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.

mwid434mwid

And It Gets Better

Either the story I linked to in my previous post about this wasn’t clear enough or I just flat out missed it, but apparently the anti-commercial skipping technology that Philips has developed would not only prevent you from fast forwarding the ads during programs you have recorded, but also keep you from channel surfing during commercial breaks on regular TV as well.

I used to just hate hate hate this idea, now I’m looking for a word much stronger, since hate seems far too generous.

Brace for Impact!

A while back under my post singing the praises of Swiss chalet’s soup, Barbie wondered if it was cuppa soup and I laughed at her. The reason for all that is one day, after eating a simple cuppa soup, I went from normal to absolutely crazily filled with some kind of inhuman energy, and among other things, wrote this piece of complete insanity! Sadly, that was the last thing I wrote for the Ham before I realized that I do not a columnist make, *sorry Roland*, and do better doing things like this. Anyway, it appears that I’ve stumbled upon the same brand of cuppa soup, because here I go again. Brace yourselves, if all goes well, for an absolute barrage o posts. And as I write this, I realize that this will make no sense in the archives because things go backwards. Oh well.

Ich Bin Ein Gummi Bear

For some reason Carin and I got talking about the Gummi Bears today and it made me think back to a few years ago and the time I randomly heard the German version of their theme song. I’d only ever heard it once and I’d always wanted to hear it again because well, to me and my childish self, hearing things sung in other languages is pretty damn funny. Come on, tell me you never watched French or Spanish TV and thought it was the greatest thing in the world even though you had no clue what they were saying.

So today I decided that no matter what, I was going to find it. And yes, me having too much time on my hands is certainly a very debatable point, but that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because not only did I find what I was looking for, but I also found
the same song in a bunch of other languages, and even a ska version!
How cool is that?

Ok, I’m off to finally eat lunch now, and to hear what this bit of musical greatness sounds like in Danish.

How To Lose Friends And Influence People…To Want To Kick Your Ass

Philips creates anti-ad skipper
I don’t have a TiVo or anything, but I still hate this idea. Hate hate hate it! It’s kind of like telling me that I can’t use my VCR (remember those?) to fast forward something.

And I love the way they try to justify its creation by saying “don’t worry, we’re not the ones who’ll be using this, so feel free to keep buying our stuff. All we’re doing is enabling everybody else to hold you up for money. We’re the good guys here, honest we are. We just wanted to invent this before somebody scooped us. Come on, cut us a break, we’re just trying to make some cash.”

Isn’t this Overkill?

Our whole society is slowly going mad. Let me sum up what it is about this story and things that surround it that makes me think so.

Seemingly nice guy visits dad in Maine. Guy finds out about two sex offenders in different towns, we think through the sex offender registry. Guy borrows dad’s truck and guns. Guy kills two sex offenders. Police find him. Guy kills himself on a crowded bus. Now people talk of shutting down the registry!

And here’s a surprise for you. It’s not the first few sentences above that make me think we’re going mad, it’s the last one! chew on that for a while.

Done chewing? Now it’s my time to start. This one guy went cuckoo for cocoa puffs. Does that mean we shut down a service that probably keeps thousands of people safe? Personally, I’d like to know if neighbour Bob who keeps offering to walk with me somewhere, keeps inviting me over to his place, keeps making passes at me is Bob the nice guy, Bob the creap, or bob the rapist. I’d like to know that John who buys my son candy, if I had a son, is not John the pedophile. It’s not enough that police checks are available, because only possible employers can do them. The public has a right to know that, queue the sesame street music, the sex offender is a person in your neighbourhood, in your neighbourhood, in your neigh-bour-hoo-ood. It’s not that I’m saying the public has a right to scream, don’t throw your junk in my backyard, they just have a right to the knowledge that there *is* junk in their backyard in case it starts to stink.

Boys and girls, how many of you know the recidivism rate of sex offenders? That means the likelyhood that they’ll reoffend if you didn’t know. When it comes to, well, molesting boys and girls, it’s way too high, and when it comes to other sexual offenses, it’s way, way too high! So no matter how you slice it, the community should have the ability to find out if there’s someone they should be careful around.

It even says in the original article about this guy and what he did that the registry where they think he found his victims had been in operation for five years. So, because of one incident, should we shut them all down? Does that make any sense to you? And, why are people reacting more strongly to the idea of a sex offender registry being used as a vehicle to find victims than anything else? All the registry is is a deviant phone book. What’s stopping another guy from picking up the yellow pages and letting his fingers do the walking when he decides he doesn’t like plumbers? TV repairmen? Whatever profession someone might decide to hate? There’s no reason to freak out so much, and there’s no reason to shield sex offenders any more than anyone else! They have to face the fact that the time for the crime they’ve done, whether served in jail or in the community, is life!

Thoughts from someone Knee-High to a Grasshopper

Well hello again. What is with my random posts and all the thinking back to being 4? Well whatever it is, it’s making me laugh.

After I wrote my other post about being a kid, some comments made me think about other things I thought back then, so I guess I wasn’t as weird as I thought. Steve got me thinking about things I used to think about the radio. He thought the stations were inside the radio. Well at least he realized what DJ’s were. I thought they were just holding the doors open for bands to come in and play. I couldn’t figure out how a band could always sound exactly the same and be in a whole bunch of stations all at once. What really stumped me was the day I was turning the dial and they were at the beginning of a song and then I flipped it again and the same song was playing at a different point. It was once again time to burst Carin’s bubble and tell her, no no no, they were not live.

I also couldn’t figure out why a lot of bands had identical lead and back-up vocalists. I thought, “Wow, there are a lot of talented sets of twins out there.” And then in songs where the lead singer would sing multiple tracks and have them overlap, I’d try to figure out who was the real lead singer until my head would spin.

And then I always thought people were eating while on the radio. I thought gees these people are pressed for time. They have to eat and play their songs. Give them a break! There was Roy Orbison. I thought he was always eating, and cookies of all things. My dad would always freak me out too. Every time Roy Orbison would come on the radio, he’d say, “there’s that dead guy again.” So I’d picture a dead guy eating cookies.

There was this news guy who’d come on who had a mumbly voice, and he’d only read the news at noon. Because his voice was mumbly, I thought he was eating cheese. I’d always think that he must be really hungry since he had to eat through the news, and wonder why he’d never eat *before* coming to the studio. I just have one question for my four-year-old self. cheese? Why cheese? Maybe that’s two questions, but who’s counting? Damn now we’ve got 3!

Something else I thought about while listening to the radio was a commercial I’d always hear. It told people not to drink and drive and made it sound like the people who drank and drove were criminal bastards. I of course didn’t make the leap that drinking referred to only drinking alcohol. I’d sit there and think, “Do you not drink anything and drive because you might spill it? Or maybe you didn’t have both hands on the wheel and then you’d have an accident.” Well at least I got the accident part right.

Ok let’s get away from the radio for a bit. Let’s go to the kitchen and bake a pie! I’d watch mom baking pie and wonder how a bunch of eggs, sugar, butter, flour and fruit could turn into pie. I’d notice how when warm water got cold it would be cold water again. So I’d wonder if letting pie get cold would make it magically turn back into dough and then get scared when mom would put the pie in the fridge. “You’re going to wreck the pie, mommy!”

And I think that’s all the weirdness I can think of for now. At the rate I’m going, I’ll think of more later.