Walt Disney World Orlando - tips, tricks, and observations
A more silent world Overview We recently took our first family trip to Walt Disney World (WDW) in Orlando, and I wanted to share some information that may save you time, money, and headaches.  We have two kids around 10 years old, so keep that in mind since some of our choices Where to stay Your choice in where to stay could depend on how much time you plan to spend at the hotel.  For ...
Fri, Mar 30 2018

Deaf TV Show - Discussing Cochlear Implants
A more silent world Kadie and I participated in a local Deaf-Services TV show to discuss cochlear implants.  This is Part 1 of a multi-part show that will feature people who have had good success with implants, and also people who have not had very good success. BCTV - World of PerceptionsEnjoy!
Sat, Feb 14 2015

Cochlear Implants, Music, and Pitch Perception
A more silent world I wanted to write a bit about music perception, specifically pitch perception with my implants.  I was a classically-trained musician for quite a long time during my youth when my hearing was more-or-less normal.  My pitch perception was relatively perfect, meaning, if you gave me a Middle C, I could re-create the entire 88 pitches in my head with very high accuracy...
Sun, Nov 23 2014
thiceathE liked this

Bilateral Cochlear Implants!
A more silent world And on the heels of my 6 month update, I am happy to share that I got my second implant two weeks ago!I will be getting activated on October 14, and I plan to spend the first 2-3 weeks wearing only the new processor in an effort to equalize the new side instead of letting my good ear be a crutch/hindrance.I'm hoping my second activation goes as well as my first.  Fin...
Wed, Oct 01 2014

Cochlear Implant - 6 month update
A more silent world How are things going? Overall, I could not possibly be happier with my CI.  It has completely blown away even my highest expectations.  I've been using essentially the same sound processing strategies (Optima P, ClearVoice medium, IDR 60) for about 5 months now, with minor tweaks here and there.  The only time I even bother to change programs, is when I am in a ver...
Wed, Oct 01 2014

Post-Activation - 11 Day Followup
A more silent world I've gone back for my second mapping.  I had a moderately long wish list and we got through everything. I cannot stress enough how vitally important it is to understand how cochlear implants work, and what the tunable parameters are, and what each one does.  It makes far better use of our limited time together if I can convey what I need in "audiologist language".Fi...
Sat, Mar 29 2014

Activation!
A more silent world Well activation day was today.  I've got to admit, there may have actually been more excitement and anxiety than with the surgery date itself.  At the end of the day there's good news and bad news, but almost all good news.First, the bad news.  I sat down in my audiologist's office and we assembled the Naida's, hooked them to her computer, and SoundWave recognized ...
Tue, Mar 18 2014

Healing...
A more silent world Lots and lots of healing.  The body is a pretty amazing piece of work.  I had a noticeable amount of swelling on the CI side of my face yesterday (day 2).  I don't really need any pain meds anymore--it just feels like a long-lived headache now.  I still can't chew properly because it seems the jaw muscles are very much connected to the muscles near the temple, and...
Thu, Feb 27 2014

Completely deaf ear is implanted
A more silent world I had my surgery yesterday and got implanted with the Advanced Bionics mid-scala electrode. Surgery took about two hours, and pain in recovery was bad the first hour and I just felt miserable for a couple hours after that. I got home 6 hours after surgery ended and felt reasonably good by managing pain with Percocets. I'm not a back sleeper, so trying to sleep was a b...
Tue, Feb 25 2014

All FCC caption complaint links broken on website
A more silent world I'm trying to file a captioning complaint at the official FCC website and every single link is broken.  To say I am pissed off is an understatement.  Screw you FCC! [link] for nothing.
Sat, Dec 21 2013
Isoxerott liked this

Cool new way to graph an audiogram
A more silent world I've been messing around quite a bit with a Javascript framework graphing toolset called HighCharts. I tweaked it to graph my past and current audiograms and you can see the output here: Here is a link to the HTML: [link] Feel free to look at the source and use it as a template to graph your own.  It is just static HTML and you just need to customize the val...
Fri, Nov 01 2013

Sudden Deafness in One Ear
A more silent world Last week I dropped into full silence on one side.  But let's take a look back first... I've been losing my hearing now for 35 years.  It has been a slow and steady loss; the kind that goes unnoticed over weeks and even many months.  But over the years it has been like becoming a senior citizen many times over.  A cycle in which I must realize (or more accurately...
Fri, Oct 18 2013

Going in for a CI consult
A more silent world Since the very nature of my job requires lots of interaction with clients, I'm going to see about getting a CI in my recently-dead ear. I can make out only about 10 percent of spoken words in that ear now so it's definitely candidate. Leaning towards the new Naida processor by Advanced Bionics. We'll see...
Wed, Aug 07 2013

