got to love windows

Well, I guess this entry is more then just my rants on how java under
windows is managed.....where to start?

I've been in and out of the hospital a couple times since i last wrote,
but there's not much to really say. It tends to be round and round of
the same thing over and over again and we're not really getting
anywhere. There's no pattern to link my hospital stays to where we can
actually improve on things. Least that's how it looks to me and it's
frustrating.

They suggested maybe getting a medical port put in my arm to help so
that they wont have to find more and more places to stick me. At this
point dispite the risks i dont think i really have a choice. they're
sticking needles between my knuckles to find vains and i'll tell you
it's not a pleasant experience.

I started the SCD diet a couple weeks ago. It seems to help a bit, but
it's very hard to follow if you land in the hospital. I guess we'll see
how well it works over the next several weeks.

I switched back to windows a couple weeks ago and while i hate windows
I'll have to admit that it's nice to have things that generally just do
what they're told to with no real setup. The linux desktop just isn't
what i'd call useable. Things like the screen reader and synth tend to
randomly go boom which means your computer doesn't talk. There's more
things like that, but over all i'd almost rather use this for a desktop.

Christmas is getting closer, and it tends to make me reflect back on the
year. This year was particularly hard in a lot of ways. the constant
hospital stays, surgery, things like that. Dispite the dificulties
though, I have chris, and that's what i enjoy the most. We have so much
fun together, and we always have things we can do with eachother to keep
things exciting:)

devils claw tea

I found this tea to be extremely effective at dealing with the nausia.
I'm nausia free for the first time in probably a week. I'm guessing it's
the tea. It's said that the tea is very good for the stomach and helps
improve digestion. We'll see how long this keeps up, but hopefully i'll
stay this way. The thought of eating real food again is kind of nice.

I had some serial this morning, and so far so good. Going to make
chicken for dinner and have it with something light.

My parents come back from texas saturday. Their car broke down while
they were inbetween my brother's house and my aunt and uncle's house.
Let's pray that they don't have to pay a small fortune for a new car.

android/iphone, my thoughts

I've been avoiding comparing the 2 on public lists etc mainly because i
don't like the debate. I have several reasons why i like the idea of
android. It's open source, theentry to get into development isn't
horrible, or so my husband says. Iphone on the other hand i gather you
have to pay apple some fee or what ever to even get materials to develop
with. I don't know the full story there, just that i don't like the "pay
to play" idea so to speak.

Here's the problem with android though. Accessibility wise, it's a mess.
I feel a lot like they're just tacking on accessibility to android. With
the iphone, I just had to get my mom to turn on a setting, and there it
is, voiceover works and the whole thing talks out of the box. Most of
the apps are at least somewhat accessible also because apple ensures
that accessibility is at least somewhat considered. Ok, tunein radio is
missing labels on a few buttons as are other apps.

Android is another basket of trouble all together though.You have to
download then enable all the required things to make it accessible.
There's a nice pretty little android bug though which essentially makes
it so that people have to at least have a d-pad (directional pad) in
order to use android because they don't make the touch screen accessible
to the blind user. The touch screen is only accessible within apps
themselves. I strongly, strongly dislike this.

Iphone has a disadvantage because it requires itunes. The linux tools to
manipulate it are buggy and may not even compile in some cases. So if i
want to update my iphone now that i'm using it again, I have to install
windows. Ok i'll do it but blah. i hate windows.

Android, well i just mount my phone as a harddrive and poof i can upload
to it and so on. That's a plus.

Another downside to android is what the manufacturers do to the
operating system. Take HTC. They're probably one of the biggest culprets
of this. They remove stuff that makes the OS accessible, they break
things, then they add their home screen and other misc shit that totally
breaks accessibility. Samsung is another bad one.....I say this, and i
have a samsung phone. Samsung has been trying to get rid of their
galaxyS phones in favor of newer ones for a while now. I love my epic
4g. As far as accessible phones go, if you got rid of touchwiz and
replaced the inaccessible apps with ones that work, it makes a great
phone. But apparrently it's not good enough for samsung, they now have
the epic 4g touch out.....Touch? hah all that means is that it's yet
another touchscreen phone that a blind person can't use because google
won't make it accessible. Or rather they make it accessible by taking on
software rather then making it accessible from the ground up.

