RSGeo-007

Deaf Communication Choices in Hospitals
RSGeo-007 Imagine this:You are pregnant. You know what it is like to give birth. You are deaf. You ask hospital in advance for a live on site interpreter for the birth. Hospital says no. You sue. You lose because hospital convinces a magistrate that video remote interpreting (VRI) is good enough.Despite reports in news that they will give you a live interpreter when the birth h...
Fri, Jul 24 2015

Uber Isn't A Public Transportation Service?
RSGeo-007 First it was NYC with too few accessible taxis, then the mayor claiming that the taxis were a hazard, and now this...Uber, Lyft, and other similar ride-sharing organizations, are claiming that disability laws do not apply to them.Uber: Disability Laws Don’t Apply to UsSay what? What are these guys smoking? Can I have some?Uber IS a transportation service, not a "tec...
Fri, May 22 2015

What Purple Should Have Done With The Relay
RSGeo-007 As I've said before in a previous blog post, there were things that Purple could have done that would have been easily programmed. Before I continue, those who ported their numbers to Sprint had to present a drivers license or another form of ID with their address on it including something like a utility bill. I will bring this up again soon.Over time, I was wondering...
Mon, May 18 2015

Live Long and Prosper - Spock
RSGeo-007 Up to his passing, Leonard Nimoy had a longing for knowledge and learning, which he included into his Star Trek character Spock. It was fun at times to watch Dr. McCoy and him clash, calling him a "green-blooded Vulcan," with his classic eyebrow raise. That Vulcan salute and quote "Live long and prosper" has become ingrained in all of us.Star Trek has always had somet...
Fri, Feb 27 2015

The Case for AIM Relay - Part 2
RSGeo-007 Many of us have had our personal relay numbers switched or ported to Sprint IP Relay. Their procedure was more strict than Purple's was, in terms of our having to provide some forms of ID to prove who we are. Why couldn't Purple make more of an effort to reduce the fraud calls? It would have been a much more simpler effort to do.When I mentioned the medical part of us...
Sun, Feb 15 2015

Looking back on 2014
RSGeo-007 This was a much better year than 2013, which was a rather stressful year. Graduating was the high point.2014 led to many more improvements. I was finally able to get started with jobsearches in mid-January. A few interviews came up including one gov't interview. With this gov't interview which was 3 weeks after the surgery on the right hip, even though I asked for an ...
Thu, Jan 29 2015

Surgery and the Hips - Part 10
RSGeo-007 At the recent surgeon appointment, the surgeon said I was clear of all restrictions and that it looked like I had no infection. Just having no infection was a big Christmas gift for just about everyone, considering how it was last year with the infection and antibiotic spacer.I'm getting back to swimming soon, which will help me in the transition from walker to cane. ...
Tue, Dec 23 2014

No Utility Bill? Sprint IP Says NO!
RSGeo-007 Just got this comment on the previous post The End of Text IP-Relay Services? Say It Ain't So...Sprint IP is denying services to consumers who live in group homes. Sprint IP requires government ID plus "utility bill with the same name and address on it as the ID". This means persons living in situations where their OWN name does not happen to be on the bills are being...
Thu, Dec 04 2014
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Surgery and the Hips - Part 9
RSGeo-007 I've made some big milestones since my last post back in July with Part 8.I continued to do swimming and water walking in the local community pool until it closed, then went on to the local rec center which had a hot tub/spa. I kept on going until my next surgery which was November 3, this time on the right hip, right as I predicted back in Part 5.I started the proces...
Mon, Dec 01 2014

FCC Did Not Require Monitoring of IP-Relay Calls
RSGeo-007 Last week, perhaps in response to the uproar over Purple's announcement of ending its IP-Relay service, Purple had posted on Facebook selected snippets from a letter. The letter was blurred, making it impossible to read the full letter - even the date was not readable. However, since the October 15 letter from Purple's lawyer to the FCC informing the FCC that Purple w...
Mon, Nov 17 2014

