Below are the 13 most recent journal entries recorded in Lindsay's LiveJournal:

Wednesday, August 9th, 2006
9:01 pm	A new keyboard layout Hi Everyone. I am typing this using the Dvorak keyboard layout. I just started learning to use it last week and it is awesome!!!A couple of my friends use it and I could not resist satisfying my curiosity to try it for myself. I am still pretty slow with it but have found the alternative arrangement of the keys to be remarkavly efficient and much more logical than the qwerty layout. Some of my friends have, understandably, told me ethat I am weird for using a keyboard layout that they have never heard of, but I think it's great. I am not making this entry long since I am still pretty slow at typing on this, but there is definitely more I could say. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 22nd, 2006
7:34 pm	YES, I still exist Okay, I know I haven't updated this since convention, which is mainly due to my lack of desire to write, but I have decided that it would be nice of me to keep you informed of what is going on with me since I have been reading up on most of your guys's entries when I can. I have been at the YES (acronyms can be severely overused for names of blindness programs in my opinion. This one stands for Youth Employment Solutions) II program which is a six-week job/independent living skills program for blind people sixteen and seventeen years old. It's going pretty well. The first week we got to know each other and did some of the necessary setting up stuff like learning our routes to work and filling out paperwork for payroll. It was nice to get to know people. Most of the people are really cool, although there are a few that require me to exercise a large measure of patience. There are eighteen of us participating in the program, however only four of us are totally blind. We are staying at a sorority house at the University Of Washington. Each of us has our own room which I am happy about. It's nice to have my own space to keep my stuff such as my laptop. I am very glad that I brought my laptop since it turns out the sorority house only has two computers, only one with JAWS, so needless to say I probably wouldn't have had that much time online if I didn't have my own personal computer with me. I wasn't able to use my computer though the first week since I was unable to connect to the wireless network, however this wasn't a big deal since I was busy most of the time. We arrived at the program on a Sunday. On that Monday and Tuesday, we did some of the necessary preparations like purchasing Metro bus passes and signing up for payroll. On Wednesday, we went to this challenge course at a community college where we did a bunch of team building activities which I found extremely boring and pointless. We basically spent the entire day doing icebreaker activities and playing the kind of team building games that people usually play for a short time when they begin some kind of camp or other event where people have the belief that these kinds of activities are actually fun and are useful in helping people to learn other's names. Each activity concluded with an interminable talk about about the lessons we learned in the activity, which was the same every time, "Trust your teammates" which I did anyway because I knew that the people in charge of the activities wouldn't allow a bunch of blind kids to play games in which they were in danger of being hurt. I usually find such activities to be extremely boring at camps, so needless to say I was happy when the "fun day" had ended. But oh well. I had fun hanging out with people the rest of the time. SO I stayed at YES that Thursday, and that Friday I left for NFB convention, which I have discussed in my most recent entry. I returned to YES the Sunday after convention week. By that time, the rest of the participants had begun working at their jobs so I began working that Monday. I am very happy with my job. I am working in the computer science building helping to organize the Vertical Mentoring Workshop for the Blind (VMWB) In Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This mainly involves analyzing tactile maps and other Brailled materials, as well as planning a presentation about my experiences as a blind youth who plans to pursue a career in STEM-related fields. The person who is in charge of organizing this workshop is also in charge of the Tactile Graphics Project at the University of Washington, in which I have periodically participated as a student consultant. It has been nice to now be able to have a better idea of what is happening with the project since I was unsure of exactly how it was progressing. I also enjoy the people with whom I work, along with the sense of independence and responsibility involved in having a job, and for these reasons I am very satisfied with where I was placed. It has seemed to be working out perfectly since I was already planning on helping to organize the workshop, and one of the heads of the department decided to take advantage of the fact