ZoomWare on YouTube

This is basically a stripped down version of Zoomtext, without all the bells and whistles the full blown product has for the extreme visually impaired.  This is a neat product, because I get comments about the Zoomtext I use on my laptop all the time from my family and friends, talking about how they like the Zooming and invert brightness controls that my Zoomtext has.   Well this ZoomWare is awesome because for those who want just those magnification and color enhancing controls, and don’t have, or don’t want to pay the $600 Zoomtext costs,  this is a much less expensive alternative for the normal sighted person who just suffers from eye strain every now and then.   This product is only $150, much less expensive when all you want is to combat eye strain.  Eye strain from the Computer is a big problem for alot of people since Windows was introduced to the general public, and since screen resolutions can range anywhere from 800×600 on up to 1600×1200 in most cases,  unless your a teenager with eagle eyes, we all suffer from eye strain every now and then.   Just think of the strain and fatique you put your eyes thru starring at the Computer screen most of the day,  much of less someone who is extremely visually impaired or legally blind.    I could probably get by with this poduct myself right now,  but I am glad I have Zoomtext instead because my copy of Zoomtext has speech support as well, so when I get tired of reading, or eyes hurt too much to read, I can just have the Computer read the screen to me.   ZoomWare doesn’t come with that, which I think alot of normal sighted people would like,  but I am glad they left out audio support  otherwise it would have driven the price of the product way up, when most people just want a little help seeing stuff.

What makes Aisquared products so much nicer, then the built in magnification and narration features of Microsoft Windows, is there xFont technology.  What xFont does, it makes the text on the screen readable even at very highest magnification levels, so you can actually read the text on the screen when you magnify the screen.  It also has controls for magnifying the entire screen, or just part of the screeen, and you can adjust the lens to any position you want,   which are things Windows should have came with to begin with..

The only thing that bothers me, is that CompTIA, PearsonVUE, or the other certification testing companies  don’t allow such software to be used during certification testing.   I don’t know about you, but I think that is discrimination.   The only type of accomodation like that these places allow, is for someone they pick for you  to go into the test with you and read what is on the screen to you.  Well, if you can’t see what your doing, what good is that?   For instance, if I was being asked to design a Microsoft Access database, or a PowerPoint presentation,  how am I supposed to know how to answer the question if I cannot see what is on the screen?   especially with these Microsoft Certification tests there all interactive.  I don’t have every menu option, or every toolbar button memorized off the top of my head, and they shouldn’t expect me to know that.  The problem is these companies don’t understand there is a HUGE difference between 20/20 and completely blind,  and even then a completely blind person doesn’t have every toolbar button and every menu option memorized.  They know the steps, but won’t know if its right or not until they see it, or hear it in a blind persons case,  so to have someone sit there and read the screen to you, is NOT an appropriate accomodation at all, which ticked me off because how am I supposed to find a job in IT  if they won’t accomodate for my needs?  An employer would, an employer has to, and plus my USB license allows me to take my copy of Zoomtext with me to whichever Windows Computer I am using, even if its a work computer, and I’m allowed to fully install my license on up to 3 computers;  a home PC, a laptop, and a work PC, so my licensing is covered whoever I end up getting employment with.   Its just stupid they won’t allow such appropriate accommodations when even normal sighted people have problems reading text on the screen such as this, much of less someone in my case who is extremely visually impaired.   I’ve been using Computers since Kindergarten, heck half the questions on the A+ and Network+ exams I taught myself when I was a teenager, so to not allow such accomodations when I’m obviously a gifted IT student, is not only unfair, but downrigh discrimination.

I haven’t had a whole lot of time to play with it yet. I’m still working on a couple plugin incompatibility issues, and wordpress’s built in avatar’s feature, but I’ll play with those as I go along.  I definitely like this new admin interface better then the old 2.3 version anyway.  I didn’t upgrade when 2.5 came out because I was afraid some of my plugins wouldn’t be compatible with this version. I was pleasantly surprised that most of my plugins were.  In fact, I’m adding a couple more plugins back that I had to take out before that were basically rewritten by other authors after the previous authors dropped off the face of the earth, so I’m pleasantly surprised on that.  I’d still like to redo my theme one day to support sidebar widgets, but that is a major project I don’t have time to mess with right now.  I mean, its not too much of a major project, but I just don’t have time to mess with it right now.

I definitely like this new admin interface alot better. The visual write interface works alot better then it did in previous versions. I’m also able to add media and streaming video alot easier without having to use an external plugin, which is really cool.  The rest I haven’t had a chance to play around with much yet, but I will and post my thoughts about later.

Remax is coming over in a few minutes to have someone else look at the house.  I’m selling my house because the yardwork is more then I am able to do by myself.  For most people who know I’m legally blind, moeing grass is something I’ve never been able to do very well..  It would be neat to have a blind person teach me how to do that one of these days, I’m sure there is a way,  its probably something really easy I’m just not thinking of.  hehe

I’ll make a new post in a couple of days, for there have been alot of changes in my life for the good that have been happening lately. I just don’t have time to write about them right now. 

