Tag Archives: work

NIB 2024: A Day of Relaxation

Posted on by John

Ah, I meant to chronicle the rest of my time at the NIB 2024 Training Conference and Expo more quickly than I have, but alas work, cooler weather, and reading have interfered with my writing. (I’m already about to set a new record for books read [and listened to] in a year, as the old one is 79 and I’m already at 76). Anyhow, I wanted to capture at least one more day of attendance before it all becomes too distant in my ever-aging memory.

Wednesday, October 16: The day dawned crisp and cold. Most times I’ve visited our nation’s capital, the weather fluctuated crazily with temps in the 80s in the afternoon and snow at night. Granted those visits usually occurred in May, whereas October weather is more uniformly dreary. But the sun was actually out on this day as we meandered out of the hotel and across the busy street to a two-story McDonald’s. We don’t have many two-story restaurants here in North Carolina, but I guess you see them more in places where space is a premium.

I had a sausage, egg, and cheese McMuffin, while my wife probably ate a McGriddle (she likes sweet, I do savory). As we ate, she noted that there were some homeless individuals using the space probably to stay warm. I’ve also noticed that, sadly, that city seems to have a high population of unhoused individuals, perhaps because there are more services available? It’s an interesting question. Anyhow, she said there are signs that specifically say “No Loitering,” so if one wishes to remain for an extended time they must either buy food or devise other strategies to make themselves look occupied. I just hope we as a society keep moving in a direction where people will have fewer of these challenges, because the systems will work as they should.

Food consumed, we went to a little store to get snacks for later. I had a giant cup of grapes, because hey grapes are good for the brain. Back in the hotel, we milled about in the lobby for a while then decided to head down to the basement area to see what was going on in the conference. I then realized that I had missed the technology demo that was put on for the employees of the year, because at that time the app I was using to keep up with events was not sending notifications out. This was ok though, as I got to check out some of these devices in the exhibit hall. I’m always fascinated by what they have in these places, but also overwhelmed by the people pulsing from every nook and cranny. My wife had to keep me grounded and inside of the place. I held and listened to the Envision smart glasses speak. Those are nice and built specifically for blind folk, but at $2,000 I probably won’t be getting a pair. The Meta Ray-ban glasses are a likelier candidate, though I might just hold out and wait for a competitor as that market is now starting to come alive. Many of my trainees at work really want me to acquire those though, so I can show them how to use them.

Anyhow, I also checked out a Freedom Scientific workstation, equipped with a computer running JAWS for Windows and, more interestingly to me, a Focus 40 Braille Display. This is another device some of my trainees would like me to get for demonstrations, but alas. It had a whole lot of buttons and switches, and it is powered by a Perkins-style braille keyboard as opposed to my Mantis QWERTY device. I prefer the latter for writing, but the Focus does have many features that could make it desirable.

After checking those out, my wife and I decided to do a whole lot of, welll… nothing. Hey, one of the rewards of this trip was to be able to relax if one wished, and how often do you get to crawl back into bed and sleep on Wednesday afternoon. It was glorious, but I just wish I had drank more water as I tend to dehydrate easily if I do not and paid for this lacking later. Fortunately I was ok.

At about 5, we opted for another fine-dining experience and one we can no longer get in our area, and ventured to McCormick and Schmick’s. We had visited this chain in Raleigh for our “halfversary” after the first six months of marriage and fallen in love with it, at which point they took it away in favor of a Mexican restaurant. So we said whenever we got to a city with that establishment we would check it out again. Arlington did have a location.

This time, I ate some kind of salmon and mashed potatoes. It was delicious, if a little expensive. And as was the case in Raleigh, I loved the ambience of the place as it wasn’t too loud and we could easily have a conversation.

Before getting a Lyft back to our hotel, we walked around that area a bit exploring some of the ice cream shops and stores they had. You could tell we were in a different city, though of course it still had nowhere near the hustle of a New York or Philadelphia. I enjoyed the feeling.

And that was the crux of Wednesday, the midpoint of our trip. A little learning and a lot of rest. We sure needed that rest for Thursday’s tours, coming up in next post.

NIB 2024: Arrival

Posted on by John
Me standing near the Washington Monument and Reflecting Pool

And so it begins… This year, as I’ve noted, I had been invited to attend the annual conference of the National Industries for the Blind in Arlington, Virginia, as LCI had awarded me Employee of the Year. Well one of them, another individual with whom I’d actually done some training as it happens, also received the designation. I was allowed to bring a guest, so my wife came with me.