Why IP-Relay is Important to Me Personally
RSGeo-007 The discontinuance of Purple's IP-Relay service on November 14, 2014, was difficult for everyone to deal with. It's affected many people in many ways, some more than others. In this post, I'm going to be writing how it's affected me.I got my number sometime around 2004 or 2005. I started using it for job searches, calling medical people, and various other places.Curre...
Sun, Nov 16 2014

The Case for AIM Relay
RSGeo-007 For many years (ten?), there was a form of text IP-Relay that used AIM. In order to make a call, an AIM user would sign on to AIM, select the screen name My IP Relay, the caller would enter the phone number to call, and then the system would assign an operator to take the call. From there, the operator would call the requested number and act as an in-between during th...
Sat, Nov 15 2014

Here's Why Purple's in Deep DooDoo!
RSGeo-007 An important document from the FCC's document archive dated May 2, 2014, FCC-14-57A1 documents Purple's failure to follow the FCC's requests for reasonable steps to keep fraud from happening. Purple was ordered by the FCC to use a reasonable process to verify the signup information of their TRS services. Unfortunately, Purple violated the FCC’s orders by using a “...
Wed, Nov 12 2014

Urgent! Email Ray Baum in the House! (was End Of Text Relay...
RSGeo-007 Just got this from Jamie Berke earlier this afternoon.She called the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications and Technology because they oversee the FCC. Congressman Greg Walden chairs the subcommittee. She I got the name of the legislative aide who works with FCC issues, and already emailed him. His name is Ray Baum, and his email address...
Mon, Nov 10 2014

The End of Text IP-Relay Services? Say It Ain't So.
RSGeo-007 Say it ain't so. Purple announced earlier that they will cease their well-used IP-Relay services on November 14.A first report from a Purple --- said that the FCC ordered Purple to monitor all calls for quality. From that video above, Purple stated: "To be reimbursed for IP Relay services, the FCC has informed Purple that we must monitor call content and details."  ...
Fri, Nov 07 2014
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Surgery and the Hips - Part 8
RSGeo-007 I've had a couple big milestones since my last post.Swimming and water walking are great therapy. The local recreation center has a more accessible pool that has no steps, while the local public pool has steps. I managed to get down them, however difficult it was. I couldn't do that last year. I'm still a little unsteady in the shallow area, but when I start walking i...
Mon, Jul 14 2014

Surgery and the Hips - Part 7
RSGeo-007 Since outpatient physical therapy started, my walking has been improving. I've transitioned from walker to cane, after around a year and a half of using the walker. Even then, it's still difficult, but it'll improve. I've been taking my quad cane to PT.When I had in-home therapy, and just two weeks before the late March surgeon visit, I started developing something th...
Mon, May 26 2014

Surgery and the Hips - Part 6
RSGeo-007 A lot of things have happened since Part 5. Around mid-January, I went from 10% weightbearing to 50% for two weeks, then finally full weightbearing. Fortunately, I'm now in outpatient physical therapy. That last "snowstorm" we had was barely a dusting two days before my appointment.Then the DC area had FIVE snowstorms. The area school systems had snow days that were 3...
Thu, Apr 24 2014

Hearing Aids in the Wrong Places - Part 2
RSGeo-007 It's not just orange juice that does strange things to hearing aids, but also sugary drinks and coffee. Massive amounts of water, either hot or cold, will do it. A boiled hearing aid sounds clean and germ-free, but let's face it... That's enough heat to most likely melt the case and some electronics as will time in the microwave. Radio Shack or any other electronics h...
Mon, Apr 21 2014

Hearing Aids in the Wrong Places - Part 1
RSGeo-007 But of course, we all know there's places to never put a hearing aid. Jennifer Stuessy's The 10 most dangerous places for a hearing aid has a good listing, but probably is missing a few places we never think about.She mentions never to put it on a nightstand, but inside. Or better yet, never place it out in the open in an area where there's a lot of things being picke...
Fri, Apr 18 2014