As we all know, Windows is very bad at being slow, sluggish, and all that, so I get alot of questions regarding which laptop to go with.  In my opinion, whichever model you choose to purchase, comes down to one thing.  RAM.  Nothing else in a laptop matters.

Now I know people want something thats fast, lightweight, and all that, but you have to remember one thing about that.  Any computer you get is going to be fast,  from the old 1.0 GHZ to the latest 4.0 GHZ there all going to be fast,  so CPU speed don’t make any difference, thats the biggest misconception I see alot of people make.  Second, it don’t matter if you go with hard plastic or titanium, or a 13.3 or 17 inch, there all going to be fairly lightweight, anywhere from 6lbs to 9 lbs, and unless your a little girl carrying a laptop around to school, the difference between 6 and 9 lbs is hardly trivial.  I mean, unless you drop your laptop on the ground frequently, which you shouldn’t anyway, the casing isn’t going ot make any difference.

For College students, who have eagle eyes, rather they get a 13.3 inch screen or a 17 inch screen isn’t going to be a big deal at all.  Now for me a 17 inch screen would be ideal, but thats only because I’m blind and could see the bigger screen better, but for most people that’s not a big factor, but just remember,  the smaller screen you get, the smaller items are going to be on the screen,  so if your vision isn’t quite 20/20, you may want to go for a larger screen for instance. Yeah you may sacrifice an extra pound or two, but like I said,  there all less then 9 lbs even the larger 17 inch titanium models, so who cares,  just work out some more if 3 lbs makes that much of a difference to yah. hehe.  just joking.

As for Hard drive space, most modern laptops come with way more then the average person actually uses.  Unless your a big time music and video fan, I wouldn’t worry about hard drive space either.  Any 5400 rpm drive is going to do you just fine, which all modern laptops come with nowadays.   Of course, you could always go with the 7200 rpm barricuda drives,  but the extra battery power they use up isn’t worth the speed benefits in my opinion,  just because the speed isn’t that much faster, just a couple miliseconds faster is all you’d notice if you’d benchmark the two, and it just cuts your battery life between charges down in half.

The biggest hardware component thats going to make, or break, any laptop, will be RAM capacity.  Not necessarily how much RAM is in the machine, but how much RAM the laptop is capible of holding, thats the key.   Most Dell, Gateway, and Compaq laptops I never recommend, because they only hold a maximum of  2GB.    whats the problem with that you ask??  simple, laptops also share video RAM with system RAM, so if your running Vista with  2GB of RAM,  minus the 256 mb  the video is using,  your already down to 1.7 GB before you even turn the machine on.    My Compaq Presario V5 has 2GB max, and its a load of crap to put XP or Vista on it either one, because I only get 1.37 GB total system RAM out of it.  In XP thats fine, not the best but it will work. In Vista,  the Operating System itself requires 1GB of RAM,  so basically I only have 370 mb free to run applications with.  That sucks because your constantly caching from the hard drive to run applications, so its like really really slow,  slower then my old 486 sx PC was..    all because there’s not enough RAM in the system to run Vista,  and really the performance wouldn’t be much better in XP either,  for it takes almost 2 GB total to run XP anymore.

Anyway my point is, any model you go with,  find one that has a maximum capacity of more then 2 GB of RAM.   There’s only ONE major manufacturer of laptops that I can think of off the top of my head, that supports more then 2 GB of system RAM,  and thats HP..    Now I know what your thinking,  isn’t HP and Compaq the same company now?  Yes thats technically true,  but HP’s laptops have much better hardware components inside them then Compaq’s do.  In fact, I’ve been very impressed with the HP line of laptops lately.

This lady who drives the kabs bus here in town. She just purchased an HP Pavilion. The laptop she bought came with 4 GB of RAM already installed.    I was like…..oh man I am soo jealous of you!  hehehe.  She said she bought it at Sam’s Club for like $550.  Came with 4 GB of RAM, a 160 gig HD, a webcam, and some other things.   Now she wasn’t too happy with HP / Compaq’s technical support,  which agree with her does suck. I mean, half the time your talking to someone from another country who can’t speak English very well. hehe,  but there all like that now I figure.  The most important is RAM capacity,  because if you have at least 3 GB of RAM in your laptop,  maybe even 4,  your system will fly, regardless of the CPU or hard drive capacity.   so really if you want to speed up your laptop, don’t get another laptop, save your money and just add in more RAM, as much as it will hold,  but if it doesn’t hold more then 2 GB of RAM,  then I’d get an HP for sure, because those 4 GB models, those are really cool!!  I saw one at Walmart the other day, it came with 3 GB but you could put up to 4 GB in it. for like $600 I think it was, that was just awesome!  I’d trade up my Compaq for that model anyday, even though all the other hardware compoents in mine, and that one, were completely identical.  I’d even take a slower CPU speed laptop with 4 GB RAM in it, over this one anyday.

theblindphotographer.com

I read this, and thought to myself.. “Do they have any classes on using photoshop too?” lol!