The good news for us is we didn’t have to leave super early. Our American Airlines flight from Raleigh/Durham International Airport to Regan National Airport didn’t depart until Monday October 14 at 10:45 AM. Having prepaid for parking the night before, we loaded the car with bags packed to the gills for our weeklong trip and headed to the Economy lot. A shuttle arrived shortly after 8:00 AM and took us to the terminal, where we then had to hoof it with those heavy bags and I was sucking air by the time we reached the check-in counter.

“Would you two like to each check one of those bags for free?” The woman behind the counter asked. I have never been so relieved to hear anything in my life. My newly acquired briefcase (I had to look businesslike, time to shed the backpack) felt light by comparison as we continued onto the security checkpoint. This was my first time flying since… well, 2020, and one thing I’d forgotten was how annoying this process could be. Or maybe my patience has just shortened over the last four years. It was belts off, shoes off, Mantis braille display out, iPhone out, and oh I forgot to take off the Apple Watch. Oh, well. They did two inspections of my stuff, having a little trouble unsurprisingly working out exactly what the Mantis might in fact be. It looks like a computer keyboard, but… where’s the screen! They also had to dust my hands I guess to see if I might have some kind of residue on them.

Anyhow, once I put myself back together again we made our way to the coffee line as my wife got a free one with the parking reservation and I wanted some in preparation for a long day.

The rest of the wait was fairly uneventful, nearly 2 hours because hey it’s better to be early than late. I thought someone else from my employer would show up, but as we sat there in the terminal no one did.

“Now boarding American Airlines Flight 5545, with service to Washington Regan Airport.” We make our way to the line for preboarding, as usual, and my wife tells the gate agent I am blind as they initially say we are not eligible to board yet. We are on an extremely narrow-body Regional Jet, so have to just about turn sidwways to make our way to seats way back on row 20. I learned something new about airplane seat configuration, too: when I first saw our tickets, I noticed it said 20A and 20c.

“Wait, someone’s gonna be sitting in between us?” I thought. But no, there are no middle seats on this aircraft. So I assume any window and aisle seats will be A and C, and F and D respectively. The middles, if there, will be B and E. Interesting stuff, if you’re a nerd like I am.

We took off pretty much on time, shortly before 11 AM, and had barely completed our climb before we began descending. We mostly just sat there and made small talk, as you really didn’t even have time to get anything out. I suppose even with those security hassles, getting there that quickly still beats driving.

As it turns out, one other person from LCI was aboard but he couldn’t catch us before we got to our seats. He did get an Uber for us all and we piled in to make the short jaunt to the Hyatt Regency Crystal City, which is an airport hotel. It took them only a few minutes to get our room ready, so we ventured up in the ear-popping elevator to the 17th floor to deposit our luggage.

Flying, even a short distance, tends to make one hungry. So the next thing we did was locate the hotel’s featured restaurant, Cinnabar. I’m not really sure why it was called Cinnabar, as it is a full-service, sit-down restaurant. Their food was delicious but expensive. I had a chicken sandwich with cheese, mayo, and tomatoes. I guess I ate too many of the fries though, as my wife regularly chides me for doing, because I couldn’t finish that entire fairly large sandwich.

Not much else happened prior to dinner. We went and officially checked into the NIB Training Conference and Expo, collecting our lanyards and my Employee of the Year swag. We also had to attend an Employee of the Year orientation at 3, where we discovered how many of us there were (like 70 people). I was excited, but parts of me became overwhelmed quickly because of my hearing problems among such large crowds.

And speaking of crowds, prior to dinner we dropped in on the Welcome Reception. This was open to all conference attendees, and it sounded like one full-on roar as we huddled in the hotel’s basement-level vault. I stood in a corner and sipped on a Corona, feeling nice and reflecting on how I got here.

And finally, there was dinner. It was a simple affair, served buffet-style, with chicken, broccoli, and potatoes. There was supposed to be a Murder Mystery presented along with our meals, and I think it did happen later, but it took them a little while to get everything together. This is because it was to involve the audience in some kind of who-dun-it, where they acted out parts based on their role in the so-called murder. My wife and I didn’t stay to hear that part though, as the day and all its activities had caught up with us. We again rode that elevator into the sky, headed into our room, and called it a night.

More in Tuesday’s post, including a description of the room and some of its features.

