Monthly Archives: July 2024

Tech-No-Dependence

Posted on by John

Friday morning, 5 AM. I roll over as my arm continues to vibrate, alerting me to the fact that work is imminent and I must arise.

I do what I always do and reach over to grab the iPhone as I stumble toward the bathroom to get ready. A quick check of the headlines reveals that a tech outage of some kind (one of my friends pointed out that it was neither an internet or Microsoft outage, but its exact nature still sort of eludes me) has occurred. Travelers stuck at airports nationwide, and worldwide again.

“Glad I’m not flying anywhere” I think to myself.

I head downstairs and eat my meager breakfast. “Hmmm, GoTriangle Access (our area Paratransit) has usually called by now”. The clock had struck 5:25, and the service regularly sends an update via automated call and text message giving us an estimated time of arrival for our vehicle. I know it has been broken before though, so I don’t make much of a deal of it and continue with my morning preparations.

I sit on the porch, basking in the warm July morning and getting some reading in, but as we hit 6:20 AM I become concerned. I am usually picked up between 5:40 and 6:15, so I finally decide to call the agency’s Customer Service. The person who answers sounds far away, possible on her regular cell phone. “I’m sorry,” she says” but we’re impacted by the same outage that is shutting everyone else down. I will let you know if we get up and running, but till then I apologize.” Oh great, this means I will have to get an Uber all the way across town.

Summoning the ride actually goes seamlessly, with the driver pulling the back door even with me, me hopping in, hopping out at work, and walking right into the door. Fortunately they seem to have gotten it where the GPS leads them directly to the correct door, which hadn’t been happening initially.

Into my office with about fifteen minutes to spare, at the appointed time of 7:25 AM I boot up my computer and prepare to punch in. Only the site I need to visit is also a no-go. We have a few other administrative tasks that were to be completed today, but at least at that time they are all grounded. And I’m fairly sure few others came in either, given that paratransit isn’t running. So, I opt to head back out with my wife and the family, as they are off to visit the Greensboro Science Center anyway.

I love technology, heck my very job is completely centered around it. But what this craziness showed us are the potential perils that come with being too reliant on this stuff. The funny thing is, this wasn’t even the only such occurrence I had this week. On Tuesday, as I innocently plodded along through my presentation on using the JAWS screeen reader on the web, my company’s internet stopped working. Since I was online remotely, I didn’t notice the outage immediately and continued talking to… myself! Folk were emailing and texting me, trying to alert me to the error, but like the indistractable instructor I am I didn’t stop to check the messages. I finally started to wonder after the third time I tried asking for questions with absolutely no response, not even any background noise. It was a good presentation, trust me, the best you would have ever heard.. if you’d been online to hear it.

Then on Thursday, my iPhone inexplically wouldn’t open some apps, like Safari, our local news app, and X (Twitter) while allowing me to access Facebook, YouTube, and a couple others. I tried resetting and restarting the phone, but no dice. This also impacted my ability to work with the employee I was training, as we use a security app to log into the software they use for Customer Service. I had this problem all morning, but after lunch for whatever reason everything was working fine. Yeah, go figure. It’s been a crazy week.

And I’ll end this post with a complete aside and an exciting announcement: my employer LCI, has named me Employee of the Year. This means I get to attend the National Industries for the Blind’s annual conference in October, in Washington D.C. This will be a fascinating experience, and hopefully one of many. So yes, while I bemoan some of the challenges it can create, I as a blind person am very thankful for the existence and rapid advancement of technology.

The Little Things: On a Relaxing July 4 Vacation and Work

Posted on by John

Happy late Independence Day to all of us Americans who celebrate. Understanding many of the nuances of this nation’s history gives me much to ponder on that day, but I suppose I can get down with good food and family fun, as well as knowing that I’m fortunate that people have worked hard so that I have what I do have.

And what I did have on this July 4th was mostly blessed quiet, the calm before the storm one might say. My wife just had one of her sisters over, and she threw some steaks, dogs, burgers, and even chicken on the grill. I ate till bursting, then topped the night off with some of her homemade butter pecan ice cream. That takes me back to my childhood, when we so often ate the boxes of that stuff my mom would get as it was her favorite. “Eat the strawberry I got for y’all” she would say. But such is life when you have kids I guess, as many times someone would not only eat all of her butter pecan, but also put the empty box back into the freezer.

Ah, the glory days. That piece of waxing nostalgic done, I return you to your regularly scheduled programming, already in progress. Friday was more of the same, as I opted to take it off and not have to return to the office immediately after the holiday. I spent much of the day in a groggy fugue, as I had awakened kind of early. And I spent most of it indoors, as we topped out with heat indeces in the low 110s. That’s smokin’!

As that heat finally, sort of, broke over these parts on Saturday, my wife put up the summerish swinging bench she got for the back porch. That thing is pretty cool too, another piece of childhood though they don’t make them like they used to. My grandma had a bit metal swing chair thingy on her porch that I loved to sit on for hours, listening to the world go by. This one is more plastic, with a cloth canopy overhead and tables to either side that can hold cups or phones.

And as the heat continued to mostly hold off on Sunday, we took a stroll through Raleigh’s Dorthea Dixx Park so she could see and I could put my hands on the sunflowers. As we did so, a light, warm rain fell that actually felt good walking through. And, I got to feel and sit in a hammock, which I’ve often tried to visualize but could not quite understand. I love when I get to discover how things I’ve only read about actually work. That rope is kind of tricky to get into, and I could quickly understand how you could easily lie in or sit down on one. Cool.

So all of that had me relaxed and ready to enter what I knew would be a fast-paced week. My work is picking up, as we begin the training I alluded to in the previous post. Turns out I’m going to help someone at least acquire the basics of braille, and I will work with another on Customer Service stuff. I think the most enjoyable part of this is getting to express and expand my creativity as I work with others. It was a good day, just long and ending with a rewarding sense of exhaustion (there are multiple kinds of exhaustion). So just remember to ake heed of and be thankful for those little things that make up a life.