As funny as this is, I bet blind people would make good photographers though. I mean, they have driving for visually impaired people, why not photography too right? If I did anything like that, they’d have to teach me how to work in photoshop first, or fireworks or MS paint, or irfanview or any of those other graphical editors. Thats why I get discouraged from designing websites, because I can’t draw, or crop pictures, or do banner ads or buttons or bullets or anything of that sort. I wish I could, I really do, but noones ever taught me.

I asked Ivy Tech about it, and my faculty advisor was saying she’s trying to learn Flash and actionscript and is having a hard enough time with that. I told Lauran though I said, I can’t even draw a bullet or a little button that web designers need just to do simple things like wordpress and movable type javascript templates, much of less all the pretty graphics most websites have nowadays. She just doesn’t understand you can’t teach me how to draw, you either have a born talent to do it, or you don’t, but she says I can be just a coder. I’m like, nobody is going to hire me JUST to sit there and code all day, there going to want more then just that, least in this town anyway, there going to want buttons in various shapes and sizes drawn, bullets made in different colors, all that kind of stuff that I just can’t do. I mean, to give you an idea of what I’m trying to say, I don’t even know how to take an existing button and change its color. I’m sure its probably fairly easy, probably a one step process in photoshop I’m sure, but until someone sits down with me and teaches me how to do that, I won’t ever know how to do it.

I’m not saying I couldn’t, but I am saying, someone would have to sit down with me and SHOW me how, because I have read just about every photoshop tutorial there is online trying to figure out how to draw simple bullets and buttons for even my own navigational menu over there on the right of this blog, and I couldn’t figure it out, because all the tutorials on that subject are too advanced for me,  so how do they think I’m supposed to be able to do it for a living? My instructor just did not understand thats the main reason I had to quit that web development job at Vision it Now. Sure, of course I can put up with crappy bosses, weird employees, and all that,  actually the employees there were fairly nice people, I put up with much worse when I worked in factories for over 10 years, but what they don’t understand, is the job itself is what I couldn’t do, and if I can’t do my job then how am I supposed to stay employed there?  Sure if I was getting paid and I needed the pay to pay my rent sure I would have put more effort into the job, but since I was just doing it on a volunteer basis for a reference on my resume, who cares, thats what I figured.

Its like if a person didn’t know Access 2007, and couldn’t figure it out even after reading a tutorial, and the boss asked the person to design a database, and the employee couldn’t do it because that person didn’t know how to design a database. Well, the employee would have to quit or accept being fired right? because if the employee they hired couldn’t do the job they’d have to find someone else who could, thats just how it works in business.  Most people would just wait until their fired if they were being paid for it, but if you know you can’t do the job they expect of you, and your doing it for FREE anyway, why stick around, why even bother sticking with it? Exactally, well thats all that happened. I couldn’t learn what they wanted me to learn on my own, I didn’t have the experience. They of course knew that when they hired me,  but I didn’t know what all I was responsible for doing until I got on the job, and Ivy Tech doesn’t offer classes in that type of web development, so it was just a waste of my time being there if I couldn’t do the job they asked me to. I would have been fired after the second week if I hadn’t have quit after the first week anyway, and I figured quitting is alot better then being fired.

My point is, everybody has their own talents in this world, mine is computers yes, but see, there are alot of areas in technology I can learn and do well in. I can do Networking, Servers, Computer Assembly and maintenance, troubleshooting,  tech support, all that stuff. I can work with Office a little bit, not professionally but I know enough of it to get me by for home use, but my strongest area is still Networking and A+ related stuff. but see, thats why Ivy Tech has 9 different degree programs now in IT, because the field is just so large anymore that I don’t have to design websites to be good in IT, so personally I don’t see what the big deal is.

I understand back in the old days of MS-DOS, us IT guys had to know every area in Computers, because every area was MS-DOS or Linux thats all their was back in those days, which I originally thought myself, that I had to know everything to make it in IT, but that is no longer true because every Joe Schmo has a Computer today, so the field has grown very large over the years.

I mean, not all IT guys know how to design websites in the first place. I talk to my fellow nerds in tech forums everyday who don’t know how to draw either, so I don’t feel so bad for not knowing. Most of the web designers I talked to had no clue how to design websites in ColdFusion at all, most everybody I talked to in the web development field either use PHP, or ASP.NET,  which I wouldn’t be able to draw buttons or bullets in those languages either, or even xhtml and CSS for that matter. I think one guy told me he learned ColdFusion in college like 15 years ago, but has never used it once since. ColdFusion actually wasn’t that difficult to learn, its the graphics I had a problem with. I did find out why alot of  people don’t know ColdFusion though, because ColdFusion hosting is expensive. I even went looking for ColdFusion hosting over at webhostingtalk.com, a place I hang out at often, and everybody told me ColdFusion hosting is expensive because the ColdFusion product is so expensive, but no more expensive then Cpanel/WHM or Virtuozzo, so I’m not real sure why they don’t offer it. but nobody knows it except a handful of people who have been using it for over 15 years, so really I feel sorry for that Vision it Now place because I don’t think there going to find anybody who knows ColdFusion, but I am sure there are IT guys who are more efficient at web design then I am, they probably know photoshop and all that, so they would be a better fit then me, graphics is just not a strong area for me, and one of the reasons for that is just because there just isn’t enough training in it out there really. Most everybody I know who does graphics is self taught, but I just don’t have the talent in that area they do, I just don’t have it.