I Can Hear Clearly Now, Sort Of: On that Hearing Test

Posted on by John

So this past Wednesday, I toddled off somewhat unwillingly to my audiologist’s office for the pending hearing test. As I noted in the previous entry, I knew I needed this checkup as my role calls for me to be able to hear in more and varied situations and to work with individuals one-on-one and in groups.

The last audiogram (that’s the technical word for them) I had was in 2018, but I barely remember that. I think I intentionally block them out. I should probably call them audiograms more often anyway, as the word “test” connotes academics, and the feeling that I am not doing as well as I would like can make me feel a little bit of that failure feeling. The last audiogram I recorded in this journal was in 2016, and can likely be found under the “Hearing” tag.

I sat in the booth with a different audiologist and, I guess, her student who was doing most of the work while under supervision. First, they checked my ears to see if there had been any wax accumulation, but she said apparently I’m doing a pretty good job of keeping that at bay. I’ve learned some lessons after my much-documented challenges keeping hearing aids going as they constantly filled up with the annoying stuff.

“How long is this going to take, approximately,” I asked.

“It should take no more than 20 minutes” she replied. 20 minutes? It felt like an hour easy!

This test was different than the one I recalled from 2016. First, they had a recorded male voice reading back the words. They start to become predictable to some extent, or at least they make us think they are, as they say “Baseball,” “Airplane,” “Northwest,” and the like over and over again. And of course they test each ear, sometimes playing white noise or a wind sound in the other ear. Another, very real challenge I experienced was shutting down my inner thoughts: dinner, sleep, work the next day, etc.

One of the words that kind of caused me to laugh… it sounded like he said “Say the word Bi*ch”. Hmmm, I’m pretty sure he didn’t say that, I thought. “Ditch?” I tried tentatively. Probably… not that either. Ah, well.

I then had to get the beep test. I think I actually did better on this part, and especially when they put on the big clunky things that kind of fasten to your head as honestly I could often feel the beep more than hear it. We laughed though when at the end of the test she said something to me and my hand shot up as if I’d heard a beep again. “Sorry, you just get conditioned to do that’” I said.

“I understand,” she replied.

The results were a little worse than the last time. She said something like my word discrimination dropped from 80 to 55% in my left ear, and my right ear remained profoundly deaf as it has been for some time. “It’s probably time for you to consider a cochlear implant, especially on that right side” she said. “And as your left-side clarity diminishes”. I have noticed that this has happened, for sure, as my Norrie Disease-related progressive hearing loss keeps progressing. A little disheartening, but such is the way I guess. I just don’t know about CI’s, because I’ve heard all sorts of stories about them. There is a possibility that it might not work, and I think you don’t really have a way to fall back if they don’t. But I know that time is likely coming more quickly than I would like.

Meanwhile, she went ahead and made adjustments to the aids as a result of the tests. And they’re kind of a mixed bag. Sports sound a lot better, and I was much more able to hear my supervisor and trainee today at work. But I am still kind of working to adjust to my wife’s voice and others, as the sound while turned up is also somewhat muffled. I think I’m getting there though and will just have to be patient, while hoping others are patient with me. The paratransit vehicle I take to and from work also sounded really loud for the first few days, but that is starting to calm down as well.

So yeah, this issue is always going to be complicated. But ultimately I am grateful to those folks and their good work of really getting the aids to work for my needs. I still haven’t tried them in the holy grail of hearing, the restaurant, but I’m sure that is coming soon. That will really tell me if a difference has been made. And even more the National Industries for the Blind conference I will be attending in three weeks as a result of winning Employee of the Year. I’ll keep you posted, and I mostly write about this to help parents of children with Norrie gain some insight into what this experience might be like, again realizing that my voice does not represent everyone’s. I do hope it helps.

All Aboard for a Much-needed Weekend

Posted on by John

Do you have that person in your life who always gets you, no matter what? The one who, because of similar experience and an upbringing that involved many of the same challenges is someone to whom you always look for advice or just to vent. That person for me is my cousin: technically a year younger than me but seeming older in many respects.

For our early life, really until mid-20s, we were never that far apart. Both of us are totally blind and have significant hearing loss due to a condition called Norrie Disease, so we have to work hard just to fit in to this world. We went to college together and lived in an apartment (albeit a slum) for six years.

Then life rolled on, and we were both fortunate to marry wonderful women. That has though necessitated changes in our relationship, as is common for all adults really. Now, we usually see each other maybe three or four times a year (with the time from January of 2020 till May of 2022 being the longest we didn’t get to spend time together due to Covid).