Hospitals and the Deaf Patient - Part 2
RSGeo-007 In Part 1, I mention in the last paragraph:"In this day of high tech and the Internet, there's no excuse for anyone to claim it's difficult to contact the deaf person when there's also email, texting, and instant messaging besides the relay. A little low tech like keeping paper and pen around goes a long way as well."When I had home health care, rather than use the re...
Mon, Apr 14 2014

Humor: It was so cold...
RSGeo-007 This recent spate of extremely cold weather seems to have broken quite a few temperature records. Means everyone has to dress warm and take care of themselves a bit better. Those with walking issues may not be able to get out very well if at all.Jamie and I came back the weekend morning just before the cold snap from being out at Target and Walmart. It rained some, an...
Fri, Jan 10 2014

Looking back on 2013
RSGeo-007 The year 2013 wasn't exactly a great year for me. It marked my graduation at Gallaudet and three surgeries.While college graduation marks a joyous time for those graduates, it was tempered by my nearly not graduating due to a capstone team member miscommunicating something with the instructor (Teamwork in classes and on the job - Part 1 and Part 2) requiring us to cha...
Thu, Jan 02 2014

Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses - Part 2
RSGeo-007 In the previous blog post Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses, I tried using the Sony Captioning Glasses for the first time. Then flash forward to recently, when I watched Frozen with the glasses.This time, I found I missed something from the first time I used them. I didn't make an effort to adjust the noserests. Thus, the way the noserests were at the time, no wonde...
Fri, Dec 27 2013

Nelson Mandela's funeral interpreter fiasco
RSGeo-007 Sometimes I wonder about interpreters and their skills. Then we saw the one at Nelson Mandela's funeral. I took a quick look and thought I was seeing some South African sign language, but a second look and a closer watch had me thinking differently. No facial expressions? Just about every sign language, no matter where you go, uses facial expressions. It's an importan...
Fri, Dec 20 2013

Recipe: Emeril's Christmas Bread
RSGeo-007 Imagine someone who doubled a bread recipe and the results nearly took over the kitchen with a lot of rising bread dough. If anyone's familiar with the classic I Love Lucy show when she was cornered by a huge loaf of bread coming out of the oven, this is kinda like this. The bread went BAM back...But of course, Jamie and I had a good laugh reading this. We'll have to ...
Mon, Dec 16 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 5
RSGeo-007 Back in mid-November, I had surgery to remove that wrecking ball of an antibiotic spacer and put in new joint hardware. I was only in the hospital for 3 days, and did well in my physical therapy tests, allowing me to go home sooner. This time, I don't quite remember being in the recovery room, only waking up in my hospital room.Interestingly enough, it was the same ro...
Wed, Dec 11 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 4
RSGeo-007 A week after I was in Acute Rehab, I was moved to a nearby nursing home, where I stayed for 6 weeks. I wasn't able to return home due to the house not quite being set up for my needs.Enduring 6-7 weeks of IV antibiotics via the PICC line wasn't too bad, but it definitely made things easier with the blood draws.Physical and occupational therapy in the nursing home help...
Mon, Oct 07 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 3
RSGeo-007 The next surgery will definitely be delayed, possibly til possibly mid-2014.As it turns out, I returned to my doctor's office to have some discharge from the incision checked out a little over a month after the initial left hip replacement surgery. When the doc took out fluid from my joint and I saw what was aspirated, no one had to tell me it was infected. Fortunatel...
Thu, Sep 05 2013

Hospitals and the Deaf Patient
RSGeo-007 Before I had my knee surgeries, one of the first things I did was go to the hospital where I was to have the first surgery and visit the Patient Relations office. I talked with them about interpreters and passed on to them my surgery date, my surgeon, and how long I will be there. This was probably my most important contact.From there, let them know to pass on to othe...
Fri, Jul 12 2013

