I Believe In Santa Claus

So Santa has been here for a bit over a week now, and although things haven’t gone perfectly, I am really noticing a difference. I have energy! I have a brain that works! Sleep actually makes me feel refreshed!

The machine isn’t working quite right for me, because I don’t think my mask is quite fitting right, or something. The machine keeps thinking I’m not wearing the mask, so stops blowing air like it should, which really makes me feel like I can’t breathe.

On top of that, it keeps lying about how much I’m using the mask. If the machine is Santa Claus, the thing that records data on machine usage is Pinocchio because it lies so much. If it has a nose, it would be very very long. Thank goodness the people who sell this stuff can actually tell that I’m using the mask. Otherwise, I might be in trouble with the sleep doctor for not following his orders.

The only other annoying thing is the machine has a touchscreen. For the most part, this isn’t a problem because the people at the company set all my parameters, and they can log in and change them. But apparently there is one parameter that they can’t change, and that’s the exact one that needs changing. Arg. I don’t know how many times I asked if the touchscreen would be a problem for me because of the whole blindness thing. They kept saying no, and now, it is. But at least they’re willing to help me fix it, even if they have to send someone over to my house to do it.

If this parameter change doesn’t work, then it might be my mask. This is another annoying post-covid thing. Apparently, when you come in for your training session, the trainers aren’t allowed to turn the air on the machines on because I guess it blows too many particles around. So they can’t do a mask-fitting session where you put the mask on and then the machine foofs air at you and you get feedback on how well the machine feels the mask is fitting. So you have to take the mask home and try it. But these masks aren’t cheap, so it’s risky! And from what I read, mask issues are the bumpiest part of the ride. Thanks a bunch, Covid.

I was worried about how hard it would be to get used to adding CPAP machine things into my bedtime routine, but it hasn’t been that bad. All I have to do is make sure there’s distilled water in this little reservoir thingamabob every night, and I usually do that a couple hours before it’s time to fall asleep. Then, when I’m getting into bed, I slap the mask on, attach the hose and try to put the hose somewhere where it won’t get in my way, and hit the button and there we go. In the morning, I wipe the mask with a baby wipe and then dump the water reservoir thingy.

The first night was the worst. I don’t know what I did, but I had air leaking everywhere and it just wasn’t working well at all. But ever since, aside from the thing just thinking I’m not there and shutting off, it’s been doing its stuff. One thing I did that was kind of helpful was I practised wearing the mask when it wasn’t hooked up to the air, so I could just get used to it.

Steve says I breathe differently now when I’m sleeping, and when I’m thinking about doing that weird short breathing thing, the machine does stuff to get me back on track.

I’ve even cleaned the components and that wasn’t too bad either. I think maybe I’m getting the hang of this.

But I’m always worried it’s going to fail. If I’m tired at all, I’ll worry that the machine isn’t working. These last couple of days have been stressful and I found myself more tired, but I’ll freak out that the machine isn’t doing its job. Um, hello. It’s been stressful, so that’s why I’m tired. Without the machine, I probably would have been totally exhausted.

So, Santa Claus has been pretty good to me so far. Hopefully we can fix the kinks in the system, and I can have crazy good sleep, tons of brain power and tons of energy…and lower blood pressure would also be awesome.

That Big Bang You Heard Was Dad’s Head Exploding

Have you ever seen someone try to flick a cigarette butt out of a speeding car but it blows back in and lands somewhere and then there’s a frantic search and moment of panic while everyone looks for it and puts it out? I remember my dad hitting me with one of those once when I was little. Kinda sucked. Burned a small hole in my shirt and everything. But that’s not why we’re here. We’re here because some stupid kid did something like that, but worse.

According to LPD, a 17-year-old male, in possession of the vehicle, was lighting and throwing fireworks out of the vehicle at around 10:31 p.m. While attempting to throw one of the lit fireworks out of the vehicle, the firework bounced into the back seat where it landed next to a one-foot-by-one-foot box of fireworks.
The 17-year-old exited the vehicle and the box of fireworks began to ignite, setting the car on fire.
The vehicle was a total loss.

Serves you right, dummy.