Anyhow, that’s slowly, finally, starting to change. This past weekend, as my work life ramps up and I feel increasingly nervous about my hearing challenges, I decided to see if we could just have a marathon Saturday watching sports and talking about nothing and everything as I like to do. My cousin and his wife agreed to allow my visit, so I purchased round-trip Amtrak tickets from Cary North Carolina to Charlotte.

I had to get the 5:43 Carolinian train, being fully aware of likely delays as it makes its way all the way down from New York City. And delays indeed happened, with emailed announcements throughout the day that the train was getting later and later.

I had Lyft take me over to the Cary station after a long day at work trying to hammer out the material for our upcoming Microsoft Excel workshop. The building was cold, and I found myself wishing I’d chosen to stay outside in the beautiful Fall-like weather to wait. I sat, snacking and reading, and tried to make myself take a break so all of my devices would make it onboard with a little life left.

The train finally arrived shortly before 7, and as I feared I was given an aisle seat so couldn’t plug in as easily. I always feel weird about asking my neighbor if I can stretch the cord over their legs.

The ride down was uneventful, and we arrived in Charlotte around 10. Knowing I would want to pick up food on the way to my cousin’s house, I decided to try downloading the Jack in the Box app to see if I could place an order in advance of getting there. I get Jack in the Box whenever I visit the Queen City, because we don’t have any of those in our area. And this would have worked, if I had already entered my payment method or at least set up Apple Pay. Trying to do that at the last minute just… didn’t work. Choosing the menu items I wanted though was accessible. Anyway, the driver just rolled me close enough to the Drive-through window to put in my order and I collected the food and headed to my cousin’s house. I do love this tech that makes it so much easier to independently move around and run errands.

Because it was already nearly Saturday by the time I finally arrived, we just stayed up a little while listening to the NFL game in Brazil and scarfing down the food. Then we retired for the night. I’d already understood that we would mostly be spending Saturday together anyway.

Knowing these folks wake by 8 AM, I was crawling out of bed just as the smell of bacon and eggs permeated the air. My cousin texted me, and I headed on down to sink my teeth into it. A small cup of orange juice and a big, piping hot mug of coffee completed the morning.

As far as sports go, our Alma mater UNC Charlotte (they call themselves Charlotte in the sports world) played, and were pretty much slapped around by, the North Carolina Tar Heels. Bowling Green University gave Penn State a scare, and number 5 Notre Dame were nipped by the Northern Illinois Huskies in an awesome upset. The prime-time game, North Carolina State University versus the University of Tennessee, was a bust as State were dragged all over Charlotte’s Bank of America Stadium.

While the games played, we chatted about our roles as Assistive Technology Specialists. We also noted the recent availability of high-powered, AI-driven Phonak Hearing Aids (NOTE: those may or may not be the right ones). Anyhow, I’m considering trying to get those, as they’re supposed to be really good at filtering out background noise. I have a hearing test (Oh fun! Except not), scheduled for September 18th, at which point I will begin this conversation with my audiologist. Where the money will come from for such a thing? Well… we shall see. No doubt I need it though, to help my rising career.

After our day of fun, we got food from a restaurant called the Skrimp Shack. (They mean Shrimp, but ok haha). I had a giant chicken “sammich” that I could not eat entirely, and a big styrofoam to-go plate of fries (the small is really small, the large is really large, no in-between). The food was really good, though.

And that was the crux of a great Saturday and weekend. I’m writing this as we speed back toward Cary on Sunday morning from 6:45 till 9:45. A bit of amusement: as we departed Charlotte, the conductor said we would be arriving in Cary, our next station stop, in 25 minutes. Cary takes three hours to reach, as suggested by the time I just posted, and it is not our next stop coming out of Charlotte. He meant a town called Kannapolis. I can only assume that it was too early in the morning for him, as it is for me of no or very little sleep. Although for some strange reason I feel hopped up on energy right now. Let’s hope that lasts till my Carolina Panthers (NFL) play the New Orleans Saints at 1, and hopefully start this season off right. You can’t get much worse than our 2-15 record the previous season. I do hope more of these restorative weekends are in store, and that you are able to find a way to lift your spirits when needed as well.

Reflections On An Age Milestone

Posted on by John

As college football plays in the background (so glad it’s back!) I begin to feel celebratory. Hello, and welcome to September. What has happened to the summer? A smokin’ hot June, a flooded July and a mostly ambivalent August seem to have gone by in a blur. I enjoyed it, and thanks to remote work on Tuesdays and Thursdays I actually felt like I had a little taste of the old days, languishing on the floor as a kid.