that I would need a job placement and decided that they could use me as an employee. Over the course of the last couple of weeks in which I have been working, I have been shadowed by one of the YES staff as I learn my route to work. I have never actually traveled indepentently in public places so am pleased to learn that this Monday I will be able to travel to work without anyone shadowing me!I have really enjoyed being able to find a practical application for the traveling skills which I have learned over the course of my mobility lessons, but which I haven't often had the opportunity to practice at home. Anyway, that's basically what's happening. So far I am enjoying YES for the most part, although I decided to take this weekend off (last weekend I stayed at YES) so that I can unwind and have some time to recharge my batteries without seventeen students and at least three staff constantly around. Today I went to the bite of Seattle food festival which was awesome. Although I live in the Seattle area, I have never been to the festival before. I had so much good food and by the end I was stuffed and didn't even want to think about sweets. Tomorrow, my mom, brother and I are going to go blueberry picking which I am really excited about. I could eat one of those flats of blueberries all day. Anyway, this is one of the rare occasions in which I am telling you I will be sure to update soon and discuss the VMWB, so expect another update soon. Hasta luego. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, July 8th, 2006
4:27 pm	Convention Post Hi everybody, I know I haven't updated this thing in a long time and I can't say that I will be diligent about writing regularly in the future because I don't know how events will transpire so therefore I cannot make any guarantees. I just returned from my first NFB national convention yesterday. It was a blast! I will try and list events in the order in which they took place, however, because the convention lasted a week and because I did not at all feel like taking notes for a journal while having fun with friends, some events may be presented out of sequence or I may unintentionally leave out details. I arrived at convention on Friday, a day before convention officially began. The flight went well although I was kind of mad that they had to put in a wheelchair order so that I could receive assistance to baggage claim. Fortunately, I was not made to use the wheelchair which made me happier. Otherwise, I would be tempted to write a letter of complaint. Once I arrived at the hotel, I hung out with my friends Alysha and Ryan from the Rocket On 2004 science academy, along with James from the 2005 session with whom I have corresponded via instant messenger. It was great to see everybody! I believe we stayed up late which began a weeklong succession of late nights. The next day I gave a speech about math accessibility to the blind parents' division. I was a bit nervous since I hadn't actually planned the speech carefully, but it went well. I was glad to get it out of the way. I could spend all day talking about math accessibility but I don't think I did badly for ten minutes. After this we hung out for awhile, which was what we did for much of the convention. Our friend Justin from the 2004 Rocket On session arrived that day so our RocketOn trajectory team was complete! Go Ego Squad! Okay, actually I'm going to forget about writing this in chronological order. it's too confusing and tedious. As I said, we spent much of the convention hanging out with friends. We attended several meetings as well, most of which were pretty boring in my opinion, however some were interesting. We attended the National Association of Blind Steudents meeting, which would have been sleep inducing if not for the cheering college students. It pretty much consisted of a bunch of sales pitches delivered by various blindness products and services associations. We also attended the science and engineering division meeting which I found interesting. Hopefully the division will continue to grow over time. It was fairly small this year. My friend Kelly was elected a division officer which was great for him! After the meeting, Kelly, James and I went to have (nonalcoholic) drinks with the science and engineering division and then proceeded back to the meeting room where we stayed up all night pointlessly speaking in the microphones which were left on tables and eating Jolly Ranchers. It was obvious that we had become pretty incoherent by the next morning. We were originally planning on going to sleep, however, James convinced us to stay up all night at four o'clock when it was obvious that we wouldn't get much sleep anyway! James had to meet with his scholarship mentor in the morning so Kelly and i had breakfast and then I went to sleep until noon. It was weird for people to be saying "Good morninng" to me when all I could think about doing was going to bed. I knew that I was seriously sleep deprived when I could barely remember my room number and Kelly, who had apparently received