I wish they had reported on who owned the car and how far up buddy’s ass that fella wound up braking his boot off once the police were done with him.

Dear Cheap Bastards…I Mean TSN

If you’re going to simulcast the TV Grey Cup commentary to the radio, first of all don’t, but just as importantly, could you maybe clue the commentators in to the fact that they are being heard on the radio? Perhaps that way they might remember to do things like say the score now and again or describe some of the plays a little better so we can picture what’s happening in our heads. It’s not as bad as it could be, but I’m still pissed that you would treat one of our country’s most important sporting events of the year so poorly.

Christ, Bell is so cheap. there is literally nothing they won’t try to ruin in the name of cost savings. They’re just the worst.

For the record, I’m picking Winnipeg. They were all but unbeatable this season in a much tougher division. But if Toronto takes it, I’ll still be happy. They’re my team, so that’s where my heart is. Sometimes it’s fun to watch a game where no matter what happens you’re going to be ok with it.

What Does That Mean

I thought this one had gone up years ago since a bunch of people have sent it to me, but it seems I’m wrong. So since I just saw it again…

A teacher in a one-room schoolhouse arrives one morning to find a nice red apple on her desk with a tag tied to it saying “T.O.T.”

Knowing that she has some not-so-nice pranksters in her class, she cautiously asks “Can someone explain what T.O.T. means?”

Mary in the front row raises her hand and says “it means To Our Teacher.”

The next morning, the teacher finds a bigger and prettier apple than the day before. This time there is a tag with “T.O.T.W.L.” written on it.

She asks for an explanation for this note. Little Johnny waves his hand and explains “That it means “To Our Teacher, With Love”.

The next morning she arrives to find a great big watermelon sitting on her desk with a tag saying “F.U.C.K.” Her jaw drops and she screams “Who can explain this?”

Little Buckwheat in the back row raises his hand.

“it means From Us Colored Kids”!

Dear SkipTheDishes Guy

I don’t like the idea of customers being able to retroactively take back tips from service people, but you know what they say about rules and exceptions. If we could have (Can We? We didn’t check.), you would quite likely have been the first person we ever did it to, because good lord.

Yes, the delivery instructions did say you could “leave the food outside the apartment door,” so what you did wasn’t technically wrong, I suppose. Perhaps its on us for having just enough faith in people to think you would interpret that sentence as intended and leave the food outside the door of *our* specific apartment and not, as you became the only person to ever do in the history of us getting deliveries, dump it unattended in the unsecured buzzer area outside the door to the lobby of the entire building where any idiot off the street could have just walked in and grabbed it. At least you had the decency to dash off a quick text before you ran off to do more dumb things elsewhere, so thanks for that, if nothing else.

In case you were wondering, we managed to get to the food before someone else did. It was pretty delicious.

Maybe you were just having a bad day. If that’s what it was, hopefully things start looking up soon. But if that was one of your good days, yeesh. Hopefully your next job won’t be nearly so complicated.

Santa Claus Has Come To Town

The day has come, and all those nights in the sleep lab have paid off. I have my CPAP machine. It’s called the AirSense 11 by ResMed, but I have nicknamed it Santa Claus. It monitors the quality of your sleep and how many hours you sleep and all that data goes to your doctor. So…you know, it knows when you are sleeping, it knows when you’re awake. It knows if you’ve been using it, so do it for goodness sake.

I am pleasantly surprised at how small the machine is. It’s almost cute!

An Airsense 11 machine with the screen facing the camera. It's about the size of a clock radio.
And here I was worried this thing was going to be huge!

I picked it up today, and got a bunch of training on how to hook it all up and use it. The lady was super nice and patient. She even let me record our session in case I have a forgetful moment later.

I’m really looking forward to getting the benefits of this thing. I’m finding that more and more, I’m tired all the time and feel like I’m swimming through a fog. I hope that this helps lift that fog. If I have results like I did that night at the sleep lab, that would rock.

I’m also excited because the mask I got is smaller than the one I had at the lab, so I might actually be understood if I forget to remove it before talking. Who knows, though. Once the air goes through it, all bets might be off.

