I was so excited when I saw the Packet 8 opportunity come up! It’s actually a contest, and the most creative entry is going to win a video phone! I’m not particularly creative, so I don’t think I will win, unfortunately. I thought about doing this piece in ASL, because that would have been creative, but I left my webcam at school!

Anyway, I am really impressed by the video phones available from Packet 8. I know they market to deaf customers, or at least are compatible with the needs of deaf customers, because I’ve heard of the company before. My favorite video phone is their DV326, because it is a fully stand alone product. The biggest problem with having your video phone connected to your computer - like the EnVision SL software available from Sorenson - is that it’s dependent on your computer’s processing power. Unless you have a pretty new computer, you probably can’t have anything else running while the video phone is in use. But with a stand alone like the DV326, you can carry on a phone conversation and browse the web at the same time!

Packet 8 offers another video phone for home use, the Tango, but it’s not as clear to me how it works. The DV326 is very similar to a particular D-Link phone, but it’s a lot cheaper! All the functions, including dialing, are done directly from the phone unit. And if the little monitor is too small for you, you can use it with an external screen too. I would love to have a DV326 so I could chat with friends from home…that would be SO cool!

The calls kept coming in nonstop today so I am pretty much exhausted. I was chatting with another interpreter while we were both on break, and she agreed that we usually had less than 60 seconds between calls which is not enough! And of course at the end of the day I had technical difficulties - even the manager wasn’t sure what to do, but our center closes at 5:00 on Fridays so we ended up just transferring the call into oblivion and not knowing if it got picked up. (Normally when we need to transfer to another interpreter, we connect with the receiving terp first and let them know what the call content is, but it was the “connect with the receiving terp” part that wasn’t working!)

I am so tired. VRS turns out to be a really intense job, and working 8 hours yesterday and 7 hours today has left me exhausted. A is suggesting I cut back on my hours, because she doesn’t want me to be overtired, but it feels like it would be weird to work less than 32-40 hours. Maybe I will cut back a little bit while I get used to it, I don’t know. I just feel like I have been exhausted forever, I feel like I’ve been neglecting stuff, I feel like everything is a mess and I’m too tired to deal with it! It doesn’t help that I am dealing with really bad hives…5mg of prednisone per day is keeping life bearable but it’s still not any fun. Plus the prednisone is making me so hungry…I feel like I might as well pause my NutriSystem because otherwise I’m just wasting the food if I don’t stick to the diet. I haven’t broken down and gobbled food yet, but I am hungry all the time.

In other news, my PS2 is broken. It is officially dead. It was giving me problems loading The Urbz a while back, and now that I’ve been playing Guitar Hero 2 it’s been acting up again. I finally looked up the repair people and contact them through their chat service, where the guy honestly admitted that it would be better to just get another for $90 at GameStop. That was nice of him, considering he could have just said “sure, send it in” and taken my $60. But it still leaves me without a working Playstation, and I am only partway through GH2 on medium! I placed an ad on Craigslist in case anybody is in love with their Wii, Xbox, or PS3 and doesn’t want their working PS2 anymore, but I am not optimistic in that department.

Today was my first full day working in the VRS center at Gallaudet. I did a reasonably okay job, except for goofing up the explanation of regional toll-free numbers and fumbling a request to transfer a call when it was extending past the time I was supposed to leave. Oh, and my first call was an answering machine message that I didn’t actually leave because I had plugged my headset into the wrong jack! I didn’t figure that out until the next call, which was connected to a live person who couldn’t hear me, heh.

I discovered that you can’t really do anything important while you’re waiting for a new call to arrive - every time I went to start an e-mail or something, I had to leave in the middle of it, and when the call ended I had completely forgotten where I was in the letter. So mostly I just kept my e-mail window open to keep an eye on things, and I surfed news websites when I wasn’t on a call, because those are easy to drop instantly and come back to.

To be honest, I struggled with a lot of calls, particularly those where the connection was slow or the lighting was poor. But I taught myself a mantra on my very first day of training, and my trainer said it was a good one: As long as the communication was successful, I did a good job. Sure, sometimes I could have interpreted better, sounded better, been faster, etc. But the important thing is that the deaf person and the hearing person conducted their business together successfully. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.

I was having a hard time posting a comment about this in a friend’s journal, so I decided to post it here instead. This is just venting about the message board at the Video Relay Services Consumer Association website. As far as I can tell, people who post over there feel exempt from the requirement to consider the needs of others as well as their own, and they don’t think it’s necessary to do any research before spouting.

