Deputies: Locksmith Took Food, Liquor From Bennigan’s

Deputies: Locksmith Took Food, Liquor From Bennigan’s

Stolen Guatemalan Baby Almost Adopted in U.S. | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

Stolen Guatemalan Baby Almost Adopted in U.S. | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

Latinas For McCain, Finding Fault With Obama : NPR

Assalamu alaikum, I’d wanted to blog about this earlier, like a couple weeks ago when this story first aired, but I kept forgetting.

Along with the “oh we don’t like Obama, ’cause he reminds us of the “change” that the ditators borught us in our home countries”, was the “oh Obama’s a Muslim, oh, you mean he’s not a Muslim, well, I still don’t believe him, he’s a Muslim, and oh he lef his church, so he’s not believable, can’t be trusted ’cause you don’t leave your church when times get rough, so he must not really be a Christian, I still think he’s a Muslim”, etc.

You know, I can handle people that disagree with me on principle or philosophy or whatever you want to call it, but willful ignorance, the continued belive that Obama is a Muslim (even when he’s not), and excuses like “oh he reminds me of the guys who used to talk about change back home and then turned out to be dictators”, etc., are just “excuses”, I just wish people would be honest, say they’re not voting for Obama because he’s black, because he has a funny name, because you think, or you just plain want to believe, that he’s a Muslim, even though the guy running the story has told you he’s not, and the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor has been debunked so many times we shouldn’t even be talking about it anymore.

Why can’t people say something along the lines of, “I’m ignorant, I refuse to learn, and I just want to wallow in my own ignorance and vote for McCain, ’cause no way should a black man be President”. I mean, let’s just be honest. But no, that’s not the politically correct thing to do is it… Better to express fears of someone being a closet Muslim (as if being a Muslim is supposed to be a bad thing), or fears of some impending dictatorship “like what happened in my home country”, then you get to have a story on NPR…

There is nothing that makes me more angry than ignorance and prejudice, and willful ignorance and prejudice at that, when the truth is either easily obtainable or staring you right in the face.

These women know darn well that Obama isn’t going to be a dictator any more than, well, any President of the US would (unless the people let him but that’s another topic), and they know darn well Obama isn’t a Muslim, they just plain don’t want to vote for Obama, not that they necessarily like McCain. McCain is familiar, McCain is something they can relate to, McCain is white, and that whiteness inand of itself, makes him qualified to be President, no qualms about closet Muslims and dictators with McCain, unless of course, his name was actually Yahya or something.

Latinas For McCain, Finding Fault With Obama : NPR

Fla. DCF Secretary Butterworth to step down

TBO.com – News From AP

Thoughts…

… which is what I title a post when I can’t think of anything better…

Assalamu alaikum, well, my Braille display will have to be sent back to the company again. It seems the prong that you plug the USB cord into has become bent, to the point that it will plug in, but it won’t recognize that it’s been plugged in. And when you do plug it in, it’s really loose.

So anyway… I’m not sure if it will be covered under the product maintenance agreement or if I’ll have to pay to get it fixed. And I’m frustrated because I tend to move faster with Braille rather than speech, and well, it’s just a minor inconvenience. But when it happened, I got so upset for like 10 minutes, to the point of tears. And I’d thought that I was getting so much better, not worrying about things, not making such a big deal about small, trivial things, and then this happened, and, well, perhaps I’ve not made as much progress as I’d thought.

Because my first thoughts were, “my numbers will suffer at work” “using Braille is so much easier” Etc. And then I was upset for being so upset, and I couldn’t believe it, for a minute, I just wanted to sit there and cry over a broken Braille display. Because I was afraid I’d hav to pay for it, was afraid my numbers would suffer at work. And then I started thinking, “wait a minute, it’s just a little thing, it’ll get fixed, you’ll be fine”. Then I started making dua, and then I got a massive headache and spent much of the day laying down watching TV.