Guest Blog - Children and Hearing Loss-Changing Lives by...
A more silent world This is my first guest post, by fellow blogger John O'Connor - bloggingwjohno.blogspot.com Perfect hearing is something that the average person really takes for granted. When people think of hearing loss, they often associate the condition with people who are old in age. Hearing loss is common in babies and young children. A person can be born deaf of suffer hear...
Thu, May 02 2013

New type of "hearing aid" coming?
A more silent world Hearing aids, even the most powerful one, have their limits.  Many people, myself included, find themselves either near or past these limits and in the domain of cochlear implants (CI). Obviously CI are very expensive and require hospitalization and serious surgery to implant.  Getting a CI also means that person can no longer have MRI scans performed, a very s...
Thu, Apr 04 2013

Deaf FAQ
A more silent world I know there are countless versions of this elsewhere, but here is mine: What do I call you? ·       Deaf ·       Hard of Hearing ·       Deaf and dumb (extremely rude, equivalent to the “N” word) ·       Deaf mute (rude/ignorant) ·       Hearing-impaired (well-meaning, but rude) Clarity matters more than...
Sat, Mar 09 2013

Switched at Birth - Deaf cannot afford to blow chances
A more silent world Last night's episode of Switched at Birth was particularly brave in pointing out what is an obvious fact to many, but some might choose to ignore:  Deaf cannot afford to blow good chances in life. To be fair, we could easily substitute dozens of other words in place of Deaf, and the sentence still holds true.  Some great examples include women in corporate America,...
Tue, Jan 08 2013

I actually LIKED the Saturday Night Live ASL skit
A more silent world I think there is a world of difference between what was done by Chelsea Lately and SNL. Chelsea made fun of something she was entirely ignorant about, thus truly insulting Deaf and our language.  I think she got what she deserved when people erupted against her.  I think she owes an apology for being rude. SNL, on the other hand, showed a very playful nature, and...
Tue, Nov 06 2012

World got even quieter...
A more silent world Well I guess it's time to get back in for an adjustment.  I graphed my audiograms over the years.
Fri, Aug 31 2012

Regal Captioned Movies via Sony Glasses - Followup
A more silent world I went to see Dark Knight Rises tonight, so I got to use the caption glasses again.  This time armed with the information from my last post, I adjusted them and got even better performance from them. The little box thing that the glasses plug into has three buttons:  the middle button is "menu" and then a + and - button.  I pressed menu and adjusted the brightness...
Sun, Aug 05 2012

5 years of ASL classes - DONE!
A more silent world I simply cannot believe that five years has blown by like a freight train. It seems like yesterday I walked into that beginning class and took like 2 minutes to finger spell my 5-letter name. It has been a wonderful experience, and I have met some people I hope to know the rest of my life. Even after five years, I still feel like somewhat of a noob.  ...
Wed, May 16 2012

Regal Captions All Movies With Special Glasses - A Review
A more silent world Regal has been busy working on equal access to movies! I have heard it is their plan to roll closed-captioning for every showtime of every movie to all of their theaters. My local theaters already have this functionality, so I decided to test drive it and go see Avengers. Upon arrival, you will need to stand in line with the rest of the world, since the ...
Mon, May 14 2012

First time using an ASL interpreter = WOW! (late-deaf)
A more silent world I had an important meeting this week. The meeting room is huge, and what sound doesn't "disappear" turns into echoes. To make matters worse, I knew for a fact there would be soft-spoken people present, as well as people with strong foreign accents. So I decided to bite the bullet and use an interpreter for my first time ever. I have to admit, I was ...
Thu, Mar 29 2012

Rexton Cobalt 16 hearing aids - 3 year update
A more silent world So, after having this set of hearing aids for three years now, I can say that I am still quite happy with them. The bluetooth streaming has proven to be an absolute life-saver for watching movies at home, and being able to hear at church. The longevity of the aids seems good, since I haven't had to send them in for repair yet. I have replaced the receiv...
Fri, Mar 16 2012

Switched at Birth - bold writing choices last night!
A more silent world I was really impressed with the bold choices made last night, exposing some pretty edgy topics in Deaf culture. The new character Travis is first shown as a strong Deaf militant, intolerant of Hearing people, intolerant of Daphne's intermixing with Hearing and Deaf, and just bitter. Then the writers connected that behavior with another controversial topic: ...
Wed, Feb 29 2012