There are many people on the board saying “save VRS and cut TTY” - don’t people realize that the majority of D/HH Americans do not use ASL? There are more than 25 million Americans with severe to profound hearing loss, and only about 1-2 million use ASL. All those other people are using text relay on either TTY or computers. I fully support keeping VRS - not just because I am a VI myself, but because Deaf people have a right to communicate in their first language - but if the FCC is looking to cut costs, as that website indicates, I would think they will cut the service used by a few people than the service used by a lot of people. I know I’ll get flamed for this, so I’ll repeat - VRS interpreting is my job. So I don’t want them to get rid of it, that would put me out of a job. But the people on that board are not thinking logically (needs of the many outweighing the needs of the few) or considering the needs of non-signing deaf Americans alongside their own needs as signers.

Another person said “if VRS terps are paid more than $40/hr then reduce their salary to $30/hr and don’t let it go above that.” This person apparently has no idea how VRS interpreters are paid, or even interpreters in general. I’m not sure they even realize how much actual work is involved in interpreting, how much training costs, how much experience is factored into the situation…sure, $30/hr interpreting beats working at the local burger joint for minimum wage, but it is not necessarily commensurate with what the job actually entails.

Let the flaming begin.

This morning I did three hours in the VRS center at Gallaudet, about two of which were actual hot seat real calls. I did a much better job than I was expecting! I went over to do my math/English tests after that, but the testing lab had lost its networking connection and so I had to reschedule for Tuesday at 10am. This means my vacation is getting extended even more…I feel bad about being away from my agency for so long but it’s the way things are working out.

Last night I started putting up the pictures from the trip; I’m still captioning and tagging them. It’s slow going! Tonight I started posting my journal entries but that’s a lot of typing so I’m taking a break for a bit.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned on here that I upgraded to a Sidekick 3. When we boarded the plane in Denver on Wednesday, I turned off my Sidekick 2 and put it in my pocket. When we arrived in Baltimore and I got out my phone…the crystal had cracked. Of all the times I’ve put my phone in my pocket, this was the first time there was any damage from it. So Thursday morning I went to the mall and upgraded to a SK3. I’m extremely annoyed that I’m expected to pay to re-download all of my applications, especially since the guy at the kiosk in the mall said I wouldn’t have to. But I have already created a Gallaudet Sidekick 3 theme - I was surprised I didn’t find any immediately so I just made my own. I haven’t found any Hello Kitty themes either, I will have to make some of those.

Whoops, looks like I had the days mixed up…so I kind of fudged that I posted yesterday! I’ve been getting pretty slack - I still think I’ve missed less than 30 days of posting in the past three years, but many of those have been recently.

Today I started training at Gallaudet for their VRS department. It feels really weird to be in training for a different job while I’m still far from done with my old one, but when I interviewed I pointed out that I wouldn’t be starting for a while, and the interviewer said “well I’m the one that teaches the training, and I don’t want to have to teach just one person later in the year, so you have to come now.” Of course I’ll have forgotten everything by the time I actually start working, but at least I’ll be able to jump right in. Unfortunately I heard gossip that none of my previous credits will transfer, so I’m hoping to hear back from the transfer specialist soon…I really don’t want to start as a brand-new freshman! I also still haven’t gotten my registration packet yet; deaf students got theirs 4-6 weeks ago, and the packets for hearing students were supposedly mailed out last Wednesday, but still nothing has come in the mail. I live in the DC area, there’s no excuse for it taking so long! I am going to stop by the guy’s office on my lunch break tomorrow and ask if he has any extra copies of the packet, or if I have to wait for it to come in the mail.

My job during the school year is taken care of! This morning I interviewed with Gallaudet’s VRS interpreting department and they accepted me. The interview was not easy, but I managed okay. A lot of people don’t realize that anytime an interpreter interviews for a job, there is always a skills test involved. (Or at least at all the interviews I’ve been through.) And then there’s the dreaded period while the interviewers go off and discuss how you did!

Fortunately, when they came back they had good news for me. I have to take even more time off from my current job to attend the VRS training, which they will not be thrilled about, but there’s not much they can do. Even if they fired me I’d already have another job lined up to start immediately! (Not that I want to burn bridges.) And the training is paid, so that’s good at least. I’ll be working as a freelancer, so I can fit it around my school schedule as conveniently as possible; they do take out taxes for you.

So I’m all set with a part-time job for the school year. Yay for me!