Nevertheless, all of that will soon be behind us as we celebrate the last hurrah, Labor Day. Or should it be called Day-Off Day. And of course I know some folks must still work in order to keep the nuts and bolts of society going (I hope those of you to whom this applies at least get to have a day of relaxation there somewhere.)

The good news though (the really good news, admit it you think it’s good news) is that we’re now entering my birth month. Yup, here’s to all the Virgos, as my 45th birthday is on the 13th. Friday the 13th, oo scary. I think that’s only happened a handful of times for me. The one I most distinctly remember was in 1996, when a nice young woman who was in Chorus with me made me a braille card by folding a piece of paper several times so that it became thick and writing with her car keys. That’s the kind of gift one never forgets, just because of the thought and effort that went into making it. This year, we’re planning to go to a local restaurant called It’s A Southern Thing, where I will eat some of their delicious “Pete loaf,” some of the best meatloaf you’ve ever tasted invented by some guy named Pete I guess. I and my soon-to-be 45-year-old mind may have written about this place before but… whatever. It’s good! Kinda pricy and most consider it “Southern-inspired” rather than straight Southern. We ate there for our sixth anniversary.

Speaking of anniversaries, this past year of my life has been in many respects the best I’ve ever had. If you’re like me, and you might be, you have to remind yourself on occasion to step back and take stock of how good your life actually is. My overly perfectionistic tendencies can lead to undue stress as I do my work at work, training other blind folks so they can do what they want with their lives. I do believe that I’ve done better though this go-round, which also marks a completion of my second year at this level of employment as I officially started in this role on September 26 of 2022. I’m just getting more comfortable talking to people and going through my sessions, even when under supervision. And for me that comes with just taking a deep breath, focusing, and preparing as best I can. And being willing to ask questions of the participants, with the recognition that they have some thoughts about the direction they want things to go as well.

The coming weeks will actually be some of the biggest we as a department have experienced, as we get ready to launch an apparently popular set of live courses on Microsoft Excel. It’s after all something many of us need to use in our work situation but few of us really understand. I am certainly no expert either, but what I am is a quick learner who is working to quickly synthesize the information in a way that I hope others find helpful. We’ll see how it’s gone by this time in October.

And that’s pretty much what I’ve got. Still reading, I’m already into my 63rd book of the year! Let’s see if I can give you a cheat list of my top five books of this year so far:

  • Dust Child, by Nguyen Phan Que Mai
  • James, by Percival Everet
  • The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West, by Sara Ackerman
  • The Noumenon Series, by Marina Lostetter
  • Shelterwood, by Lisa Wingate

And yeah I added a whole series: sue me! It was good for reasons I’ve already detailed in here, namely that this author had folks with disabilities performing key roles on deep-space missions. Lots to talk about in the near future, as things really get oppin’. Well of the things I can disclose publicly, that is. More soon.

Tech-No-Dependence

Posted on by John

Friday morning, 5 AM. I roll over as my arm continues to vibrate, alerting me to the fact that work is imminent and I must arise.

I do what I always do and reach over to grab the iPhone as I stumble toward the bathroom to get ready. A quick check of the headlines reveals that a tech outage of some kind (one of my friends pointed out that it was neither an internet or Microsoft outage, but its exact nature still sort of eludes me) has occurred. Travelers stuck at airports nationwide, and worldwide again.

“Glad I’m not flying anywhere” I think to myself.

I head downstairs and eat my meager breakfast. “Hmmm, GoTriangle Access (our area Paratransit) has usually called by now”. The clock had struck 5:25, and the service regularly sends an update via automated call and text message giving us an estimated time of arrival for our vehicle. I know it has been broken before though, so I don’t make much of a deal of it and continue with my morning preparations.

I sit on the porch, basking in the warm July morning and getting some reading in, but as we hit 6:20 AM I become concerned. I am usually picked up between 5:40 and 6:15, so I finally decide to call the agency’s Customer Service. The person who answers sounds far away, possible on her regular cell phone. “I’m sorry,” she says” but we’re impacted by the same outage that is shutting everyone else down. I will let you know if we get up and running, but till then I apologize.” Oh great, this means I will have to get an Uber all the way across town.

Summoning the ride actually goes seamlessly, with the driver pulling the back door even with me, me hopping in, hopping out at work, and walking right into the door. Fortunately they seem to have gotten it where the GPS leads them directly to the correct door, which hadn’t been happening initially.

