Cyber hugs to all my Friends out there..

And huge apologies that I have not been able to return messages left for me at certain social networking websites all over the Internet.. Just been without a working computer at the house.. You have no idea how many of you all pass through my thoughts each and every day.. :grin:

The upside to being without a 'puter is that it leaves, yuck, tons of time for housecleaning, ugh, not to mention conspiring to repair a near constantly ailing vehicle of late.. More on the latter later as I have a bunch of public "thank yous" to leave for all those who have been so helpful and, more importantly from these Shoes, kind and respectful throughout all my questions and one-on-ones as I bounce through the list of tow companies, auto repair businesses, and auto parts stores here in Pickens County..

Cyber hugs..

PS If anyone knows where I can get my hands on an inexpensive computer from Year 2000 or better, you'd be my Hero for the Day.. I've run the gamut of community thrift stores with no luck in recent weeks.. 23,000 plus emails in my inbox when I got to the local library earlier.. At least 85% of those emails contain awesome disability advocacy information that never should have stopped at these fingertips........

Cyber hugs X2.. :grin:

Disheartening as H.. :: ADA, on your 17th Anniversary, meet Reality.. Sigh..

Hopefully this comes out right.. My gray cells aren't functioning so well at all again today.. :(

PS, by the way.. Everyone with a Yahoo! group needs to please check your spam buckets.. My copy of this to you all from my desktop never made it to the lists.. Next post: The Conspiracy behind effective advocacy posts regularly finding themselves being thrown down the cyber incinerator.. :wink:

Now, about yesterday's 17th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the real Reality of the human factor behind seeking any kind of accessibility accommodations.....

Don't know why I looked at an email bearing a subject referencing a World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) IRC chat log yesterday, but I did.. Guess I'm glad I did.. Ran off at the fingertips at first glance, too..

The email was a cross-post to several W3C-associated working (wg) or interest group (ig) listservs.. It was about the most recent realtime talk some members had very literally regarding rewriting how we all design our web page coding so that the Internet is accessible for absolutely everyone..

The email I responded to was by a "Joshue O'Connor" who caught what my mind just completely did not grasp on the first run through of the IRC archive.. What caught my eye most from Joshue's now archived post (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) was the following:

This section is frankly kind of amazing. In several fell swoops the entire efforts of the accessibility people on the list are dismissed as almost Pavlovian responses and then an absurd dialogue about smell-o-vision ensues. This is trivializing the efforts of people here who are concerned about the needs of people with disabilities.

He was commenting on the following block from the log:

# # [15:01] This is orthogonal to fallback/alt content for images, though

# # [15:05] oh well, the legal stick of accessibility has been waived again :-/

# # [15:05] why is it that when accessibility advocates can't come up with a rational argument, they always fall back to the legal stick?

# # [15:08] Well, maybe they realize there are no carrots available?

# # [15:25] If the Web had smell-o-vision, would accessibility advocates fight for longdescs of odors on behalf of those with no sense of smell?

# # [15:27] A perfume site that made use of smell-o-vision would probably provide a description of the smell anyway for all users, so they can know what it's like before sampling.

To put it into some kind of perspective, these are the folks, among others, who are re-creating THE Internet for the rest of us'ns.. My no-regrets and also now archived (w3c-wai-ig, public-html) response was:

More amazing to these fingertips is that this became publicly disclosed, surfaced today, July 26, 2007, the 17th Anniversary of the ADA, the Americans with Disabilities Act..

Obviously a long, long way to go before those who seek universal access for *ALL* are not publicly ridiculed by others..

Peace and best wishes..

Cindy Sue

If you've a mind to, please have at it.. These sentiments were left literally for the World Wide Web to meander regarding the acceptance of universal accessibility, let alone the actual implementation of the same..

Ever.........

To those who participated to this level in that chat, do you all honestly think this is what Tim Berners-Lee wants associated with his vision of Reinventing HTML towards a New Net..?

Very personal to Tim.. Please tell me from the bottom of your most visionist of visionary Hearts this isn't..

Cyber hugs..

Georgia Tools For Life's ReBoot Program..

One of the latest emails in my inbox served as a reminder of the existence of the Georgia Tools For Life ReBoot computer recycling program.. Computer parts along with other miscellaneous technologies donated to Georgia Tools For Life's ReBoot are recycled, revamped through this non-profit then given to persons with disabilities across the state..

What I REALLY like about this program is that they ask for those who receive computers to pay it forward by donating, volunteering so many hours of time to ANY other non-profit entity of that person's choosing.. This is not just some kind of handout deal..

With all the wonderful interest in Freecycle-type programs going on right now, please think of adding TFL's ReBoot program to your bookmark index for the next time you upgrade your equipment in the future and just don't know what you're ever going to do with the backlog of computer parts beginning to pile up in that back closet of yours..

Will work for 'puter parts..

More specifically, server parts.. Events of late along with a couple of days sweatin' it out on the ol' '98 say it's time..

Been thinking on it for a long, long time.. Playing with Apache, Perl, and PHP along with Cygwin.. Would love to go all open source, but maybe next time..

Ever want to learn yourself some serious patience..? With today's bloated websites in mind, take that '98 and toss in a 166 processor to boot.. No pun (necessarily) intended.. ;)

Speaking of kind, unselfish acts.. :))

Accidentally just now found out my main website and all the attached sub-domains went down for the count in the last few days.. Former webhost, iPowerweb, apparently is not interested in our business so will be a couple of days before I can be back up and running.. Already had a new favorite chomping at the bit, but if you know of GOOD, reasonable webhosting services that know how to communicate with their clients, I'm all ears. :P

In the meantime, Google does a wonderful job of keeping cached copies of websites for a short period of time should you need anything from my websites.. THANK YOU, Google..

To friends I've just recently brought up exactly this kind of thing in the last week or so, the Internet has brought us an awesome tool to use for advocating and self-advocating for persons with disabilities.. BUT, for those of us who deal in topics more critical in nature, for example suicide survival as Life chose for these fingertips, today's Technology can definitely provide a double-edged sword when there is a glitch, regardless of how the glitch occurs..

Everyone be safe out there, and don't forget, Google caches.. A perfect reminder we need to never let up steam on finding ways to make sure we are all completely independent of others as Time continues forward..

Warm cyber hugs to all.. :)

P.S. Speaking of being shut down with absolutely no warning, think, hear, recognize, read all about the, at first glance, seemingly very geekette phrase of Net neutrality.. Get involved to make sure it stays our Reality..

Bear in mind that, with a flick of a virtual switch by someone who does not agree with our subject matter, our content, there always stands that chance that our Voices can be snuffed out instantly like a Light.. The more radical your point of view being voiced on the Net, bet your bottom circuit that your topic moves closer to the top of the list to be censored should they ever figure out a way to do so legally..

Stay informed.. Stay involved.. Help guarantee Net neutraliy becomes one less battle we need to confront each day.. ;)