So I chose ZVRS
A more silent world A few ZVRS people came and gave a great presentation at Deaf Family Night several days ago. Impressive stuff, and it appears overall to be the best choice for me right now. I'm getting the Z-340, and I will use the Z4 software on my Mac and iPhone also. Now just waiting for my hardware to arrive! I'm still kind of sad I couldn't get the Z20 for free...
Wed, Feb 29 2012

Switched at Birth - lazy signing?
A more silent world I watched the premiere of Switched at Birth last night, and although people on the show are improving on their signing skill, it seems like even the Deaf characters are using some lazy signing (but mostly the Hearing characters). Unlike most newbie signers, the Hearing characters have a really decent "flow", but still, I see a lot of lazy signing all around. Ob...
Thu, Jan 05 2012

Teaching Deaf kids ASL - fingerspelling?
A more silent world So my 3-year-old son is rapidly learning ASL from me. It's nothing short of amazing how he is accelerating. One thing I haven't done much around him though is fingerspelling. As he learns more, it becomes more difficult for me since I don't know signs for everything under the sun. There are only two cases, though. Some thing have no signs, and...
Thu, Jan 05 2012

No free VP through ZVRS?
A more silent world I do not currently have a VP. If I go to ZVRS, it looks like everything is free if I trade in my Sorenson VP, but if I do not have a VP, then I need to pay??Sorenson VP is free for me. It seems like if ZVRS wants business of new customers, they should offer the same deal as porting customers from Sorenson. Otherwise, I might just choose Sorenson for ...
Mon, Dec 05 2011

ASL class over - again
A more silent world The first trimester of my 5th year ASL class is over. With only two short classes left, I find myself wondering what's next. It has been really enriching to go so deep into a few topics this year, but I feel like I need to have more "general" conversations with people, or I'm never going to be even close to truly fluent.I'm hoping maybe to start, or help s...
Sat, Nov 19 2011

Rexton Cobalt 16 - added a new program
A more silent world So I decided to switch up my programs a couple months back when I went in to get a replacement bluetooth receiver. Program 1 is still "auto", but I changed program 2 to be "music". The music program has basically no compression, and no noise cancellation. Ironically, I don't use this program for music, but rather for meetings and really quiet, or rea...
Sat, Nov 12 2011

Lecture on Eugenics at Swarthmore - what a great night!
A more silent world Last night I got to see two, one-hour lectures from Dr. Brian Greenwald and Dr. Ben Bahan. The first was about eugenics in American/Deaf history, focused somewhat on AGB and his role in this whole thing. The second was a very funny story leading to the conclusion that Deaf people hold the key to the future by preserving ASL.The eugenics lecture was very ey...
Wed, Nov 09 2011

Are cochlear implant users deaf?
A more silent world John Lee Clark's post titled "Cochlear Implants: A Thought Experiment" hit on one topic I have given a bit of thought to myself: If you cannot hear without your CI or hearing aids, are you deaf?This may seem like a simple question, but I think outside the Deaf community, so little thought is given to deafness in general that it becomes unclear ...
Thu, Oct 27 2011

Switched at Birth - clearing up some things, distorting...
A more silent world First, I applaud the creators/writers of Switched at Birth for bringing common Deaf issues into the mainstream light. Most people never think about any of these things. People mumbling, taking too fast, turning away while talking, talking behind someone, "curing" Deaf with CI, the troubles of mainstreaming, etc.One problem I have with the show is Daphne's ...
Wed, Sep 21 2011

Captioning ASL vlogs
A more silent world This topic seems to always come up, but I have a fairly strong opinion about it, so I want to write a little blurb.It's true, the Hearing world seems to make very little effort to provide D/HoH with quality captions. So why in the world should we caption ASL vlogs? If the Hearing want access, let them learn ASL, right??? Here are the reasons I think ...
Sun, Sep 18 2011

Stigma of Hearing Loss
A more silent world After reading the article posted on Jamie Berke's blog about hearing loss stigma, I felt the need to add my own experience.I think being late-deaf is a little like coping with finding out you have a life-long disease. There's a process that needs to happen. The beginning for me was marked by anger and self-pity. That evolved to understanding and fina...
Sun, Sep 11 2011

Best way to tell people you're Deaf?
A more silent world I'm curious about the different ways people indicate to hearing folks the you're Deaf. I also found myself wondering why, in a nation where a huge number of people understand the phrase "no habla ingles", nobody understands the sign for "deaf". Seems like it would be worthwhile to teach everyone this basic sign in school at some point.
Thu, Sep 08 2011

Switched at Birth - no captions on Netflix!!
A more silent world Of all the ironies, only the first couple episodes of Switched at Birth have captions on Netflix. A show that has the power to increase awareness about the Deaf world, inaccessible to Deaf. So stupid!
Fri, Sep 02 2011