Into my office with about fifteen minutes to spare, at the appointed time of 7:25 AM I boot up my computer and prepare to punch in. Only the site I need to visit is also a no-go. We have a few other administrative tasks that were to be completed today, but at least at that time they are all grounded. And I’m fairly sure few others came in either, given that paratransit isn’t running. So, I opt to head back out with my wife and the family, as they are off to visit the Greensboro Science Center anyway.

I love technology, heck my very job is completely centered around it. But what this craziness showed us are the potential perils that come with being too reliant on this stuff. The funny thing is, this wasn’t even the only such occurrence I had this week. On Tuesday, as I innocently plodded along through my presentation on using the JAWS screeen reader on the web, my company’s internet stopped working. Since I was online remotely, I didn’t notice the outage immediately and continued talking to… myself! Folk were emailing and texting me, trying to alert me to the error, but like the indistractable instructor I am I didn’t stop to check the messages. I finally started to wonder after the third time I tried asking for questions with absolutely no response, not even any background noise. It was a good presentation, trust me, the best you would have ever heard.. if you’d been online to hear it.

Then on Thursday, my iPhone inexplically wouldn’t open some apps, like Safari, our local news app, and X (Twitter) while allowing me to access Facebook, YouTube, and a couple others. I tried resetting and restarting the phone, but no dice. This also impacted my ability to work with the employee I was training, as we use a security app to log into the software they use for Customer Service. I had this problem all morning, but after lunch for whatever reason everything was working fine. Yeah, go figure. It’s been a crazy week.

And I’ll end this post with a complete aside and an exciting announcement: my employer LCI, has named me Employee of the Year. This means I get to attend the National Industries for the Blind’s annual conference in October, in Washington D.C. This will be a fascinating experience, and hopefully one of many. So yes, while I bemoan some of the challenges it can create, I as a blind person am very thankful for the existence and rapid advancement of technology.

The Little Things: On a Relaxing July 4 Vacation and Work

Posted on by John

Happy late Independence Day to all of us Americans who celebrate. Understanding many of the nuances of this nation’s history gives me much to ponder on that day, but I suppose I can get down with good food and family fun, as well as knowing that I’m fortunate that people have worked hard so that I have what I do have.

And what I did have on this July 4th was mostly blessed quiet, the calm before the storm one might say. My wife just had one of her sisters over, and she threw some steaks, dogs, burgers, and even chicken on the grill. I ate till bursting, then topped the night off with some of her homemade butter pecan ice cream. That takes me back to my childhood, when we so often ate the boxes of that stuff my mom would get as it was her favorite. “Eat the strawberry I got for y’all” she would say. But such is life when you have kids I guess, as many times someone would not only eat all of her butter pecan, but also put the empty box back into the freezer.

Ah, the glory days. That piece of waxing nostalgic done, I return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. Friday was more of the same, as I opted to take it off and not have to return to the office immediately after the holiday. I spent much of the day in a groggy fugue, as I had awakened kind of early. And I spent most of it indoors, as we topped out with heat indeces in the low 110s. That’s smokin’!

As that heat finally, sort of, broke over these parts on Saturday, my wife put up the summerish swinging bench she got for the back porch. That thing is pretty cool too, another piece of childhood though they don’t make them like they used to. My grandma had a bit metal swing chair thingy on her porch that I loved to sit on for hours, listening to the world go by. This one is more plastic, with a cloth canopy overhead and tables to either side that can hold cups or phones.

And as the heat continued to mostly hold off on Sunday, we took a stroll through Raleigh’s Dorthea Dixx Park so she could see and I could put my hands on the sunflowers. As we did so, a light, warm rain fell that actually felt good walking through. And, I got to feel and sit in a hammock, which I’ve often tried to visualize but could not quite understand. I love when I get to discover how things I’ve only read about actually work. That rope is kind of tricky to get into, and I could quickly understand how you could easily lie in or sit down on one. Cool.

So all of that had me relaxed and ready to enter what I knew would be a fast-paced week. My work is picking up, as we begin the training I alluded to in the previous post. Turns out I’m going to help someone at least acquire the basics of braille, and I will work with another on Customer Service stuff. I think the most enjoyable part of this is getting to express and expand my creativity as I work with others. It was a good day, just long and ending with a rewarding sense of exhaustion (there are multiple kinds of exhaustion). So just remember to ake heed of and be thankful for those little things that make up a life.