misinformation, was able to convince me that my room was on the sixth instead of the fourth floor (we decided that it would be even worse if I forgot the digits of Pi). I slept during general session which was no big deal to me. Based on what I heard, that's probably what I would want to be doing during general session anyway. I attended two or three of them, and most of them weren't too bad, although they definitely had their boring parts. I got to know the face of my watch very well during those meetings. (Thank goodness I use a Braille and not a talking watch or I would be disturbing a great many Federationists.) Ryan convinced us to go to the resolutions committee meeting which was actually better than I thought. There were several interesting resolutions, although the "debate" which Dr. Maurer said might take place never did. Most of the resolutions consisted of the resolutions being read, maybe some discussion and amending, and then almost the entire committee voting "I". While there, I met Keao who attended the 2005 Rocket on session and with whom I have chatted online. We staid at the Hilton Anatole Hotel which is very nice but which has to be the most confusing place I have ever had to navigate independently, mainly due to the immensely large atrium and tower lobbies. Several friends and I were lost on more than a few occasions. On the positive side, I went on many adventures and met several new people while lost. On one occasion my friend Justin and I saw Kerri and Tiffany while trying to find the elevators. It was great to meet them since I had only chatted with Kerri online and I had only read Tiffany's numerous Live Journal posts. The hotel food also wasn't bad, however it was very expensive so we went to Denny's a couple of times, once until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. I also spent several hours exploring the exhibit hall. I don't think I have ever seen so much adaptive technology in my life! There were several new notetakers/PDAs, none of which I can afford now but many of which were very interesting to look at and which seem to show promise for the future. I also met Jonathan Mosen at a BrailleNote demonstration and Julia Aguilar in the IfByPhone booth in the exhibit hall. It was great to see them after talking with them online and calling into the Mosen Explosion radio show several times. On Wednesday night we threw our own party, a peach ring party to be specific. James was the organizer and I was the cofounder, or something like that. The inspiration for this idea came during an instant messenger conversation when neither James nor I could agree on any foods we liked except gummy peach rings, which we both happened to find addicting. I suggested that he bring peach rings to convention, he suggested that we have a party, and the peach ring party was officially declared! The party was held in Alysha's and my room because all of our mass quantities of junk food were stored there. Kerri and Tiffany invited some of their friends and James brought $20 worth of peach rings, along with pop--or soda--whatever you want to call it. We had fun for a few minutes while we listened to the JAWS rap, the Pi song, the Phone Crap song (consisting of phone tones) and Dec Talk singing. The party broke up, however, when Kerri had the bright idea of bringing out the NFB songbook! I remember standing and eating peach rings and the nexxt thing I know, I'm bolting for the door with the sounds of "Glory Federation" behind me. Those songs are really lame too in my opinion! One of them has the word "NFB" rhyming with the word "be". It gives the blind community a bad name! But apparently the "Voice of the Nation's Blind" doesn't think so, so who am I to argue with them? So then people went separate directions to meet friends, I hid the NFB songbook, and James, Kerri and I hung out in the room until Alysha and Ryan came back. So the peach ring was a fun disaster. On Thursday we attended the banquet. Basically the attendees sat and talked while the opening speeches were being made (some friends and I referred to them as background music), after which we sat and talked (in quieter voices) during the Maurer Power Hour. The food was good though. It was funny though, because throughout the entire convention, we could pretty much predict when the Federationists were going to clap or cheer or initiate some other collective response. Usually those responses didn't take much to elicit. For example, all Dr. Maurer had to do was say "Hi" and the entire assembly would erupt in applause, and a fairly decent speech would all of a sudden become the "best Presidential address ever!" Oh well, it's just my opinion, and i have nothing against Dr. Maurer, who is a very respectable person. While at the banquet, James and Ryan received their NFB scholarships, James receiving the computer science scholarship and Ryan receiving another type of NFB scholarship, both valued at $3,000, so congratulations to them! What made it even better for them was that each of them received money, software