I actually reacted worse to the broken Braille display than I did when my computer went out. Probably because work was affected, I guess, and work tends to stress me out, though I’m working on that. If it’s not worrying about getting my numbers for the day, week, or month, it’s worrying about keeping those numbers up, if it’s not that, it’s getting upset about a tough call I had, where the person said “you” don’t care about me, “you” don’t care if “I” starve, because “you” will have food on the table and lights on when you get home. And various themes of how “you” don’t do thus and such. I know I shouldn’t take such things personally, but you know, I do.

I should have a thicker skin, I shouldn’t be so sensitive, and worry so much, and get so emotional (I still cry over Steel Magnolias and I’ve seen it a hundred times). But I do, it hurts to be cussed out, yelled at, vented at, have the phone slammed in your face, all because you have to follow the guidelines of your agency and you can’t of course, do what people want you to do. And that’s OK.

And when I deal with customer service people, I always make sure to tell them, that though I may be frustrated, I’m not upset with them, and that I know they have their own rules and guidelines that they have to follow. Because I know what it’s like, as I said, to be called all kinds of names, to be yelled at, so loud that the person in the next cubicle can hear the person, even though you are still wearing your headset. And I know I shouldn’t take it personally, I know I should have a thicker skin, but when I hear “you” as in “you” didn’t do this or “you” sent me this letter, I know they don’t mean “you” as in me, but “you” as in the agency. But I still take it personally, and I want to say “I” didn’t do this, etc. I think that Allah puts you in certain polaces and positions to teach you thinks, and I think my job, Inshallah, is meant to teach me patience, as well as to be able to help people in the best way I can.

Inshallah, my Braille display gets fixed soon, I’m doing OK without it, but I work better with it.

Whooping Cough Cases Rise Dramatically in Polk | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

Whooping Cough Cases Rise Dramatically in Polk | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

BlindConfidential: Patent Law

Assalamu alaikum, Blind Confidential weighs in on the Freedom Scientific lawsuit against GW Micro. Very interesting thouthgts, and he gives a better perspective than the “oh this is so unfortunate” reaction I came up with.

From what he’s saying, it seems that FS may indeed have a case, though perhaps bringing the fact that GW Micro might have been violating a patent held by FS to GW Micro’s attention might have been a better way to go than just suing them out of the blue like that.

I’ve always tended to like Jaws better than Window Eyes, and Freedom Scientific has done a better job as regards support for refreshable Braille displays (something that I’d heard at one time that GW Micro would *absolutely* *not* support), so FS and Jaws will always have a special place in my heart. If it wasn’t for the help functions and the neat little messages that tell you all of the windows and Jaws hotkeys, I’d not have learned to use Windows in three days, right at the end of the semester, when I had a term paper due. This was back in 1997, when my disability services office decided that they’d upgrade their computer system reserved for “the visually impaired students” right before finals, and right when I had a paper due and had no other computer to use. I not only had to jump from using Jaws for DOS to Jaws for Windows, but I also had to learn how to use the Windows (it was 95 at the time), operating system too. To put it simply, I was quite stressed. It was funny, though, the other girl who was visually impaired, came a few days later to “work with me” and to “teach me the system”, and I ended up knowing more than her. For reasons I won’t go into now, the fact that I was able to do that, was well, very sweet to me.

Anyway, I’m not a screen-reader basher, I’ve used 4 screen-readers, including Jaws, well I’ve *tried* to use them, and have just always felt more comfortable with Jaws. Others would say the same about Window-Eyes, or System Access, or, well, take your pick. They all have their strong points, and not so strong points, but I get the feeling sometimes, that people bash Freedom Scientific and Jaws because, well, they’re Freedom Scientific and Jaws. It’s like people want to bash different dog guide schools, because they don’t like their philosophy, or training methods, or whatever. But again, I’m digressing, for Jaws and Freedom Scientific, perhaps it’s because of their approach to the community, the fact that people feel as though they’re not listened to, because of their authorization scheme, whtever.

But Jaws is a good product, even if you don’t always like what the company making the product is doing.