NTID and Gallaudet dictionaries broken in Apple OS X "Lion"
A more silent world Just an FYI to all of you out there who may have these two dictionaries. Do NOT upgrade to Lion if you use these dictionaries regularly, as they are not (yet) compatible with Lion. Apple made the decision to end Rosetta emulation for support of PowerPC binaries with the release of Lion, and thus only Universal Binaries are supported. NTID has been in...
Fri, Aug 26 2011

Comcast charging for captions?!
A more silent world I subscribe to every movie channel, which means full, free access to all OnDemand movies for those channels.The other night I tried to watch Matchstick Men (made in 2003) in HD and it had no captions. This wasn't a technical problem because the info actually was missing the "CC" icon which denotes movies that include captions.Not to fear, there was another listi...
Sun, Jul 10 2011

Tips for traveling in London and the UK with an iPhone
A more silent world I've learned a few new things that make travel in London a lot easier and thought I would share a few. I use an iPhone on AT&T and it is a huge help to be able to fully use it in London--of course this means getting creative, or forking over a kidney to AT&T.For DataObviously many plans are limited to UK citizens who want a contract. This clearly d...
Wed, Jul 06 2011

DirecTV on Continental Airlines - NO captions!?
A more silent world I was pleasantly surprised to find that Continental Airlines has LCD screens in all seat backs this last week. Wow, how this will make my 6-hour flights pass by more quickly. EPIC FAIL!There is no way to enable CC on their systems. Isn't there some law against this? Seriously unbelievable that in 2011 we can stream whole movies on computers smaller than our hands ...
Wed, Jun 22 2011

Affordable Remote CART? Web CAPTEL?
A more silent world I was recently checking into prices for Remote CART for myself, so I can use it during a couple large meetings per week. I was astonished when I saw the price quotes come in at around $100/hour.I have previously used Sprint Web CAPTEL for meetings that I can dial into via phone, but I found that participation in these meetings is nearly impossible. The captions get ...
Sat, Apr 09 2011

xfinity iPad app - no captions!?
A more silent world So I just downloaded the xfinity iPad app, and I am able to watch shows right there on the iPad.  Great, right?  WRONG!xfinity has joined the ranks of companies who apparently don't care about accessibility for Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing people who rely on subtitles to watch TV and movies.  It used to be if you wanted captions, you have to miss it at the movie theater a...
Wed, Mar 30 2011

Beauty and the Beast play - INTERPRETED!
A more silent world One of my fellow classmates in my 4th year ASL class is involved with the theatre program at the high school he teaches. He makes sure that they do a matinee with interpreters each year, with a dedicated ASL seating section right up front by the interpreters! Next weekend is Beauty and the Beast.I took my daughter last year to Wizard of Oz and it was great! Two int...
Mon, Mar 14 2011

London - HoH paradise?
A more silent world Having recently visited London for the first time, I couldn't help but notice all the signs in various places marking telecoil access. Supermarkets, public transportation, etc. My aids don't have a telecoil, but this just seems like such a great step in the right direction. The best we seem to get in the USA is "press this button to make something louder and full o...
Thu, Jan 06 2011

Answers for raising Deaf kids are anything but common
A more silent world My wife and I recently attended a seminar for parents of D/HoH kids. Having been HoH my entire life and now late-Deaf, I found this seminar more like a rehash of all my worst experiences as a school-age kid. This is actually a compliment to the presenters, since they clearly understand the challenges present when D/HoH kids are mainstreamed.One thing, though. I ask...
Tue, Nov 23 2010

No Captions for Commercials??
A more silent world Companies spend millions of dollars creating and airing commercials. With 10% of the population being Deaf/HoH, why in the world would they not spend a tiny bit more money adding captions? Do they think that we don't shop in their stores, buy their products, etc? It's very disconcerting sometimes how we are silently ignored as a minority group.
Sun, Nov 07 2010

County Commissioner proposes hearing test before...
A more silent world I have to admit, I am fairly shocked to find that this is an actual news story in my area. Charles Martin, Chairman of the Bucks County Pennsylvania Board of Commissioners was apparently taken aback by the huge amount of money spent on interpreters for people who don't speak English or cannot hear in the county courtrooms. He suggested that maybe our state represent...
Wed, Oct 06 2010

Rexton Cobalt hearing aids - 18 month followup review
A more silent world So it has been about 18 months since I got my Rexton Cobalt 16 hearing aids, and I figured I would write a followup review in hopes that it may help people weigh the options.Overall opinion: I have very little to complain about with these. They perform admirably in almost every situation, and fail where I imagine every hearing aid will fail. My experience with Rext...
Sat, Oct 02 2010