Anyway, I just think that phtography for blind people is so neat, now they just need classes in photoshop for blind people.  lol

Oh well. I talked to Vocational Rehab this morning, and there going to help me find something else hopefully. I talked to the library, they said they’ve had interns there before, but they haven’t got back with me yet and its been over a week now.

The trouble I have finding work alot of times, and this is for anyone who cannot drive a car, is having to deal with transportation issues. When I am employed with a company, I can either walk (which I like to do its good exercise for me and it doesn’t take longer then an hour to walk anywhere here in Warsaw, hehe) or I have the option of taking the City Bus, or a Taxi.

A Taxi costs $10 per way, per stop now, so I don’t take them anywhere unless its an absolute emergency. Its not that I don’t mind spending $20 per day to get to work, I just don’t have it. I can’t pay what I don’t have. Besides that, they get so busy in the mornings and late afternoons that they don’t show up on time. When I had my interview with Vision It Now, the taxi was 2 hours late picking me up, so I was 20 minutes late for the interview. I didn’t know where they were located, so I wanted the taxi to take me early so I could find the place, then go get a cup of coffee from McDonalds or something and wait until my interview, but that didn’t work out. I don’t blame Vision It Now for being mad at me for that. I admit, I was 20 minutes late for the interview, beyond my control yeah, but still doesn’t look good on me, so alot of the reason that job didn’t work out was mostly because of transportation related issues beyond my control.

I mean, ok yeah I didn’t like my boss, and I wasn’t too crazy about the work, and all that, but that comes with any job, I can always suck that up by blowing off some steam somewhere. I didn’t mind walking, its good exercise for me, I just don’t see why they had a problem with me walking to work. My two feet are the only transportation in this town I can truly depend upon, since the taxi or city bus just aren’t reliable.

The city bus option, is cheaper, it costs $1.50 per stop per way, which is only $3 a day, thats about what gas costs now anyway, which is cool. The trouble with the City bus in this town, this is one thing my boss and I at Vision It Now did agreed upon, they don’t always show up either, and when they do, if they don’t see you standing right outside where they drive by at, they write you up as a no show. It took my boss and I several calls to finally explain to them “this guy cannot see you drive up you have to go around the block to get him”. After 2 no-shows, they suspend you from taking the city bus for 1 year. After 3 no-shows, your suspended indefinitely.

Isn’t that system stupid? I mean, what if your at work and you pass out and have to be rushed to ER. Yeah you can call the city bus and tell them, but they still write you up as a no show for that day. My boss at Vision It Now, she was saying she had similar issues with her son, or daughter or something. Someone should write a letter to the city and complain thats all I have to say about it. I don’t mind paying a no show fee for not showing up one day in an emergency situation, but they should not suspend you for 2, or more, offenses. They should just charge you for their tiime, and leave it at that, but thats not what they do no.

When I used to work at KMC Corp, before Susan started working there, my boss at KMC walked in with me to speak to the owner of the place. He had two no-shows written up on me, so the owner of the company I was working for stepped in and said “hey look man, he needs a ride into work and your going to take him”. They finally did agree upon a years suspension, instead of a suspension indefinitely, but isn’t that rediculus though?

I think what I need to do, is get away from Warsaw, to a bigger city that has better public transportation services. I thought about moving to where my brother lives around the Indianapolis area. He lives in Noblesville, but I know Indianapolis has excellent public transportation, and other such services for the blind and disabled. They have a better bioptic driving program down there too from what I hear, so I’m thinking seriously about moving there.

I’ll have my Social Security Disability check wherever I move to, but I’ll just have to figure out where to live. A possibility I thought about, was talking to my Vocational Rehab counselor about it, see if he knows about any relocation programs for the blind and disabled.

It is too bad the job didn’t work out, and I really do appreciate Vision It Now giving me this chance and everything. I just know if I could move to a larger city with better public transportation options, it would open up a world of options for me, but in the meantime, I am stuck here in Warsaw, so I’m out finding a place to complete my internship program. The library is one prospect I have in mind right now. I am going to speak with Staffmark today, our local temp agency, to see if they work with interns or not, I really don’t know. I could always do it at Biomet or Zimmers or MedTronics or something. I asked the hospital, they don’t work with interns. I did speak to my VR counselor though, and asked him if he would speak to Anthony Wayne Services of Warsaw for me. They have job placement services for the blind and disabled, but you have to go thru VR to get job placement assistance from them, so I’m awaiting for him to return my call right now.