and the new KNFB Reader from the Kurzweil Foundation in addition to their scholarships. Anyway, I really had an awesome time at convention. I am very bummed out that I will not be able to see some of my friends for what I believe could be anywhere from a year onward. It is rare for me to be with a group of totally competent blind people such as them and I wish that this could happen more often. I hate to say it, but sometimes I don't feel this collective air of normalcy among the blind people my age at many of the state blindness functions which I have attended, so it was great to be with these people, as well as to network with other blind people. Although I am not a Federationist, I had an great time at convention and hope to attend many more in the future. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, June 12th, 2006
4:29 pm	Update Hi everybody, Sorry I haven't updated this thing in awhile. I've been pretty busy with end of the year projects, including upcoming finals. Things have been going pretty well, albeit busy. I got my SAT scores back last week. I got a 670 on the math portion, which I was kind of surprised about considering that math is my favorite subject and that I thought the math portion was easy--I guess not quite. Although I was in the 89th percentile (85 percent of people taking the test scored at or below my level) for the math portion, I still believe I can do better. I can take the test again which is good. In the meantime, I should get practicing. People have told me that sometimes the math portion is not always easy for advanced math students because sometimes such students miss learning basic math concepts. I got a 750 on my verbals though, which made me happy, considering that I was in the 98th percentile. Yay! I will still need to see what my essay score is online since it hasn't been mailed to me. I will post a more thorough update later, although I can't really think of anything extremely exciting or interesting at the moment, plus I need to get started on homework. We're reading The Color Purple for our literature circle in English class which is a very good book so far. I will write later! (8 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, May 9th, 2006
5:30 pm	Mathamphetamines Yes, sorry for the inclusion of this pun, but actually I'm somewhat proud of making up that one--maybe you can call it a stroke of genius? Or perhaps it's just lame. That's probably more accurate. I actually made up this word today as I left my math classroom after school where I was discussing my independent studies class with my statistics teacher. I realize that I always have a sense of happiness which I can't describe after an afternoon spent doing math. I was mentally comparing it to being on a math-induced high, or being high on math which gave rise to the term mathamphetamines. I really don't do math as frequently as I would like, and this due to the fact that I don't have scheduled meetings with my math teacher as much as I would like. This is because each of us always seems to have something after school which prevents us from meeting regularly. For those of you who don't know, I had to convert my Statistics class to an independent studies class because my books did not arrive on time initially this year and as a result I was unable to keep up with the rest of the class. Also, as I thought about the happiness I derive from doing math, I may have struck upon a revelation, and that is that maybe the lack of motivation and somewhat reduced passion for learning which I have experienced this year may have to do with the fact that I have not been doing math on a regular basis. I really believe that math keeps me grounded in a way and every time I do it I remember the feelings of excitement, satisfaction and accomplishment which I derive from immersing my mind in math problems. Math keeps my mind stimulated. Anyway, just thought I should write that, and I can't wait to do statistics homework tonight! Pile it on, Mr. Reed! Current Mood: Academically stimulated Current Music: My computer humming (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, May 8th, 2006
5:29 pm	Oops Hi everyone, sorry I failed to proofread my last entry. I was in class and only had time to do a quick spell check. I was too lazy and did not have sufficient time to fix the glaring grammar and usage errors which I see now. Current Mood: normal; nothing extreme Current Music: The phone ringing (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, May 6th, 2006