Ok i'll stop complaining now. What i like about android is the fact that
things can update themselves. That's actually nice. I've yet to see an
iphone do that, though i've heard that when IOS5 comes out you won't
need itunes just to update the operating system.

Pricing wise, android phones are obviously cheaper. apple as usual is
overpriced.

So there's my take on the old iphone/android debate.

Which do i prefer? Let's just say i've swung back to iphone for
accessibility. It fits my purposes even if it doesn't currently have
cell service.

frustrated by the government and tse

I don't quite know what to think here. I got a letter from seeing eye
the other day basically stating that a train ride home is too far to
take a dog on, and they'd rather not put me on the home training list if
they can help it. They would rather me get my florida id etc etc etc. I
think they've forgotten though that getting my birth cerficate is no
easy matter. On the other hand, i did find out that the court order is
attached to my adoption papers, so that's 1 step down and a lot to go.

The letter from tse basically ammounts to "no dog for you unless you get
your papers in order" I'm not so sure i like that. I mean, what are they
going to do when more and more people like me want to get dogs. Just
tell them no out of habit because they dont have vallid id and birth
certificates? It's not really fare. It's not like it's my fault that I
can't get a vallid id. It's not my fault the stupid government didn't do
their end of the work and file my adoption with the state of texas.

Oh well. At this point i question the advisibility of getting a dog
anyway. The whole chronic pancreatitus thing has things all annoying
right now anyway.....Hell, I can't even eat normal food these days.

the useability of facebook

Facebook is one of those things i both like in some ways and seriously
hate in others. Yes i know, the majority of people who read this are on
my facebook page..... From a blind person's perspective though using it
with firefox and orca presents a whole ton of problems. In internet
explorer it was easier but the website itself is bogged down with menue
after menue, javascript, and god only knows what else.

The facebook mobile site isn't so bad, that's generally what i use. How
ever for a blind person i have a hate/love relationship for facebook. I
never did get to like the article i was trying to like from another
website which is what started this rant.

When i clicked on the like thing to like the article i got presented
with several pages of people i "should" be friends with. I gave up half
way through. It wasn't worth the effort of trying to figure out what
happened to my article, where was the text i was supposed to do what
ever with. Either way, totally bad experience i will never repeat. Maybe
it's time to sign up for twitter.....That can't possibley be as bad as
facebook. Or can it? My husband said twitter requires some stupid
captcha thing to sign up for it.

dog update

Well, as things go, I'm still waiting to hear more on new dog info. The
biggest problem has been figuring out how to get me to/from seeing eye.
I can't fly so that's out unless a miracle happens. I asked pauline
about the potential of taking the train. She said that taking the train
there wouldn't be a problem but coming home may be a problem but she'd
talk to someone in training and then we'd go from there. They are
basically worried about a long trip home with a dog.

If they say no to my taking the train home with the dog then i suspect
i'll be waiting a year for home training.

This frustrates me. It shouldn't be this dificult just to go from one
end of the country to another. In other countries you can fly around x
country just by boarding a plane. You don't have to give your life blood
just to get an id card to fly, and rumor has it that in canada you can
fly with out an id etc as well. Oh well, what can be done about it. Not
much it seems.

alternative medicine

It's been a while since i've written much. Been in and out of the
hospital once or twice. On the plus side, there's a chance that my
doctor may have found more of the cause of my problem. Turns out one of
my bloodpressure meds has been giving me chronic pancreatitus. They
changed out my meds stopped the vommitting and sent me home. So far no
nausia etc so let's pray that this is the fix and there won't be any
more problems.

So a while back i decided to go off the majority of the meds i've been
on excluding the important stuff like bp/stomach meds. I decided to try
herbal medicine instead and this seems to be farely successful. My pain
levels are much much lower thanks to the devils claw and other things.
Not so tired durring the day and a lot more flexible and functional.

I'm incredibley glad about this. I'm sleeping better at night, in less
pain, more flexible and over all more healthy. Hopefully with time i can
lose the remaining weight that i need to.