Ivy Tech’s job placement program has been real disappointing, they just don’t have anything. Oh, how I wish I lived in South Bend though. Ivy Tech of South Bend, this region’s home office, has all kinds of services the Warsaw campus does not have. They have a Learning lab, where I could get help learning how to read (like my nephew Ryan went thru, I have the same issues he does with reading and studying) they have better accommodations there for persons with disabilities, like software for the computer that is authorized to work in testing situations, like for the A+ and Network+ certifications, that Warsaw just doesn’t have. I wouldn’t be surprised if Indianapolis had a similar setup, Warsaw just doesn’t. My VR counselor is from Elkhart, and just doesn’t understand Warsaw doesn’t have all the services that the bigger cities like South Bend and Ft Wayne have.

I thought about moving to Ft Wayne too, but nothing against my family I love them all dearly, but my life would be an Everybody Loves Raymond episode if I moved there, with my mom popping in every day whenever she felt like it. ugh. I love my mom, I really do, but not that much. haha.  Have you guys seen that show “everybody loves Raymond”.  Oh I love that show!! I about die laughing every time I watch it.   Another funny show I like to watch is “Courage the Cowardly Dog” on cartoon network. hustess and muriel on that cartoon remind me of my mom and step-dad, it is so funny!! 

I tell yah, after all these years, I never thought I would get this far, never thought I’d graduate. I remember certain individuals in my life I’ll keep silent about, telling me I was a looser, that what could have been a promising Career field for me, was nothing more then a alcoholic addition to the Computer. Ya know how I respond to that kind of a comment? Sure, I may spend 24/7 on the computer most of the time, but so what, Computers are everywhere nowadays, I’m proud of my alcoholic addition! and you can’t tell me a kid who has spent his whole life on the computer since Kindergarten, cannot become successful in the world today with an alcoholic addition to something that is everywhere on the planet today.

I’ve always been proud of who I am, even if others don’t care, and there isn’t a person in this world I cannot train to use a computer, or repair, or design a website for. The only thing that is scaring me right now, is I was offered a Co-Op job this summer. I volunteered to get involved in the Co-Op program at Ivy Tech, I’m the only IT student at Ivy Tech who even took the time to volunteer to do it, so I’m going to be working for free this summer designing websites, or whatever they ask me to do for them.

I’m just so scared, because there using a web language I’m not familiar with, and I’m supposed to learn by May 12th. I’m so scared of loosing this job, I don’t know what to do. I’ve been working 18 years to get to this point, and now I feel like a failure. I’ve spent the last couple of years learning PHP, XHTML, CSS, ASP, so on and so forth, and now I have to learn a language called ColdFusion, and for the first time in my life, I am scared of something I have to do on the computer. I’ve spent all these years trying to prove myself, and this comes up.

So even though VR has decided not to pay for any additional schooling anymore, I’m going to find my own way to go back for my Bachelors degree, even if it means a stafford loan I may not ever be able to pay back, because I can’t give up after all this time, I refuse to give up now, but I may have to if all this doesn’t work out this summer. I’ve never been more scared in all my life then I am right now.

All I can say is, THIS is why I didn’t want to get into web design in the first place.. All these years my brother inlaw encouraged me to get into web design, all his encouragement and everything, and now I say, this is why I didn’t want to get into it, everytime I learn something, something new comes out and have to learn all over again. I hate everything to do with web design, and this is why.

but I have to give myself credit, after I lost my job last year in Boggs Industrial Park, anyone else would have just stayed on Social Security the rest of their life and given up, but noo, I didn’t want to give up, I busted my butt to go back to school, despite my disability. Ya know, for 8 years I worked in boggs industrial park, doing a job that didn’t pay any better then McDonalds, fact I make more on Social Security then I did at that job, and the hospital, for over a decade, but I didn’t give up because I don’t want to be on Social Security the rest of my life. Anyone else would have taken the lazy way out, but not me, I continued to never give up, now I’m excited about graduation, but scared of this co-op thing coming up, for the first time in my life I’m scared.

Link to a much larger photo

Some of those names are hard to read, I understand. President Thomas Snyder is the head of the Leadership Academy for all 13 regions of Ivy Tech throughout the country. Most of the regions are around the Indiana Michgan area, but there were some just outside as well. We had a few guest speakers during the graduation ceremony, but I can’t tell you what all their names were, I forget now. LOL

Anyway it was fun, we drove down to Anderson Indiana from the Ivy Tech Region 2 Warsaw Campus, Friday the 11th, and stayed at the Hampton inn a few miles away from Anderson University.

The first day, we got a chance to take a tour of Anderson University, have a couple nice meals, and then listened to the Anderson University jazz band play until 9pm that night. The jazz band was really good, I wish I had brought a camera with me.

I brought my swim trunks with me to swim in the pool after the jazz band played at 9pm. but Region 2 wanted to get together in room 321 that night to work on our Powerpoint presentation for the next morning. Each of the 13 regions got to do a presentation about what we learned this year in the Leadership Academy. We did that for maybe, 10 minutes, hehe, and then the rest of the time just hung around and talked about silly stuff, ya know how that goes. I basically hung out in room 321 until about 4am when everyone finally went to bed. Half the group went to bed around 11am, some left about midnight, but 4 of us stayed up all night, including myself. They wanted to take me to one of the local bars, and I would have went if they asked, but we ended up not going and just sat around the hotel talking about sily things mostly.

