Perhaps Y’all will laugh at me, but its funny how
odd it feels returning to Zed Keyboard and trying to poond away another Award
Winning No Fenders ‘BLOB story after having been on an enforced Holiday away
from thy ‘Confuzer for some three-plus weeks now, having last left off with the
following announcement...
Although I did manage to produce my first post back
nearly 4wks later with that riveting Seafair Spectale, sorta post...
And as Grizzled ‘Journo Joe Saward has just noted (August 1st
) this being the Formula 1 Summer Holiday Break, not to mention Indy Cars being
on a bit ‘O a breather after its 3wk break, what better time to entertain Y’all
with this rant, right?
Originally I’d intended to give Y’all a running Blow-by-Blow
of the convoluted twists of trying to do what seemingly would be a very simple,
straightforward task for anybody with normal eyesight and the freedom of possessing
and piloting an automobile, but alas: “this
is NOT My Beautiful House, this is NOT my Beautiful Wife!” As I’ve belabored a zillion times before, your humble No
Fenders scribe lives a different lifestyle as a visually impaired ‘vurd
Botcherer...
Hence a multitude ‘O thoughts have come to my Attenzione -
as its such a farcical statement to hear so many different entities clamouring
for the Blind & Visually Impaired to
live an “Independent life,” not to mention another faction of individuals who
seem not to exist, the physically and mentally Handicapped...
As Riddle me This? How does a blind person go to the Computer store?
And how does said individual transport his CPU “Tower”
Desktop unit if Public Transportation is their regular mode of travel? Let
alone how would said individual manage to transport two Towers home at once on
the bus? And that’s before we even get into the procedures of
un-installing/installing accompanying hardware & software; like Y’all know,
you’ve gotta be able to S-E-E what you’re doing, eh?
Yet what I find so disconcerting - and apparently either
totally ignored, glossed over or not even considered? Is this seemingly
colossal tidal wave of “DigitalIdus,” Y’all know: “There’s an App for That!” As
this race towards 100% touch screen icon driven lifestyle is exceedingly Discriminatory
towards those of us who either cannot see, are colour blind or both; CRIKEYS!
Or in the case of another individual I overlooked who’s confined
to a wheelchair for life and has NO use of his arms & hands, must rely
solely upon using his foot to communicate orally and ‘E-lectronically! (As I’d
totally overlooked this subset of civilization in an earlier post)
Thus having finally picked up my new “Scratch-built”
winDOUGHS-7 ‘Confuzer nearly a Fortnight later, to which said the local small
business Computer store I’d patronized had ignored a crucial part of my order
request, as imagine my surprise upon having it installed at home only to discover that it did NOT have any MS
Word upon I-T! Not to mention the corresponding Outlook email platform I prefer
over web based email, all of which is extremely UN-Friendly user-wise for me...
And notice how I’ve left out the part completely about having been previously
told how the “New & Improved” winDOUGHS-7 Operating System was an absolute
CLUGE! And for reasons still unknown, the Computer store Boffins totally
ignored my request for MS Office 2010 to be installed upon my new machine!
This error was discovered after our second trip back to said
local business, as the first time the new BITCHIN’ machine was booted up; Err
Houston, we’ve got a problemo! As the machine would NOT boot up; SHEISA! Thus
finally after four trips to said store - I left my box in disgust to have what
I’ve come to refer to as “Office lite” installed upon I-T! And with some
corresponding Icons so I could actually access IT! Uhm, can I get Fries with
that?
As it ultimately turns out I’m glad that they ignored my
order; NOT! Since apparently Office 2010 is NO longer available for sale
commercially, while I’ve since discovered after spending copious hours trying
to figure out thee A-L-L KNOWING Confuzer - like should it really take 32-hours
to discover that it turns out I’d be Dead in The Water anyways, cause guess
what? Although Office 2013 will work upon winDOUGHS-7, it will NOT work with
Zoomtext 10.0 which is where ‘Lucy, my ARSE-steamed Screen Reader comes from.
As I still firmly believe that this local small business owner
didn’t want to eat the wholesale cost of his mistake since I’d already paid in
full for my machine before delivery after having the audacity to tell me over
the telephone that if he installed Office 2013 it would wipe out all of his
work he’d done installing winDOUGHS “Live Mail!” Note to respective business
owner, what ever happened to that Business 101 saying: Thee Customer is ALWAYS
Right! Huh?
Yet the most entertaining part was that after all of this I’d made the mistake of not
having Claudio install Zoomtext for Mwah, saying what’s ‘Awntie Harriet’s
favourite saying: “I can do i-t myself!” After
Clyde had been kind enough to take me back to the Confuzer store to pick up my
box, bring I-T home, re-install I-T and then work thru the myriad of technical
problemos, i.e.; as the “Live Mail” wouldn’t let us send any emails - telling
us to contact our local Service Provider; Huh? If I cannot send/receive any
emails then how is the n$a gonna track me? Can Y’all say Edward Snowden? But I
digress...