3:10 pm	The past week and a half Hi guys, Well, here's an update. i haven't gotten to updating this thing in awhile. The big event that happened last week was that I took the AP Language Exam. It basically involves analyzing a bunch of complicated literature. I honestly don't know how I did on it. I hope I did well of course, but...well...I don't know. Only time will tell. I can't believe I have to wait until July! The anticipation is not fun. I got double time for taking the test and it took all day. The test itself took around six hours to complete and it came to over seven hours counting all of the breaks. I was extremely exhausted upon completion of the test. Not much exciting stuff has happened this last week as far as I can think of. I've been busy as usual. We had a party for cinco de mayo in Spanish club so that was fun. Actually, we didn't have the party on cinco de mayo. We had it before because we didn't think that people would want to come to a school party on a Friday. It was great! We had a pinyata and I couldn't believe how funny I found it to be. For some reason, I was laughing very hard when a couple of boys were continuing to smash it into oblivion even when all of the candy was out. The pinyata was shaped like a star and one of the boys ripped off one of the points and wore it as a hat. I don't know...I wonder why pulverizing something like that can be so humorous? At least that was the case for me. But I was also happy to be able to see my Spanish teacher from last year because I hadn't talked to her in a few weeks. It was lots of fun. It's funny, though, how Americans make such a big deal out of cinco de mayo when, based on what I've heard, it's not that widely celebrated in Mexico. I guess it's just a good excuse for Americans to party and eat Mexican food. I equate it to Mexicans making a huge deal out of some obscure holiday like Columbus Day by eating hamburgers or something. Anyway,it's fun anyway. Yesterday we bought some Mexican fool to celebrate. We made nachos and I had some chicken with mole (pronounced MO lay). And no, it doesn't have to do with guacamole! Mole's a type of sauce made with, of all things, chocolate. it sounds disgusting but it really doesn't taste at all like chocolate. it's a very popular dish in Mexico. My mom and I also had red bulls and we tried to justify it as Mexican enough by referring to it as a "toro rojo". Today I took the first half of the SAT. It seemed pretty easy except that I don't know how I did on the essay prompt. I'm going to hopefully finish the second half tomorrow. Anyway, once Ican think of more interesting happenings over the past week, I'll add them. I'm not much in an editing kind of mood today after this SAT which is why my writing is not as polished as it usually is. Current Mood: Braindead Current Music: Someone's lawn mower/weed whacker (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 22nd, 2006
3:33 pm	Hi everybody, Well, I haven't written in this thing for over a week so I thought I'd keep you guys updated. Let's see...not much has been going on. I really was not excited to go to school after a week of vacation, which is very unusual for me since I am usually such a lover of school. This school year has just been extremely busy and stressful. i was glad, though, that last week was the week for the sophomores to do their standardized testing which meant that juniors and seniors didn't have to come to school until later. So luckily for me, I got to sleep in. I also got to stay home on Wednesday because, not only did we arrive at school two hours later, but we got off two hours earlier, so basically it was only a two-hour school day. My mom was unable to drive me there and back with such a small interval of time in between because she had to go to work. So I stayed home and got some work done for my classes. Besides that, my days were pretty much uneventful. Well, I guess I always say that. It's easy for me to say that my days are normal from the surface, especially looking over an entire week, however, the more I look back at them, the more I seem to remember the interesting happenings. Oh yes, now I'm concerned about my BrailleNote battery. My BrailleNote has been acting strangely and doesn't seem to want to calibrate properly and when I called technical support they told me that I may have to send it in. I've also been e-mailing someone from Humanware about this problem. He told me to calibrate my unit and send him the log but, since it doesn't seem to want to calibrate properly, I'm going to have to see what he says tomorrow or the next day. I'm going ot have to ask him how to find the log on the flash disk as well because I have no idea of where it is located. I just really, really, really do not want to have to send it in again! I just got it back from Humanware and it was gone for over 23 days. I don't want to have to be without it for that long again, especially after the customer service I received. I realize that it was my fault the case caught on the chair and fell on the tile floor, despite my best efforts to take as best care of it as possible, so I do not, by any means, blame Humanware at all for that of course. It's just that the people in the repair department with whom I spoke kept underestimating the turn-around time and did not return my phone calls. They seem like very nice people but I was becoming very frustrated with this situation in combination with the fact that I experienced similar problems while sending in my BrailleNote classic to be transplanted to an mPower only a couple of weeks before. I've