BlindConfidential: Patent Law

As Rice Shortage Hits Senegal, Wade Government Faces Crisis

As Rice Shortage Hits Senegal, Wade Government Faces Crisis > The Gambia Echo > The Gambia Echo – Online Newspaper

As Poverty Increases Bride Price Keeps Rising

allAfrica.com: Gambia: As Poverty Increases Bride Price Keeps Rising Page 1 of 1

Old School WTLC…. Back when it was power 105.7

Dailymotion – WTLC’s Super Jay Johnson, a video from wtlcradio. WTLC, Indianapolis, Radio, Jay, Urban
Assalamu alaikum, never thought I’d find this, brings back memories, I remember the lucky number contest and everything… As well as the DJ’s, the DJ doing the aircheck is Jay Johnson (which was the same guy who did that Quiet Storm show I mentioned in a previous blog post). Wonder if he’s still around?

Anyway…

Blind Access Journal: Freedom Scientific Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against GW Micro

Assalamu alaikum, I don’t have a lot of info on this, if any, really, except this really strange feeling that we’ve been here before, and something about this seemsm, well, like the big guys are trying to sue the little guys out of business.

Allah alone knows best, and I need to do more research on this. I’ll say, though, that I’m a loyal Jaws user, despite its, or its company’s flaws. Jaws does the job, especially as regards Braille support, along with the ability to use the Jaws cursor to review any part of the screen, something which I’ve not been able to do with other screen readers, though I’m told I can do the same thing with other screen readers.

Heck, if I could find another screen reader that does what I need it to do, all of the time, as Jaws does, I’d probably switch, but right now, I can’t.

I’m really disappointed, though, that this has happened.

Blind Access Journal: Freedom Scientific Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Against GW Micro

So Where Do We Go From Here?

Assalamu alaikum / greetings, well now that I’ve hashed out my feelings (once again) on my experiences with blindness, and the attitudes of both the blind and sighted, the thought that’s been occurring most to me, during the past few days is, where do we go from here?

As far as the sighted dealing with the blind, I think the first step would be to admit that we may not truly be as advanced as a society in dealing with the disabled, as we think we are. And that our attitudes toward the disabled may not be all that “liberated” either. Just as racism and sexism is still an issue, ableism is still an issue also. The first step is for people to truly be honest with themselves as regards their own attitudes toward the disabled, i.e., whether the disabled can hold down a full-time job, raise a family, and/or otherwise lead a full and productive life as their non-disabled peers would.

If you don’t think that the disabled are capable people, can’t or shouldn’t be allowed to do things like work, have children, etc., why is that? If you were educated to the abilities of those who are blind, for example, would that change your mind? Would “education” actually help? The thing is, I had a recent conversation that made me wonder if, just as people don’t want to face their prejudices regarding race, that they may not want to face their prejudices regarding disability either.

So the first step is to deal with whatever prejudices people might have and then we can move forward from there. Also, blind people need to be honest with themselves as well, i.e., do they like their “condition”, would they change it if they could, is being sighted “better” than bieng blind, would being sighted make them more of a “normal” person, does being blind make you less of a person?

Because I’ve struggled with self-esteem issues for years, and I still struggle with issues of self-esteem and self-worth. And for years, I was not honest enough with myself to admit that. I told myself that I was just as good as anyone else, that I was capable, independent, all of that. I was intelligent, fun to be around, well-liked. But then, sometimes I wondered, did people talk to me just because they felt sorry for me. Did people really care about what I had to say or were they just telling me so so as not to hurt my feelings. I often wondered was I stupid, pretty, smart intelligent, ugly, nerdy, how did I look to other people.

I didn’t face my self-esteem issues until after I’d gotten divorced from my first husband, and I felt I had to face them, or else I’d probably end up in another abusive relationship and I definitely didn’t want that.

I think you tend to attract the people who kind of fulfill what you truly feel about yourself, when they tell you you’re stupid, you say in the back of your mind, yeah, I must be stupid, something must be wrong with me for me to end up in this situation.

