What is it with old guys that don’t want to replace/update their appliances? The man who had this house built and lived in it for over forty years, didn’t replace the appliances – since the 80’s! And it was not by any stretch of the imagination a financial issue. Not at all.

I checked in my microwave – it was manufactured in 1987. 1987! Good Heavens! It’s a wonder the thing still works. Well, it has its moments, that’s for sure. It has a mind of its own and cooks things how it wants to – undercooked, overcooked, just right – depending on what kind of a mood it is in that day! Heh!
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Someone on Twitter that I follow tweeted this very cool and extremely addicting site, Wordle.net. For the life of me, I can’t remember who it was that tweeted it, but, I know it was a guy that lives in Dallas. I’ll figure it out eventually.

Look at the awesomely cool things you can make there!

Isn’t that cool? Most people are using a TON of words, but, I’ve never really been one to play ‘by the rules’. My own beat and all…

Here’s one I made with my main sites on it:

I am going to use my Vista snipping tool to grab that one for my Twitter profile. I could seriously spend HOURS there messing around! I love that site! My only critique is that I had to fix the spacing in the coding to make it work on my blog. Otherwise, I freaking love this site!

If ya’ll make some, tell me about it in the comments and tell me where I can see yours!

I don’t know, but, wouldn’t that be great? Haha!

Besides that, though – GO ELLEN! GO ELLEN!

I’m feeling just a bit fired up here, so let’s delve into this a bit further, shall we? I was disgusted when I read Karen’s initial post – I just about completely lost it when I read that she was dealing with a MANAGER of an establishment. And then someone-who-shall-remain-unnamed in my F2F life, argued with me the validity of Karen’s claims. This ‘warmy’ (how I describe people in my right-here-next-to-me life) thinks that she shouldn’t even be upset at all. This person thinks that maybe she could have just gone to the speaker, waited a few seconds, and then hollered her order into it, and then pulled forward. (The ‘warmy’ dug himself out at this point, saying that she could then say, “I did order at the speaker.” Too late – said ‘warmy’ was just too deep.) And now I’m even more fired up!

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) states in Title III, straight from the US Department of Justice website:

Public accommodations must comply with basic nondiscrimination requirements that prohibit exclusion, segregation, and unequal treatment. They also must comply with specific requirements related to architectural standards for new and altered buildings; reasonable modifications to policies, practices, and procedures; effective communication with people with hearing, vision, or speech disabilities; and other access requirements. Additionally, public accommodations must remove barriers in existing buildings where it is easy to do so without much difficulty or expense, given the public accommodation’s resources.

The emphasis in the paragraph is mine. Would it have been effective for her to go to the speaker and speak into it, not knowing what, if anything, was being said back to her? No. Does effective communication require two or more people? Yes. If I am deaf, and I go to the speaker and talk – that is just me. Alone. The argument came up in my mind about people giving speeches – that is just one person. However, if the entire audience is deaf, and there are no interpreters, then that is not effective communication, is it? So effective communication does require two or more people. One may only be listening, or receiving, the communication, but, without your ‘receiver’ – you are just telling the wind.

The Council for Disability Rights website provides ADA FAQ’s for those of us non-lawyer types. They explain the above referenced section of Title III, in part, as such:

• May a public accommodation require people with disabilities to meet certain standards of policies, especially safety standards?

A public accommodation must not use eligibility criteria or standards which screen out or tend to screen out people with disabilities unless it can be shown these criteria are necessary for the safe provision of these services. Safety considerations must be based in real, immediate threats of danger to others, not on stereotypical assumptions. In addition, a public accommodation must make reasonable modifications in policies, practices and procedures unless it would fundamentally alter the nature of the goods and services offered.

Again, the emphases is in the above paragraph is mine. Speaking to the first emphasis, would it be unsafe to take the order of the patron from the same window through which you will eventually serve them their food? No. Some fool might say, “We have to know they are real customers, it’s unsafe to have them just come up to the window. They could shoot us.” To which I would retort that I could order a burger, as if I’m just a customer, and then once I get to the window, shoot you. People are going to come to your window – it’s a drive-thru.

Speaking to the second emphasis, would it fundamentally alter the nature of the milkshake if I were to order at the window? Would my milkshake be salty? Would it have hamburger meat in it? As far as ‘altering the services’ goes, would you suddenly be physically unable to reach out the window to hand it to me? No, no, and no.

Just give the woman her damn milkshakes, would you?!

There are just some times when I cannot write like the intelligent creature that I really am and it drives me absolutely bonkers! When I get like this, as hard as I try, I cannot pull Smart Lisa out – I keep typing and backspacing, typing and backspacing ….ad nauseum. My words string together in dry, stale sentences that must remind my readers of that monotonous preacher they had as a kid that put them to sleep every Sunday, or even worse, like some cheesy, polyester-wearing car salesman. You know those car salesmen in the 70’s? Do you remember how they looked? That is how I feel, and how I imagine my reviews must sound. Ugh.

My idiot hat is even MORE stuck to my head when my family is around. I just cannot make the English-is-my-favorite-subject-and-I-sound-like-it-Lisa come out to save my life when the family is about. I mean, it’s not always like that, but, often enough to really bug me. Like what? Am I supposed to only work when no one is home? Like that’s logical – or even feasible…

Ok, I just wanted to come here and vent to my lovely and sweet HS-H2 readers, whom I know love me anyway! I’m going to go try to make another crack at it! Wish me literacy and fluency and loads and loads of intelligence! Thanks!

They seem so simple, but, they’re also a little hard to understand. I absolutely love my fiber optic Christmas decorations! My mom bought me a mini fiber optic Christmas tree about seven years ago, and it’s still working and one of my favorite decorations! I remember the first year we got it, Patrick would lie on the couch and just stare at it for hours! That is why I used to always call it our ‘psychedelic tree’! Ha! And I also never could remember the term, ‘fiber optic’! I used to know a guy whose father worked for a company that laid fiber optic cables all over the world! I was fascinated by it then, and I still am today. I wonder, though, are those cables the same as what makes my little Christmas tree so pretty? And the really confusing part, to me, is that information is actually passed along those cables! I can see, sort of, how the colored lights are shot out the end of the cable in the Christmas decorations, but, information? How on earth does that work? It’s really just amazing technology, if you ask me!