Funny Moment 12: Imploding TVs
RSGeo-007 Back when I was moving from KY to VA, I had this storage room that required me to go up a flight of steps. I managed to clean up the space, tossing at least half the stuff in there, leaving just a small neat pile. One of the things that went down the steps was a TV. I wasn't in much of a mood to carry the thing down. So, I pushed it down the steps.*crunch* *pop* *cras...
Mon, Jul 08 2013

Teamwork in classes and on the job - Part 2
RSGeo-007 Continued from part 1That plus the instructor emailed us saying our report and presentation were never uploaded to Blackboard. I take one look at what those two girls finally uploaded and I knew we weren't going to get a good grade, and we didn't.What totally floored me was meeting up with them and the instructor after class in the instructor's office. One girl kept g...
Mon, Jul 01 2013

Teamwork in classes and on the job - Part 1
RSGeo-007 We know that teamwork is probably the most important thing on the job. The old cliche of "there is no I in team" is pretty much true. It's multiple people working together. In classes, it's even more important.When doing a class project, it's how well the entire team does. If one person does badly, the entire team suffers. I had this one team project and I kept tellin...
Sat, Jun 29 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 2
RSGeo-007 Physical therapy started the next day for me, twice a day. I was barely able to make a circuit around the nurses station, going only 1/4 of the way around with the help of a walker. Next day, I made a full circuit before heading into the physical therapy room. Then the day before I was to leave, in two physical therapy sessions, did the equivalent of two circuits. I e...
Mon, Jun 24 2013

Surgery and the Hips - Part 1
RSGeo-007 I've been writing my experiences up to the time I go into the surgery. I got the call saying that my surgery time was 11:30am and I had to be there by 9:30am. Going through Registration, I find that there's been some changes in the way ASL interpreter requests are handled. According to the Registration person and interpreter, there was a case in 2010 that was finally ...
Sat, Jun 22 2013
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Researching My Hip Surgery
RSGeo-007 Like I said in my Researching Your Knee Replacement (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3), it helps to research and ask questions. I started like I did with the knees, looking on YouTube and other webpages. But of course, I went back over to Booktoots' Healing blog, but if she had something on that, I may have missed it. However, Robin's site had some info.After much research, I k...
Tue, Jun 18 2013

Graduation... Finally...
RSGeo-007 I haven't been posting much in the last year, and for good reason. I went back to school. The knees were repaired and I was ready to head back to classes. After much looking around of where to go, I found I had three more years of classes with GMU. I wanted a place that would allow me to graduate in less time than that, maybe two years. Gallaudet University had their ...
Fri, Jun 14 2013

Hip Surgeries (was Post-surgery knees)
RSGeo-007 Awhile ago, I came back from the doctor awhile ago and it's just as I figured. I need a left total hip replacement. It's getting more and more difficult to get around. I had to go from cane to walker around the house and wheelchair when I'm out and about....and if that ain't bad enough, I need it on the RIGHT hip also...The good thing is that I graduated from college ...
Sun, Jun 09 2013

Funny Moment 11: Human vs Elevator
RSGeo-007 Another time when I attended NTID, there were many of us who were a bit on the nutty side. Various students managed to find ways to abuse and confuse the elevators in the Ellingson dorm building, known as Tower A. I managed to make it think it was opening up on 7th floor when it was actually on the 6th. A trip down to the basement reset its floor identity crisis.There...
Wed, Feb 06 2013

Post-surgery Knees - Part 9
RSGeo-007 Crap...Double and triple crap...Just when I've been improving like I said in Post-surgery Knees - Part 8, something else comes up and it's a nice setback.Seems I may need hip surgery since my left hip's giving me trouble. I'm figuring it's a fall I had in a parking lot that did it while going to an event in the early summer. I was doing good all through the summer up ...
Tue, Jan 29 2013

