I took the Lloyd’s test again and did much better, but when I did the Audacity tones again with headphones I couldn’t hear the tones - and yet I could hear them without headphones. So who knows if it’s the computer, or my hearing, or what. All I know is that last night, A could hear things I couldn’t.

• Fantazyland Review
  The most bleak theme park I’ve ever seen. Located in Alexandria, Egypt.
  (tags: coasters)

Well, this is interesting. I have a mild hearing loss at high frequencies, apparently. This was prompted by an NPR story about the “Mosquito” teen repeller, which plays a 17kHz tone to drive away unruly teens hanging around stores and other establishments. I had been able to hear the sample tone played on the radio, which was less than 17kHz, but we couldn’t hear it when I played the story on the computer. We figured it was just the computer having a hard time playing it, so we tried the Online Hearing Test at LloydHearingAid.com. I was the one clicking the buttons, so we were really only testing my hearing, and it came up with a mild hearing loss. It said my loss was greater at the lower frequencies (assuming I was interpreting the little chart right), but I figured that it only said it was a mild loss because they wanted to sell me hearing aids.

We still couldn’t figure out if my computer could play a 17kHz tone, though, so I searched around trying to find out how. I discovered that the Audacity software (which I downloaded to record Spoken Wikipedia articles) could generate its own tones, so we started playing with that. I was rather surprised to find that I couldn’t hear anything at 11kHz or above! A could hear up to about 15kHz. So now she knows why I sometimes don’t hear her when she’s calling for me from elsewhere in the house. I’m vaguely considering going for an actual audiologist test, even though I can hear human voices with no problem…just to find out what my actual loss might be, if any. I’m not actually worried…it was just a surprise to me to have A saying “yes, I hear that” for tones that I could swear weren’t even being played.

I just installed Sorenson’s EnVision SL software! I called up VRS and told the interpreter I was just testing, so I know it works. So if anybody wants to call me direct, use my first name at my domain name. I don’t have it set up to use audio, so please make sure you have the video, or we won’t be getting much communicated!

My thoughts are all over the place about the protests at Gallaudet. For one thing, I agree with Elisabeth Zinser:

DPN was a “genuine civil rights movement,” said Zinser, a “historic turning point toward progressive emancipation of deaf people from the bondage of society’s prejudice.” The current protest, said Zinser, appears to be protesters simply complaining about the selection of the university’s next president.

I also don’t buy this “not Deaf enough” line. I. King Jordan was hearing until he was about 20 years old, but he was “deaf enough” in 1988. Jane Fernandes (”JK”) was born deaf, and her parents - deaf mom and hearing dad - elected to raise her orally. I can understand that students want someone who is fully Deaf - although I’m not sure JK isn’t - but saying she is “not Deaf enough” is ignoring IKJ’s history.

However…I still think JK should stand down. Regardless of why the protests are happening, the fact is that after all this she won’t be able to lead the university effectively. The “she doesn’t say hi” argument has exploded into great animosity between the two sides, and I don’t see how it can be resolved. Something else I wonder about is the faculty’s “no confidence” vote - what prompted that? I haven’t heard why they have no confidence in her.

I haven’t decided yet if I’m going to visit Gallaudet or not. It’s right up the road, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t go…but I don’t want to just go and gawk. Assuming I could find parking, I would want there to be someone there for me to go and see. My friend _R_ leaves work at 5:00, so he wouldn’t be there by the time I got there. I know at least one person who is involved in the protest, but I don’t know when he’ll be around. If this stuff continues into the weekend, perhaps I will stop by on Saturday and see what’s happening.

In recent times, deafness has not been regarded as a barrier to learning, and deaf children attend mainstreamed schools and deaf schools across the country. But this was not always the case. In fact, prior to the early 19th century, deaf children received virtually no formal education. Certainly some were taught to read and write by family members, but many worked in jobs that valued physical skills over mental ones. The person who was instrumental in changing this situation would later lend his name to the world’s first liberal arts university for the deaf.
(more…)

eudyptes sent me to Firefox Flicks, where users can submit video testimonials for Firefox. The weekly winners get $50 Amazon gift certificates and Mozilla schwag, and the grand prize winner gets $500 from Amazon. So I made a long and fancy video testimonial, complete with subtitles, only to find out that Firefox Flicks insists that you upload directly through their site - and they only give you 30 seconds! So my nice script was pretty much useless, and I just said something along the lines of “Uhh…Firefox is great! It has lots of options! It’s a great product! Go ahead, try Firefox TODAY! What are you waiting for?!” So I made the fancy one into a blog entry instead, and uploaded it here. I won’t bother posting a translation here because it’s subtitled! (I’m not sure if I’ll try that again…it was kind of a pain.)