It’s only when you recognize the issues that you have, that you say, wait, it’s not me that is stupid, or whatever, it’s *them* who has the problem. I try not to get too upset when a sighted person makes a stupid comment or when people decide that I can’t do something. Because it’s not me who has the problem, I have nothing to prove to anyone…

Because I’m doin’ it, I have a job, I participate in my community as best I can, I do pretty much everything else a sighted person does, and even if I didn’t, I’d still not be less of a person because of that. If I chose to live iwth my parents, or to not work, that would be OK, I think the issue is not what society decides is best for you, or what some blindness organization or training program decides is best for you, it’s what you decide is best for you. Whatever makes you happy, fulfilled, content.

And Alhamdulillah that I got to this point.

In my opinion, the Best Muslims and the Worst Muslims live in America | MR’s Blog

In my opinion, the Best Muslims and the Worst Muslims live in America | MR’s Blog

More Thoughts on Disability and Blindness

Assalamu alaikum, and greetings, all, I started thinking about this a few days ago when I was explaining to a coworker why I feel uncomfortable in groups of people where I’m the only blind or disabled person, and I have in the past also attempted to explain my, how do I call it? Feelings of bitterness and mistrust toward “sighted” or non-disabled people. I have to say, though, that the “bitterness” comes in short spurts and as soon as I feel it, I do my bes tto get rid of it.

I think most of my feelings stem from having to fight the stereotypes and misconceptions that most people, I’d venture to say, have about people who are blind/visually impaired and/or disabled.

I’ve often said that dealing with blindness, in and of itself, isn’t hard, in fact, when I’m in my own home, I normally don’t even think of it. It’s so much a part of who I am, and I’ve been this way practically my whole life, that I just don’t give it much thought, unless something comes up where I really need sighted assistance, but even then it’s not a big deal, I just have my husband help me, or get some help from friends, when I was single.

The problem for me is and has always been dealing with “the outside world”, their expectations of me, what they think I can and can’t do, what they think I should or shouldn’t be doing, what my position in society should or should not be.

I’ll give a few examples. I was at a meeting a few weeks ago, and I was in a room full of people, as meetings go, and while there were people in chairs immediately adjacent to me, most of the time, people talked *around* me. The thing is, I knew pretty quickly as soon as I came in the room, that I probably should not have come. I didn’t know anyone there, I really felt like I stood out like a sore thumb, and even if I only came with my cane and not Chloe, I still would have stood out. I’ve been in situations like this from Eid gatherings to neighborhood meetings to conventions, etc. And unless it’s a convention for an organization for/of the blind, it’s pretty much the same thing. I’m sitting there, and hardly anyone says hi to me, except the occasional salam, or the hi how are you, or the “you have a wonderful dog” comments. I’ve literally been in situations where two people have been sitting on either side of me, and they’d be talking to each other, both of them leaning right in front of me, and it was like I was not even there.

And as I have said, this has happened across the board, so it’s not just Muslims, non-Muslims, me, women, whoever. I’ve been in a myriad of situations where I’ve been in a roomful of people, everyone talking, and me just sitting there, and people walking and talking around me like I wasn’t there. It’s made me feel like I could have just stayed at home, which is one reason I don’tggo to many Eid “gatherings” anymore.

Another issue I’ve found is that there is this “invisible circle” that most sighted people won’t cross with you, as a blind person. I’ve found this from college to work to organizations that you may be involved in. And it goes something like this. People may talk to you, at work, in class, at lunch, etc., on a superficial, “hi, how are you”, kind of thing. But you, as a blind person, will never be invited out for tea, for drinks, if you do that sort of thing, for shopping, or anything like that. And it’s not because I’m Muslim either, because I’ve noticed this before I became Muslim. The “invisible circle” I’m talking about is that in my experience, most sighted people will only get to know you so much, will only go “so far” in their friendships with you.