Growing Up Deaf - Update 6
RSGeo-007 Earlier in my Growing Up Deaf - Update 3 post, I talked about MSSD. I was out at MSSD all day during their academic bowl as I mentioned in the previous post, MSSD's Academic Bowl.One of the first things I realized from back then while talking with a couple parents is that my signing skills weren't exactly that great. So if I had gone to MSSD:- I'd be more oral than si...
Thu, Jan 24 2013

MSSD's Academic Bowl
RSGeo-007 On January 10-13, MSSD had an academic bowl. Jamie Berke and I went to the January 12 events. [link] was quite an event. Her son's events with Woodson were done well and they managed to go pretty far. They had some good questions posed to the students.I had the feeling after taking a look at the stats posted on the wall that it would be interesting if MSD and MSSD co...
Fri, Jan 18 2013

Phyllis Diller Passes at 95
RSGeo-007 The entertainment world lost a comedy legend. Phyllis Diller passed away at 95. I wasn't born yet when she started, but I was hearing about her comedic acts here and there. And the wigs and other stuff she wore including that LONG cigarette holder... Seems that kind of thing added to her acts."I bury a lot of my ironing in the backyard"Only problem when I dig them up,...
Tue, Sep 25 2012

Post-surgery Knees - Part 8
RSGeo-007 I returned to Clemyjontri park last year. This time, I'd left the wheelchair and cane in the other car. I was already over halfway there when I remembered, and even Jamie knew I was in for a bit of a challenge.Apparently I did better than I thought. I was able to stop a few times in places before continuing on.I'm wondering if I can actually do the graduation walk thi...
Tue, Sep 18 2012

Cheers to DC, More Jeers to NYC
RSGeo-007 Washington DC's gotten some rather nice-looking accessible cabs. Why can't NYC do the same thing?Hey, Mayor Bloom-boy... Get a load of THIS!Wheelchair-Accessible Taxis on the Rise in Maryland SuburbsWheelchair-accessible taxis available in Prince George’sEven the DC Metro paratransit has some of these. Can you do this, Mayor Bloomie? Come on, seriously... 13,000+ ca...
Wed, Sep 12 2012

Funny Moment 10: Subway Misdirection
RSGeo-007 A year after 9/11, I was in NYC for some personal business. I managed to get all the travel logistics figured out including how to get to a friend's place in Queens on the subway. But for some strange reason, I used FOUR lines rather than two.As it turns out, I got on the wrong line, but it fortunately got me in the direction I was going. A quick map check showed me a...
Tue, Sep 04 2012

NAD Convention in Louisville, KY
RSGeo-007 I should have written this sooner, but whoa... The NAD's going to have a difficult time topping the convention in Louisville, KY, this past July 3-7, 2012. The next one is in Atlanta, Georgia on July 2014. It was activity-packed right in the middle of downtown Louisville, KY, within walking distance of many good restaurants and the waterfront. Many of us probably didn...
Mon, Aug 27 2012

Review of Sony's Captioning Glasses
RSGeo-007 I just recently got back from watching The Dark Knight Rises with captions. In this case, it didn't use open captioning or rear window captioning (RWC). The theatre used the Sony subtitle/caption glasses. They do take a little getting used to at first. No captions will show until the beginning of the movie.They've got their good points and their bad points. But basica...
Sun, Aug 19 2012

Crimeware and Malware
RSGeo-007 Remember this post?Sherlock's Computer Nearly Taken HostageThis is yet another good reason to have a second account on your computer. Don't use it for anything except to use it when your computer is badly infected, installing the malware checkers after setup if they're not there already. The advantage is that when the original account is infected, the second account s...
Fri, Aug 17 2012

"Put Away Your Guns and Knives"
RSGeo-007 Back when Virginia Tech was hit by the student shooting other students and teachers, it started with some colleges setting up an alert system of some sort, usually sending alerts to someone's pager via email or text. It also got me wondering how other students like me are able to keep from getting killed when this happens. It's too easy for deaf people to walk into th...
Wed, Nov 23 2011