Half and Half

Posted on by John

So we have reached the end of the first half of 2024. The beginning of fiscal year 2025. And it has been and continues to be a year like no other I’ve ever experienced.

The first thing that tells us in which part of the year we are is the heat. And it has been, for most of us East coasters, extreme. If you know me though, then you know it’s hard to keep me inside when it’s not raining. Note I do know to listen to my body and seek shelter/water when told to by my various systems to do so. But understanding my need for heat, my wife got me this cool Neck Fan. Up until a couple weeks ago, I didn’t know such a thing existed. Weighing about as much as a headset band, it fits comfortably around the neck and blows air out through upward-facing slats. I’m actually curious how it works, since obviously there are no blades to generate the air. But you can set it at three speeds, and I’ve found that at the middle speed it’s quite effective in keeping me cool and minizing sweat, which of course helps me retain said water. So that thing is going to make my summer a lot more enjoyable.

The second thing that tells me where I am in the year is the amount of books I have consumed. (Side note: do you said you’ve “read” an audiobook? Because my wife and I are having a little discussion about that as well. I guess as a practical matter you are listening to someone read to you, but assuming it’s still a standard book and not something that tilts more toward an audio drama I argue that you are still using many of the same brain components that are involved in textual reading.) Any way you slice it, I have taken in more books (45) than I ever had at this time of year. I think that stems from my low tolerance for stories that aren’t grabbing me, which means I sometimes flick through three titles before settling on one. Lots of historical fiction, as that’s what people seem to be producing in spades these days. I especially love travel and adventure, currently into one called The Uncharted Flight of Olivia West by Sara Ackerman in which a woman enters an air race from San Francisco to Hawaii in 1927. It has some of the same elements of a Lisa Wingate book, as there is a character in 1987 Hawaii who discovers that she will inherit an estate from her great aunt. I’m not sure yet how the stories are going to tie together, but I’m also enjoying these increasingly popular dual-timeline novels.

And the final thoughts I have regarding the first half of 2024 involve my job. I spent nearly these entire six months working with two individuals in particular. I taught one how to perform some actions required in customer service and to do some basic work in Excel. This was rewarding, as he grasped many of the concepts we worked on. But what I found even more rewarding is the work I’ve done with a woman who wished to start learning some JAWS skills. I’ve learned the art of repetition, and of coming up with strategies to try and make the material more memorable. When I informed her that our sessions would be ending, or rather transitioning into a larger course that I will lead on using JAWS with web browsers, she said “Aww, I want more!” This made me feel good, as admittedly I had hoped she was even enjoying any of it or at least feeling like our work was useful. It is still nice to do work that truly matters, and that I hope will help someone achieve their career goals someday.

and that’s what I got for you as we prepare to embark on the rest of this year and our lives. We shall see what kind of fun awaits us on the other side. How was your first half?

SHIFTING SANDS:My Much-needed Trip to Myrtle Beach Part 3

Posted on by John

Friday, May 3. I awake a little after 8 AM, because I love listening to a local radio morning show as this is one of the best ways to get a feel for the area. I can kind of simulate this on my phone with apps like OoTunes, although it’s not quite the same given that I just go in and select the city I want and find a station. And it can be hard to tell if the station is actually in Myrtle Beach and not, say, Wilmington North Carolina. Ah, sometimes I miss my good ol’ analog walkman. I suppose I need to poke around and see if I can find something that simulates that closely enough.

Anyhow, I find a station, Mix 97, that I think is local to Myrtle Beach. The only thing they really talking about was the latest celebrity gossip, but this probably stems from the fact that I didn’t find it till nearly 9. The earlier you catch the show, the better.

We head out of our hotel room just after 10 to one of our Myrtle Beach favorites, Hot Stacks. It’s an area chain of breakfast restaurants that, as far as I can tell, only operate in Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach. On this trip, I go with the sausage omelet and plain grits, eschewing something they have called Trash Grits. I would get these grits on Saturday, and they were actually much better than the plain grits as they had sausage gravy and flecks of some kind of meat in them. I joke with my wife that if they’d shredded napkins and straw wrappers into the grits, we the customers couldn’t really be surprised. We have that weird sense of humor. Hot Stacks also has delicious coffee, nearly on par with that found at Waffle House.

After eating, I get to explore again with my GPS apps as my wife heads over to the Carolina Pottery to check out some arts supplies. She’s made quite a business making rag wreaths, wooden signs and the like in particular and selling them via Etsy and Her website. If you’re into that sort of thing, check it out. At this location, she finds some hard-to-locate ribbons.