So, wish me luck. I hope Santa Claus brings me the gift of many good nights’ sleep and lower blood pressure. I’ll make progress reports as things go, and hopefully not bore everyone to death.

Even If I Walk Instead, They’re Still Driving Out There. It’s Been Nice Knowing You

I don’t drive so perhaps I shouldn’t be judging, but I’ve got to tell you that as a passenger, the fact that Uber feels it necessary to prevent its drivers from making left turns and remind them to watch for traffic at intersections is not at all comforting.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 22 percent of crashes involve a vehicle making a left turn at an intersection. Uber has a novel solution to this problem: fewer left turns.
Uber announced today that its in-app navigation system will now recommend fewer left turns in an effort to reduce crashes and make trips safer overall. The adjustments are expected to be “minor” with little impact on trip time, but the effect will hopefully make for a less stressful experience for drivers.

Intersections also are proving troublesome for Uber drivers, so the company is adding a visual alert in the in-app navigation when drivers approach an intersection without a four-way stop. The alert will warn them to “watch for cross traffic,” for example.

No Thanks To The Clowns At Yahoo News, Here Is When You Can Expect The Next Emergency Alert Test

Most of Canada should get itself prepared to jump out of its skin this coming Wednesday, November 16th. At some point that day, there is going to be a test of the Alert Ready emergency alert system. I would love to tell you when, but because some lazy fucker at Yahoo News decided to stick the schedule into an image and not caption or alt text it with anything useful, I cannot. Blind people don’t need to know these things, I guess.

Seriously, you’re the news. If there is important information that you are attempting to convey, like, say, the entire point of your goddamn article, please write it down using actual words. It’s good for people like me, and it also makes it simpler for search engines to find and categorize it. I should not have to tell you this. Not only is it simple common sense, but you guys in particular should already know it seeing as Ya fucking Hoo is still kind of a search engine, I believe.

So I guess I’ll be spending Wednesday on high alert just waiting for the shriek. Thanks for nothing, Yahoo. You suck.

Actually wait. Allow me to Google for 10 seconds and do your job for you. Here we are.

Ontario
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
12:55 PM EST
Prince Edward Island
No test in November
Quebec
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM EST
Saskatchewan
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM CST
Yukon
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM PDT
Nunavut
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
2:00 PM EST
Nova Scotia
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM AST
Northwest Territories
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM MST
Newfoundland & Labrador
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
10:55 AM NST
New Brunswick
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM AST
Manitoba
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM CST
British Columbia
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM PST
Alberta
Wednesday, November 16, 2022
1:55 PM MST

Forgot Your Senses?

Now is the time to take a second to mock myself, apologize to some poor unfortunate soul, and allow everyone else to mock me too.

So last year, I got some stocks. I got my account set up on the place where they’re stored. It was a process and a half, but I did it.

A few months later, I wanted to log in to see how they were doing. I thought I remembered what my username was. I tried to log in with said username. I couldn’t quite remember what the password was, so I tried one. But it got really weird and mad. It asked me my security questions and I answered them, because they sounded like my security questions. But it didn’t like my answers!

This might have been a hint on the average website that something was off, but this website was a bit of an accessibility garbage fire, so I just figured something wasn’t getting along with the screen reader, because sometimes things would update and NVDA wouldn’t get the memo. So I tried again. And again. I tried so many times that I got locked out and had to wait a few days. I came back and tried again. Then it got really mad, and told me that it was going to mail me a temporary password and I would not get in until I got that password.

“Well, this is a giant pain, isn’t it?” I thought, and waited patiently for my temporary password to arrive.

…

…

and I waited.

…

…

Finally, I got annoyed and called them back. After going through a couple of agents, one of them asked some clarifying questions, and revealed that I am a giant tool!

You see, my username wasn’t what I thought it was. So I, being a stubborn but stupid human, had tried so many times that I had locked someone else out of their account. So some poor sap must have thought they had been hacked or their identity had been stolen or something else evil. Nope. It was because some other nimrod, me, had forgotten their username and didn’t catch on until it was too late. Hey dumbass, there is a “forgot your username” link right there. Use it next time, would ya?

So to that person, I apologize. I hope you managed to put your heart back in your chest. I will do better next time.