Added: The testimonial I actually submitted to them can be found here but it’s pretty cheesy.

I forgot to mention this earlier, but our kitty Amanita is apparently deaf. She’s probably about nine or ten years old, and she recently had ear mites, but those have been cleared up. We’re not sure how long she’s been deaf, but my brother-in-law pointed it out to us this morning so we did the usual tests and didn’t even get a flicked ear. We’re holding off on bringing her to the vet because she acts fine and we don’t really feel like dealing with another veterinary crisis right now.

I am writing this from a stool in a hidden corner of Baja Fresh near the intersection of 20th and Pennsylvania NW. I am several feet above the sidewalk and I am watching everybody go by. The evening party at the conference starts at 6pm, and I needed to get away from the crowd for a while, so I am snacking on chips and salsa.

The conference is going reasonably well. There is somebody here I’m not too fond of (not that I’ve admitted this) whom I didn’t expect to be here, so I am avoiding this person as much as possible. I did meet a nice girl a couple of years younger than me; she flew here from Colorado with her hearing boss; I had lunch with them today.

I’m excited - I get to go to my first professional conference as an attendee! The organization Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Government is holding its National Training Conference next week, and I found out about just today from one of my deaf clients at my usual workplace. (I’d heard him mention it before, but I didn’t really notice what it was.) Registration closed before the deadline because they were sold out, but my deaf client contacted the organizers to ask if it might be possible for me to attend a single workshop on Monday in exchange for volunteer interpreting services. The organizers said yes, but at the same time my deaf client learned that two deaf employees from our agency (or rather a remote site for our agency) were forced to drop out because of funding issues. So we asked the organizers if I might be able to take one of their slots, and they said yes! I am going to use my company’s annual educational stipend of $300 to pay the conference registration fee (also $300). We aren’t sure yet if I will be able to be considered in a working status for those three days, but if not I will take leave without pay and attend anyway because I think there are some very valuable workshops being offered. And even if I have to take LWOP, I will still volunteer to do a “knowledge transfer” session with the other interpreters in my company.

There are five workshops that are specifically about interpreting: Mentoring: Become Part of the Solution to More Certified Interpreters, Interpreting in the Federal Workplace, Leveraging Interpreters in the Workplace, How can a Deaf Employee, Supervisor, and Interpreter Work Together to Ensure That Effective Communication Takes Place in the Workplace?, and Video Remote Interpreting. There are also a number of other workshops that sound interesting, including Shall a Disaster Strike: Preparedness & Response with Your Deaf, Deaf-Blind and Hard of Hearing Colleagues (which will undoubtedly include some discussion of interpreters), Is It Time to Declare the TTY as Being an Obsolete Technology?, and The Use of Hypnotherapy and Relaxed States with Deaf Clients in Mental Health Settings. (Some of these are at the same time as interpreting workshops, so I’ll miss them.)

I’ve already decided that if interpreting services are required during a period when I’m not attending an interpreting-related workshop, I’ll provide them. I’m not sure if this is something all interpreters would be willing to do - I suspect it’s just my own personal ethics. I have the skill of interpreting, therefore I will interpret when needed. Obviously since I will be a conference attendee I will make sure nobody else is available - I am paying to be there, after all - but if it is a truly desperate situation then I am happy to fill in.

Oh no! According to an article from Agape Press (a Christian news service), PAX will be halting production of Sue Thomas, F.B.Eye at the end of the current season in January. I would count the show among my favorites currently on the air - yes, it’s intensely cheesy, but it’s not overly religious: the God references are kept to once per episode, don’t impact the plot, and aren’t even in all the episodes. (They’ve been making more God references lately than they used to, but they’re still just the moral at the end of the story.)

I was fortunate enough to meet Deanne Bray and Troy Kotsur (her husband) in September 2003, on the closing night of his Broadway appearance in Big River. I got to chat with both of them; she is as fluent in ASL as she is with oral English. I would be terribly disappointed if the show went off the air! This is the first TV show I’ve ever heard of that not only had a deaf main character, but also starred a deaf actor. (Shoshannah Stern played a minor character on the short-lived series “Threat Matrix,” but she was almost never shown.) There is reportedly a campaign to save the show underway at stfbeyefanfic.com, I’m going to check it out. (I had no idea people were writing fanfic about this show!)