Anyway, we all had to be up and dressed by 7am for our presentations, so I didn’t even bother going to bed that night. I could have slept for maybe a couple hours, but I figured I’d probably oversleep if I did that, so I just stayed up. Almost everybody in the group had their own hotel room, there were a couple guys who got rooms together, and a few girls, but most of us from our region were lucky enough to get our own rooms since not everyone from the Academy completed. Most dropped out after the first semester, or just stopped going to the meetings entirely. I think Jennifer and I were the only two who attended every meeting, so we each had our own room.

The only complaint I really had about the whole trip. I took my laptop with me to help work on the presentation, and I couldn’t connect to the hampton inn’s wireless internet. I worked on it for hours. After fussing and fussing with it, I finally just figured it was a WIndows Vista issue, because everyone else who was running Windows XP had no issues connecting, and I did exactally what they did, so Vista must be the culprit as to why I couldn’t connect, but I have the same problem connecting to the Warsaw Library, and I figure that must be why. Vista won’t connect to any open network, it almost forces you to use WEP or WPA-PSK even though there is an option in Vista to connect anyway when it gives you that warning, but the thing is, even though I have problems connecting to hotels and libraries, I can’t seem to “reproduce” the error here at home, so I’m not real sure how these other places have their routers configured. If I could figure out how to reproduce the issue here at home, I could work on a solution, but I can’t reproduce the issue here at home, so just gave up on it.

The other complaint I had, The hampton Inn where we stayed the night, was like, 2-3 miles away from Anderson University, so we didn’t have the option of working on our presentations in the Computer lab on campus. That made alot of us mad, because we would have rather been able to walk from the campus to the hotel if we wanted to, especially since they had so much more to do at the University. We noticed several other hotels closer to the University they could have put us.

Also, most of the people at this big Regional event, were in the 18-24 age group, and I just don’t fit in with that age group really well, ya know? It was like trying to network with a bunch of little kids, they wanted to go out and party all night in bars and stuff, they just didn’t understand that wasn’t my thing, so most of my peers just ignored me for the most part. I did go along with what everyone else wanted to do, but they still didn’t talk to me much at all. It made me sad to tell you the truth. It always upsets me when I goto these events and nobody talks to me. I know I’m not much of a conversationalist, especially around a bunch of 18-24 year old girls. I mean there were a few guys too, but most of the regions were all women, which is usually the case in colleges around here most of the college attendance seem to be women for some reason, which would normally be fine by me, I like talking to women better then I do men anyway, I always have, but its just the fact that the whole semester they’ve treated me like that. I met a couple people in person who were on my facebook friends list, which was real neat, some from ft wayne and bloomington mostly, but a couple of them took me off their facebook profiles and banned me from their facebook friends list, after seeing me in person with the cane and sunglasses and everything, so that was real upsetting to me, especially since this was supposed to be a graduation conference about leadership. How can a person even begin to be a good leader, if they discriminate against the disabled like that. They didn’t treat the guy in the wheelchair like that, only the blind person. That, downright irritated me to no end, because it wasn’t just my region who acted like that, it was most everyone from all the regions, and that really upset me.

Some people are going around posting their upgrade instructions, mine have been the same ever since I’ve run a blog. I use a shell prompt, using the following shell script:

#!/bin/bash
cd /home/username/public_html/blog/
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
tar xfz latest.tar.gz
rm -rf ./wp-includes/
rm -rf ./wp-admin/
cd wordpress/
cp -rpf —-reply=yes * ../
cd ..
rm -rf ./wordpress/
rm -f latest.tar.gz
exit

To backup the mysql database, I use this command

mysqldump -u username -p databasename > filename.sql

replacing of course, username with your actual username, databasename with your actual databasename. My SQL database is in the format username_databasename because I’m using cpanel, but you get the general idea. See, and you Windows guru’s thought the command prompt was dead, HA! I use the command prompt everyday in linux, and write shell scripts, just like in the old days of batch files.

Anyway, I have no desire to upgrade to Wordpress 2.5 at this time. I may in a couple of weeks after I get all my homework for my classes done, but right now I don’t have time to upgrade to another major version, because it requires editing my theme files for wordpress’s new gravatar features, and going thru my plugins to see which ones work and which don’t, and I just don’t have the time to mess with that right now until after my classes are done.

April 11th, is my last day of the Student Leadership Academy. I am going to Bloomington that day, to present our final project, and be presented with our Leadership certifications. Its like a little diploma, and I received 3 college credits for taking part in it. It was basically a year long class teaching us how to be an effective leader. According to them, leadership isn’t something your just born with, leadership can be taught they claim. I’m not sure if I entirely believe that, there are alot of people in the world who are not natural born leaders, but apparently they claim anyone can be taught, which will be great skills to have for any job I figure, so. This last day is our only overnight stay, because we’re supposed to work together that night to work on our presentation for the next morning. Since we have it done, I’ll probably just go swimming in the hotel pool, and probably hang out with my fellow classmates. The college reserved me my own hotel room there in Bloomington, the college pays for it all, so it should be loads of fun.