never had my BrailleNote gone twice in a row with so little time in between (probably only a couple weeks) and I really don't want to make it three. I don't mean to make Humanware sound like a company that doesn't care about its customers. In fact, they have been one of the most responsive assistive technology companies I have encountered. They always seem open to new suggestions and have implemented many of these suggested features into new releases of Keysoft. I just haven't been pleased overall with their customer service. I know this is a busy time for them so hopefully it will get better once the number of battery problems and mPower transplants have died down. And speaking of Humanware, I listened to the Mosen Explosion radio show for the first time yesterday. I found it to be a very fun and entertaining program. They did a very nice tribute to Dean Jackson and then Jonathan talked about marriage proposals and other assorted topics. Listeners were able to call in during the show. I didn't get to listen to the entire broadcast, granted that it was about four hours long, however, it was very good and I plan to listen to it next time it airs. I also enjoyed being able to put voices to the names of many of the people with whom I have corresponded via instant messenger and e-mail as well as whose names I have seen on many listservs. Also, I have noticed that I have been on a huge technology kick lately. I know this sounds crazy, but I really want to boost my technical skills and want to learn everything I can about technology that I can pack into my brain. I have just started listening to podcasts this past week and have found them to be very enjoyable. So far I have listened to BlindCoolTech. I have enjoyed listening to many of the episodes and have been somewhat amazed by the depth of the sound quality. So I guess you could say I have had quite a technology-filled week, and I hope that, minus the battery problems, it continues! Current Mood: Normal Current Music: The sound of a weedwhacker or related yard tool outside (6 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 14th, 2006
11:01 pm	Hi Everybody, well, today was pretty uneventful, and so was yesterday I believe. Let's see...yesterday I,well, did the usual I guess. I talked to some people online and was trying to figure out podcasts for the first time. There may be more but I can't remember right now. Anyway, today I promised myself that I would do some homework. I finished my Spanish essay and some of my Social Studies. The ,Spanish essay was easy because it was...well...Spanish. What else can I say? Then I went out to the store with my mom a couple of times. My brother has a friend over right now and they are playing xBox in the room where I usually do my homework so, naturally, I decided to move downstairs. Of course, that's when my wireless Internet decided not to work so I was stuck without Internet. I try and avoid going upstairs into fifteen-year-old boy land because they're playing xBox Live very loudly and with a lot of profanity and...smell I might add. Actually, my Internet was working for awhile and I was planning on listening to a radio show at 4:00, but, naturally, that's when my Internet decided to die, so I'll have to listen to the archives. I'm not even sure if there was a show today, actually. By the way, do any of you know if I need to download something in order for my computer to be able to play MP3 audio streams? You see, I absolutely love technology but would really like to learn more about Podcasts and just technology in general. I've been BrailleNote dependent for the last few years and it's high time that I get my PC skills back up. I mean, any Notetaker user can realize how much I value my BrailleNote, but it's still important that I improve my PC skills. I do feel that I have made significant improvement this past year, though, so I would like to keep it up. Oh, my laptop just died and I was really glad to see that livejournal saves these posts so that I wouldn't have to write it over again! Yay! Anyway, so I'm really happy now because now the boys have left the room (I had to go back upstairs to check e-mail and to write this entry and they just left) and, after carefully picking my eay through the rearranged chairs and spraying plenty of air freshener in the room, it's once again peaceful. Well...I think that's about it. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, April 13th, 2006
1:06 pm	Just A Random Thought Hi guys, Here's a question I was pondering. Why is it, or why does it seem to me, that so many blind people can't spell the word accessible? I can't tell you how many messages I've seen on blindness e-mail lists where people just don't seem to be able to correctly spell that word. It's not acessible or asesible or anything in between. I mean, I understand that some people are just not naturally good spellers but this seems like a word that disabled people should know how to spell. Am I being reasonable? (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, April 12th, 2006
