff come in and make sure things are cool and help when needed. Any suggestions or leads would be super appreciated, since I’m completely stumped and need as many ideas as possible. Comment, or email me, it’s up there near the top.

G Doesn’t Have to Be for Grrr!

Like I said in the post I put up before this one, I’ve got a gmail account. I don’t plan to use it for much, simply because I read this and was way way way too creeped out by it. But lots of people seem to love Gmail and want an account right now, even before right now if possible, including some blinks. So I thought I’d suffer through the process of making an account and using it for a bit to see if it can be done. And, now that I’ve cursed, yelled, stomped my foot, slammed my fist, crossed my fingers and jumped up and down when I succeeded, I thought I’d pass on a few tips to help other blinks who might really want to use their Gmail account but can’t.

First, I’m assuming you’ve been invited by someone to Gmail since that seems to be the only way into this cute little community. You go to make your account and you get to that graphical word verification step. There’s a link to click on now that lets you hear the characters you’re supposed to type in. Now here’s my little yea and boo on that.
Yea: there is a series of beeps before the numbers start coming, and each time you hit the link to hear the box described, you get different voices telling you each digit, so if you find a voice unclear, ya might get a better one next time.
Boo: it doesn’t open a player like PayPal and Microsoft do when you listen to the voice, so you can’t just throw the player on repeat until you think you’ve got the digits right and then type it in.

So now you’ve got your account all nicely created. You sign in. Yea and boo time again.

Yea: right at the top it says, if you’re using a screenreader, you might want to switch to basic html as your viewing mode. This is a very good mode for viewing messages and doing basic things like reading and writing mail, but…
Boo: Forget changing any settings while in basic html mode, and when you click back into standard, you’re only shown one setting, whether or not you want your email archived or not. To get the rest, you have to use your JAWS cursor, or the equivalent in whatever screenreader you’re using, to find settings, and then find the sub-heading you want to modify. You have to do the mouse-pointer thing a lot in standard mode, I guess that’s why google was kind enough to write, “hey, blinky, you’re better off in basic html mode.” Also, at least for me, while in standard mode, JAWS choked periodically, so if you have Windows XP, turn on Narrator while you’re on the page, and use it to see if your whole computer is frozen or just that page, and move away from the window so poor JAWS can unlock. Also, if you can left click the thing that says standard without chat, the choking will drastically decrease. I think what JAWS is choking on is the massive page refresh that happens when it tries to refresh to see if anyone has written you a chat message.

Yea: Once you do manage to click your way into settings, you can see all the settings you may want to change, in whatever category you clicked into.
Boo: If you want to change a setting of another type, like if you’re in the general settings, and you want to get into the pop and forwarding settings, you have to use the mouse-pointer again.

Huge, massive, extremely large yea: Gmail will let you download your messages from Gmail into your email client of choice, and they even have a huge FAQ on doing this. That is some amazingly helpful help. Also, with pop access, I doubt you’ll get any targeted advertising like you might if you used the web service.
boo: They say you’ll be able to have it so once you’ve downloaded the mail into your client, it will be gone from google. But I’m still not sure if it’s being quietly archived anyway, since they make it very hard to delete things from the web.

Very small sub-boo: they don’t mention in the instructions for configuring your email client to grab the Gmail that if this isn’t your first email account ever, use your ISP’s outgoing mail server, not Gmail’s server, and also disregard all instructions to do with outgoing server settings and leave them as they had been for the server you’re using now. *shakes head and sees seas of question marks flying at me* What I mean is if you have a rogers email account, look at how your settings are set when it comes to your outgoing or smtp server. Note them and use those when you’re setting up your Gmail account in whatever grabs your email. If you’re still having trouble, talk to a tech support dude.

I think that’s about it. I hope that makes sense to more than me. And I hope people don’t suddenly look at me as some kind of geek, or start snoring. I will shut up now.

Progress is Awesome!

God I feel like my titles are lame. But that’s all I can come up with. But I have good news about something I bitched pretty venomously about before, so that rocks!

Like I said in that other post, google went heavy on those fuzzy little pictures with letters and numbers, making it so you needed to see the picture to do practically anything. Well, now they have a system for us blinks! The deafblind still have some fighting to do, but it’s progress, baby!

I just got myself a Gmail account, and I’m going to write a helpful post for other blinks if they need some helpl with gmail, because parts of it can be frustrating as hell! I’m just so happy to have good news for a change!

Just Because It’s Funny!

I’m in this really goofy mood, and I got thinking about Steve’s post about spam that he wrote the other day, and it made me think of this hhillarious masterpiece he wrote me years ago that summed up the kinds of spam I was getting, and these were coming in in heaps. I still think it’s great years later, even though it has no wonderful phrases in it like “High atrium elliptical centrifuge antithesis, click here.” But this beauty was written before that era. So, here’s what Steve would send to me if he were a spammer.

Below is the result of your feedback form.
Here is a copy of the convo.
Want to enjoy beautiful skin and the lowest mortage rates ever? Well then
just click here for free porn! Why pay market price for viagra when you can
get your free credit report from us? All you have to do is click here for
free inspirational quotes right in your email.

This is an optin mailing list. We opted you in when we got your address
from a CD that some guy sold us through another special offer.We respect
your privacy and we comply with proposed Florida legislation number
534.hrc.911.6. If you wish to be removed just follow this link.
www.there’snowayyourgettingoffthismailinglistyoufuckingidiot.com/morespamfor
youifyouclickhere.

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