After a short jaunt back to the room to get ready, we head down to the beach with my cousin and his wife for the best part of the trip. The sun is dealt out in just the right measure, with clouds thrown in so we don’t become too toasty. My cousin and I sit on the shore and chat about our similar fields of employment. He is also an assistive technology training instructor, as many of us blind folks fortunate enough to have good jobs are. I just hope our work is starting to give people the skills to open more doors, though the larger change must happen at a societal level, as still too many think non-working eyes means incapable of work.

Anyhow, our wives frolic in the water as the tides roll in. Mine says she is nearly knocked down by a big wave and decides to migrate inland. I join her briefly in the surprisingly warm surf, heard the news say it’s unusually warm which portends a bad hurricane season. Let us hope not.

We wrap up our time waterside in a deliciously warm hot tub. Only I, genius that I am, neglect to take off my shirt as I enter the water. This made for a fairly cold, drippy walk back to the room. Y’all, I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed.

Beach time is chill time, so we sprawl on the couch a bit while watching the news before heading out for supper. We join our other couple for dinner, tonight at Giant Crab. They mainly have a buffet, which is kinda pricey at $48 a plate. But it is also pretty good. I have two crab cakes, two servings of mashed potatoes, mac and cheese, and shrimp. As we eat, we all allow some of our unique marital inside language and jokes to come out. This is one of the joys of being with someone for a long time, the unusual way we come to understand the world and create our own world.

And finally, we head to my cousin’s room on the 16th floor, where we spend a little more time on their balcony and then inside of their much nicer suite. The balcony is up so high that the ocean is a little more muffled. And that cool breeze starts to get to me after a while, because yup, no long-sleeved shirt. But overall, the night and my trip were just the vacation I needed. They help to reset my perspective as I continue to try and help people broaden theirs.

Freeing Refreshable Braille for More Access

Posted on by John

Many in this era worry that the advent of digital audio technology will mean the end of braille as we know it. And there is already some truth to this, as very few totally blind people know or read braille as it is. But and I’ve seen this frequently in my training, those who depend heavily on audio to consume written content often are less able to spell correctly, which may well affect their ability to gain employment. Given the degree to which the cards are already stacked against us when it comes to getting jobs even without this challenge, we need to gain every advantage we can in any area.
These days, the answer to being more able to read materials in braille without having to produce the paper and take up the space this medium requires is to use a refreshable braille display. I’ve had a few of these devices, from the Braille Lite I got way back in the late 90s during my college career to the Brailliant BI 40 received from the I Can Connect program for deafblind individuals. And in 2020, I of course got the Mantis Q40 display I’ve written about a few times in this journal. And each of those devices opened up more of the written word in ways I could not have imagined.
The problem with these displays is and has been their expense. Most of us blind folks can hardly afford $2, 3, or $4,000 to get even a low-end display. Happily though, at least in the U.S, the National Library Service for the Blind (NLS) is making refreshable braille available for any eligible blind individuals. You have to be enrolled in the library for services, as I am, and call your regional library to request one.
There are two models of NLS Ereaders, as they are known: one provided through Humanware and another through Zoomax. I think you get the brand of reader that your library has available, so I received the Zoomax machine.
These models contain 20 braille cells, which is as much space as I had on my Braille Lite but only half the 40 cells on my other units. Reading with 20 cells is certainly doable, but it requires a lot more pressing of the panning buttons to advance through a single braille line. I’ve found though that as I practice I’m already getting better at it. My Mantis is currently on the fritz and I don’t know when or if I’ll ever see it again, so having this option so quickly available is vital to me being able to continue my work. I also like that it has a handy carrying case with magnetic snaps that keep it closed, which is kinda cool!
This reader is primarily designed to download and read NLS BARD books. However, it can connect via Bluetooth to your smartphone, and USB to the PC. It’s got an SD Card reader, and USB C port for the PC and a USB A port for a flash drive. I love that such a small unit contains so many ports.
It’s a pretty good device on the whole. The only issue I really notice, and this may be only in my unit, is that the battery gauge is unreliable. It says I have 50% charge, then 77%, then 19%, then 54%, so I can’t really tell how much juice it actually has. This is not a big deal though, as I’m usually close enough to a charging port at all times. I even have a portable battery I can plug in.
I am happy such a program exists. If you would like to take advantage of it, again just call your regional library and ask if they have an NLS Ereader. There was a slow roll-out, but they were at least hoping that all states would have units by the end of 2023. And happy reading!