4:05 pm	Stuff Hi Guys, well, what a profound name for my journal entry! Anyway, I had an interesting morning. I was supposed to catch the Access But between 7:30 and 8:00 today. But I was up really late last night and I suspect that I turned my alarm clock off and then went back to bed because the next thing I knew I woke up to my mom calling that the Access bus was here and I could hear the sound of the bus pulling up. So I was thingkin, "Oh crap, I can't believe this" and in five minutes I had my clothes on and was ready. My mom said I looked pretty good too! I think she was surprised to see that I was capable of getting ready so quickly. Usually I'm the type who takes long, hot showers. haha Anyway, the evaluation went pretty well except I felt like a ditz. One of the things I had to do was call a fake information service to request a bus route. Well, Lindsay, you know, the Lindsay who has memorized 875 digits of Pi, forgot the street number (9) and the bus number. smooth My mobility wasn't the greatest today either, but my evaluator told me that I was a lot better than some of the other people she's seen, which was pretty bad because I wasn't lining myself up correctly and as a result turned onto the wrong street. Time to start practicing more I guess. Then I came home, caught up on all of my list e-mails and LiveJournal comments took a shower, got into more comfortable clothes, ate some fried rice (yum) and then talked to Justin Harford from Rocket On who I haven't talked to in ages, so that was fun. Then I talked to Dr. B. from Rocket camp which was great because he's really cool and I haven't talked to him in a long time. I've wanted to talk to him for awhile now. So I just got off the phone and now it's time to have a Filet O Fish. Hasta luego. Current Mood: happy Current Music: Willy's xBox (5 Comments |Comment on this)
12:11 am	Sad Ending to a Normal Day Hi Everybody, Well, I spent most of today on the computer instant messaging and messing with LiveJournal stuff. I subscribed to a bunch of math and Pi communities and responded to comments. Wow, I didn't realize how many comments I would get on my second day! Anyway, nothing really exciting to talk about there, except that I would like to thank all of you who commented! I really think this LiveJournal will be a lot of fun! Anyway, there was some sad news from Humanware today. (For those who don't know, Humanware is a company which produces assistive technology for the blind.) Dean Jackson, who worked as the product specialist passed away yesterday. I am subscribed to the BrailleNote discussion list and he used to post all of the time. I mean, he spent hours posting and moderating that list. He has answered several inquiries I had buthe would help anyone with practically any technical support need any time of day it seemed. I didn't realize this before, but he was only 25 or 26 years old. It was a huge shock for me and many others on the list, partly because he was so young and partly because he was such a vital part of the list and the company. I mean, he posted all of the time and you would see his name everywhere. And it's weird to think that he's not going to do that anymore. Well I was happy to hear that he was active in his church. Anyway, I don't think I have ever been this emotional over someone I've never met but it's just so tragic and sad. But I just have to remember that Heaven is much better than this place. It makes me think about how I shouldn't take anyone in my life for granted, despite their age. Anyway, on that note, I'd better get to bed. I'm going to have to wake up early and do my Access evaluation so that I will still be eligible to ride the access bus. Talk to you guys later. Current Mood: sad Current Music: The fan humming in my computer (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
12:10 am	First entry Hi Everybody. Well, after some persuasion from all of you,(thanks Caitlin and Shelly) I have decided to create a Live Journal account. As I have said to many of you, I am really bad at writing my feelings and stuff on paper (or the computer), because that's just not the way I best express my thoughts. I mean, in many ways I am a good writer, according to others, and in my own opinion, but I was never the type who could keep a diary and use it to record all of my thoughts and feelings like some sort of trusted friend, but this will be a great way to keep my friends updated on what's going on with me, and that's awesome. SO anyway, it took long enough to set this thing up. For some reason when I opened the audio file my iTunes decided to keep playing this Pi song that I have loaded on my computer. Then JAWS kept talking over the audio so I had to play it multiple times before I got the numbers right. But anyway, time for me to go to bed. Oh, and by the way, James, my trajectory team didn't suck!!! Ego Squad Rocked, and, we rock now, and we will continue to rock!!! Anyway, good night, and I will talk to you later. Current Mood: tired Current Music: Nothing (20 Comments |Comment on this)