The YMCA called me yesterday, and I went in for a small interview. The lady wanted a better idea of how much eyesight I have, to properly place me in a volunteer area. She had a couple good ideas, and said if nothing else, I could always clean weightlifting equipment for 8 hours a month to get in enough volunteer hours to keep a membership.

One interesting idea she had, she wants me to come back Monday and interview with the swimming teacher. Their idea, was I could be an assistant swimming instructor. That would be neat. I was in varsity swimming all thru middle school, so I could do that, teach kids and adults how to swim. I told them a lifeguard may be out of reach just because if someone was drowning I wouldn’t be able to see they were drowning unless there was someone with me, and she agreed that wouldn’t be the best area to put me, but she thought an assistant instructor could be an idea. The other ideas they had, were working at the front desk answering phones, which again I could do that, we’re only talking about 8 hours a month, so I don’t really think any of that will interfere with my Crohns related rectal and standing up issues any, since we’re not talking a standard 40 hour work week here, it would just be when I felt up to it, so I don’t think any of this will affect Social Security at all.

I mean, if Social Security gets word I’m volunteering at the YMCA, they may come back and try to claim that I could work a job if I’m volunteering at the YMCA, and stop my benefits, but the way I see it, volunteering 8 hours a month is hardly the same as working a standard 40 hour work week, so I don’t forsee any problems with this. Again, it’ll look good on my resume, even though thats not why I’m doing this.

Besides, I think the exercise will do me good. Here lately, since I lost my job, I have been bored out of my mind, and since all I do is sit at home now doing homework, and taking baths several times a day turning into a prune, I no longer get the exercise I need, and all I think about all day and night long is “food” which is not a good thing especially when you have a condition called Crohns Disease, hehe. Because all I think about all day long is food, I’ve been going off my diet, which has been giving me all kinds of medical problems. So I figured, you know, exercising at the YMCA, and keeping busy volunteering, would fix both the boredom and overeating issues at the same time.

Let me put it this way, if I can do something where I don’t think about food all day, its easier for me to stick to my diet. Before I had work to keep me busy not thinking about food, but since I’m unemployed now, all I think about is food. I don’t care if I gain 100 lbs, I don’t care how I look, thats not the point. The point is, I eat stuff I’m not supposed to developing a food addiction sitting here, and I end up getting sicker from it, when all I do is sit here all day, so this will be a great opportunity for me, I think even my doctor would agree with.

I realize alot of people on Social Security don’t have a choice, but the way I see it, we all have choices. As I sit here waiting to go completely blind, watching my Crohns Disease worsen with every passing day, I could choose to sit here on my butt all day feeling sorry for myself, but I choose not to do that. I choose to continue trying to be active as long as I have a breath left in me. I think that kind of attitude is admirable, and whoever says otherwise is just being pessimistic.

How to install and boot 145 different Operating Systems

this is freaking awesome!! I used to use System Commander to boot between Windows, DOS, and different Linux flavors, but this puts System Commander to shame for sure. I knew that multiple Linux distros could be installed using the same swap file partition, as long as there using the same kernel version, but I didn’t know you could install 137 different flavors, that is just so awesome!! Now I’m gonna have to get my server computer back out and try this just for the fun of it, ya know that right? haha! I don’t have a 300 GB hard drive though, but I do have a 120 and an 80 lying around, so between those two I may be able to pull it off. I’ll just have to setup the partitions differently then the ones he did. I probably won’t attempt this until after graduation, but it will give me something fun to do for the summer. hehehehe.

Here is another cool reference I found the other day someone posted over at Leoville UNIX Toolbox I added it to my bookmarks, its basically a complete list of useful Linux commands from different distros. I was looking thru that list, and noticed one command in particular, the one on how to change the MAC address of your network card. I knew that could be done in Linux, but I had no idea you could do it that easily from a linux shell prompt, pretty fascinating stuff. I guess that does prove after all that it is possible to spoof a MAC address. I know WEP can be cracked just as easily, but how to do it I have no idea. A couple students in my Networking class didn’t believe me when I told them you can spoof a MAC address, now this proves it.

That is one thing I love about school though, its the only place I can get away with speaking my mind, as long as I have the citations to back up my claims. I can hardly wait to do my persuasive speech in the next two weeks, I’m going to persuade the audience to eat healthy. I’m going to talk about the Specific Carbohydrate diet, Makers diet, and several other citations that prove that eating healthy isn’t just about weight loss. I can hardly wait to present that. Nobody ever believes me, but this time, I got the citations to back it up! so cool

Vision Simulation

Of course, this is just a simulation, this isn’t even near close to how I see, but it does explain the various types of conditions I have to deal with everyday.

For instance, my right eye has Central Vision loss, so in the center of that eye is clouded like in that photo, but the left eye has peripheral vision loss. The peripheral vision loss slide is just a simulation, I don’t see black around the edges like that, the black areas just aren’t there, there like gone, so when I look out like that, that center area is all I am seeing.