As I went to install Zoomtext, I ran into one of microSOFT’s
latest security features, where it WON’T let you install a software program
automatically; SHEISA! As now you’ve gotta Agree to Agree that you really-really-really
wanna install said program on your Confuzer.
So now comes the even funnier Ha Ha? NOT! Part, upon having
called Ai Squared’s Tech Support which is on East Coast time from 9AM-5PM
Mon-Fri, the Tekie said, I’ll be happy to remote login and help you with that
Sir. Uh Gee Wally! I’m BLIND! Which in almost all known cases means that the person CANNOT see clearly, if at all? Thus explaining this
predicament, he suggested I try turning on the microSOFT magnifier function, to
which once again you need correctable vision to find I-T buried inside the
Control Panel’s Accessibility function... Asking if there were any Hot Keys for
this he told me he couldn’t find any, giving me one suggestion which didn’t
work and said guess you’ll need to find somebody to help you.
Then for humour, I tried calling Best Buy’s “Geek Squad” to
which the lady taking my call didn’t grasp the situation either, telling me
Sir, for $49.95 we can remote login and install that program for you... You
mean like I’ve got to be able to read the internets in order to remote login
right? HEY LADY! I’M
FREAKIN’ BLIND!!! What part of this picture
DON’T you comprehend? Here’s your
Sign!
Thus I arranged to have Marcus come out and help install the
MOST crucial piece of software I own, my ZT10.0 (Zoomtext) which magnifies
& reads everythingy to Mwah, which afterwards, naturally as I began playing
around on winDOUGHS-7 and noticing all of the enhanced programs features which
I found totally DISGUSTING! I ran in to the veritable Buzz saw of microSOFT
inadvertently breaking Open Office Writer’s ability for my reader to read
anything inside of the corresponding word document; FUCK! As the second Ai Squared tech
would later inform me that it had been fixed on a previous V3-dot ‘Somme-thun
version but had obviously been BROKEN on the current 4.04.1 version...
Thus, I’m just sitting around now anxiously awaiting the
arrival of David, a Computer Systems Consultant to come out and install an
outdated version of microSOFT’s Office suite so I can at last have MS Word
& Outlook upon my new winDOUGHS-7 machine, while I simply cringe at the
future of computing...
KNOCK THIS SHIT OFF MICROSOFT!!!
As obviously microSOFT is betting the future will revolve
around tablets, smart phones and whatever nano i-Devices Apple & Google can
come up with, I mean HELL! We’ll probably just ALL be walking round with our
i-Glasses in the future and won’t need Confuzers, right? Uhm? What if your
vision isn’t correctable or heavens forbid, you’re blind? Oh Never Mind!
As SHAME ON YOU microSOFT for being too lazy to do the right
thing and instead of being cheesy and developing one supposedly does I-T all
piece of software, really should have developed two separate programs, one for
the massive current generation of PC users who are used to navigating Confuzers
the traditional way; Y’all know, like where’s the FUCKING Start bar
application? And then you could have your snazzy, jazzy look Ma, NO
typing/clicking smart touch screen thingy devices... As it seems like it’s a
pretty weird world if I’m openly wishing for Microsoft’s Stock price to take a
massive nose dive over this INSANITY!
As I’ve said it before, and just experienced that punch in
the stomach feeling (again) when I could NOT interact with word via ‘Lucy - I
thought my Blogging career was OVER once again, as I like to cling to the naïve
thought that I’ll actually be the one to decide when to stop blogging instead
of having microSOFT, gOOgle and thy Confuzer decide for me! (As No Fenders 9/11
Born-On-Date is fast approaching...)
As I don’t know ‘bout Y’all, but I find the fast approaching
A-L-L DiggI-T Tull world exceedingly DISCRIMINATORY towards those of us who
have visual or physical disabilities, while the NFB isn’t overly positive
towards this shift either. Having written them a two page letter outlining my
concerns, to which they actually replied; are you listening Google &
Microsoft? Yet basically told me I needed to quit trying to cope with my
limited vision and become MORE blind; aye Karumba!
As I’ve tried refraining from using what my first two titles
were: microSOFT SUCKS! And this later version internally titled microSOFT
REAKS! As I’m presently trying to decide if I wanna try converting over to the
A-L-L knowing Ribbon which microSOFT forced upon us with the advent of MS Word
2007, as like everything! It gets RID of menus and sounds like forces the user
towards a more visually driven Ribbon of happiness instead; BARF! As I don’t wanna even try guessing whether or not I can SEE
the speel checking function in Word ’07?
Hmm? May be I should just stick to
reading books like OLD Fogies do, eh?
KUDOS to Clyde, Mary Ellen &
Marcus for their repeated trips to NoFendersville to transport me back ‘N
forth, lug around two Confuzer, continuously set them up & swap them back
‘N forth all so I could have access to the world wide web thingy!
As I’ve only got 7/10th
remaining of the 500pg biography the Life of Senna remaining...