Because both eyes have different degrees of vision loss, I do not see out of both eyes at the same time. For instance, I have to cover the left before I can see out of the right, because the left takes over. That has been that way since birth, eyes working independently of eachother I mean with the left eye always taking over. Its always very hard to explain that to people, even my mobility instructor doesn’t get it. She thinks I can use the peripheral area of the right eye to see objects on that side of my path, but she doesn’t understand, unless I cover the left eye I can’t see out of the right at all, and that has always affected my mobility, as a kid I was just stubborn about it.

Basically what I am saying, is when I was younger and could see the same out of both eyes, the left eye has always taken over, and for that reason among many others, I have been considered legally blind since birth. Social Security doesn’t see it that way, thats why I’ve always fussed with Social Security matters, because they haven’t always considered me Legally blind. They didn’t consider me Legally blind until April 2007, which isn’t true I’ve been Legally Blind under the law since birth, but they only look at the numbers, and don’t take other things like peripheral, and only being able to see thru one eye at a time, into account, that my eye doctors do.

I mean, think about it, if you can only see out of one eye, unless you cover the other, your basically completely blind out of that eye as your walking down the street, so why wouldn’t that be considered? I mean that has never made any sense to me.

Another issue I have that they don’t talk about at all in those simulations, is I see halos around lights every now and then. Thats mostly from the glaucoma, but I’ve always had some of that, its just worse now. One of my eye doctors thinks its just my eyes aging, and that I was prone to this happening long ago, I was just so young that my eyes could handle it, but I don’t know, but they do agree that Glaucoma is usually caused by Inflammation of the eye, and since Crohns Disease is inflammation of the entire digestive tract, why couldn’t it spread to the eyes as well? it only makes sense. My doctor just says I should thank my lucky stars I don’t have Lupus, which is the same condition except spreads to 11 additional areas, like the lungs, heart, liver, so on and so forth. I suppose I am lucky on that, but as fast as this spreads, I don’t feel a bit of comfort knowing that in the least. Instead of that fact comforting me, only makes me worry that it could one day be Lupus, so I definitely do not take the least bit of comfort in that. I don’t even know why he told me. I would have been better off not knowing what I don’t have, but could have, yet. I can only handle so much at a time, ya know?

The last thing I wanted to talk about, in regards to that simulation, is it doesn’t talk about the sensitivity to light that glaucoma patients experience. Basically without sunglasses, I see two of everything. Its called a glaire affect, but to me it looks like shadows around everything, kinda like the halo effect I suppose. Sunglasses, preferably ones that have blue light protection, take away the halos and shadow doubling effect, but have a disadvantage of blocking some of the light coming in to see with, thats why I wear a yellow pair that aren’t quite so dark. This is a disadvantage, because I need as much light as possible in order to see what I’m doing, especially that white florescent lighting helps a great deal, but it hurts to look at the light, so what I have to do is shine a florescent light behind me on the book I’m reading, and then use the sunglasses to protect my eyes from the blue light so the glare doesn’t double my vision. Its kinda confusing, and believe me I don’t understand it all that well either, but think of it, like how you have to wear sunglasses outside when the sun is really bright out? Well its the same thing for me, except not only sunlight but florescent lighting hurts my eyes as well, but the sunglasses themselves block some of the light I need to see where I’m going as well, they do for everybody I imagine, thats why people don’t generally wear sunglasses indoors, which as you can imagine impairs my mobility even more, which is why its so important for me to get mobility and cane travel training.

Anyway, the point to posting all of this, not everybody who is legally blind sees the same. I went to the blind school in Indianapolis with many kids who never wore glasses or sunglasses, but I have to wear sunglasses because of the nature of my unique eye condition. The term Legally Blind describes a wide array of many different eye conditions, and visual abilities, just like any other type of disability, and because of that, there is no real way for me to explain to you guys what I can and cannot see. Because I was born this way, I don’t know what its like to have 20/20, and I never will understand, so I can’t explain it to you, any better then you can explain to me what its like to have 20/20, its just not possible, so alot of times, its just easier to have a white cane with me so when I’m at walmart walking around, or school walking around, other people see that cane and know I at least fall within guidelines of legal blindness, meaning they don’t have to understand it, just know I am blind in some way, and to watch out for me regardless. I mean, thats really the point to all of it I think. Some people, well alot of people, don’t carry a cane around because they don’t want others to know they have a vision problem, but for me I don’t have a choice, because any place I go in public becomes a hazard for me to get hurt if I don’t. I could not only hurt myself, but little kids or other people, so it isn’t just about me finding my way around, I also use it so others don’t get hurt in the process. I mean, most people think someone walking with a cane there gonna trip you with it, but that isn’t true. With proper mobility training, a regular person should never trip over a cane, and if they do, its their own fault for not looking where there going in the first place, because a white cane stays within that persons private space, so your not going to trip over a cane unless your too close to that persons private space to begin with, right up in their face I mean. So, when you see someone with a white cane, you don’t have to run away, they don’t have koodles, just don’t get up in their personal space and you’ll be fine, hehe, just kidding, but seriously you wouldn’t do that, get up into someones personal space while walking around walmart or someplace, so its no problem.