And I’ve asked other blind people about this and they report the same phenomenon. I’m not saying that all sighted people are like this, obviously, because my husband is sighted. And I’m not saying that it’s malicious, perhaps people are doing this and they’re intimidated or don’t know how to act around blind people. I’m saying that it’s enough of a phenomenon thta I believe there’s something to it.

The only sighted people who seem comfortable with us “blind folks” are usually sighted people who have had contact with other blind people, i.e., they’re married to blind people, have blind people in their family, or are the parents of blind children. Although this doesn’t mean they won’t have stereotypes of thier own, I know of parents of blind children/people who shelter their kids, won’t let them grow up, won’t let them move out and have lives of their own, etc., because they don’t think that their children are capable of this.

And just because someone may work in the “blindness field” such as a rehab counsellor or independent living instructor, doesn’t make them immune from viewing blind people in stereotypical ways, which is really sad because you’d think that they of all people would know better. However, people who have worked with blind people or know blind people on an intimate level seem to be less susceptible to the still-pervasive stereotypes of the blind that we still have in our society.

When I’ve tried to explain this to some of my sighted coworkers, I’ve gotten the same sort of defensiveness that you’d get if you’re discussing race to white people. The same sorta “oh but I’m not like that” or the “oh but you gotta understand, we just don’t know” kind of comments. And to me, if you have a blind coworker, or a blind friend, or a blind family member, there’s just no excuse for you *not* to know. But I think the problem is as someone told me once, people are afraid, “blindness” as I was told once, is one of the most feared things, and for people who are sighted, they think that if they were blind, they couldn’t possibly function, I once had a college roommate actually tell me that if she ever lost her sight, she’d just curl up in a corner, and wish that she’d die, that there would be no way she could ever learn to function, and that she’d probably just curl herself anyway.

I was shocked, and I was even more shocked to hear from some blind people that they didn’t want to be blind, that if they could see, they would, that blindness was a curse, an evil, and I was just shocked! I’ve heard partially sighted people tell me that they do everything they can to “not look blind” even if it means they don’t carry a cane, and they end up running into something. They’d rather look stupid, look like a bumbling idiot, than like *shudder* blind! This was why someone once told me they wanted to get a dog, because having a dog would make them lookless *you guessed it* “blind”. I was angry!

Those of us who are totally blind don’t have the luxury of choosing to “pass” for sighted or not! And it’s always made me angry, that when I was growing up, and going to school, that the “partials” seemed to get treated better by the staff, seemed to be the ones who got the off-campus jobs, for example, seemed to be the ones who got to go to public school for half days (something I was always promised but never got myself). The “totals” always were at the bottom of the barrel, and it took my mother pointing this out for me to realize this. The “totals” were always a burden, always shoved to the side, always “less than”. I have memories of traveling for track meets and other athletic events where we’d stop at the school we were going to to compete, or a restaurant to eat, and all of a sudden, the kids who had more sight, who were supposed to make sure those of us who couldn’t see at all were guided to the building, all of a sudden were nowhere to be found. This happened more times than I can count, and either the adults had to help us, or other kids, who barely had any sight themselves, stepped up and helped.

It’s not that I don’t want to see, it’s just that if seeing is going to make me act like this, make me treat others in some of the ways that I’ve been treated, then I’ll just stay blind, sorry.

And I don’t think blindness is a curse, an evil, or anything to “change”. It’s not like if I woke up and Allah gave me sight tomorrow, that all of my problems would disappear, that everything would be great and wonderful. In fact, I’d probably have to re-learn everything all over again. Most people don’t think about that. I’d have to learn to do things by sight and not by touch, I’d have to learn to read, perhaps to drive, etc. And I wonder if it’d be just as traumatic as going blind would be to someone who’s had sight their whole lives?

I’m not saying that I’d not want to see, I’m saying that I like how I am now, I like how things are now, frustrating as they may be sometimes.

Captcha Could Be Solved, Alhamdulillah!

Assalamu alaikum, first of all, the Dell technician came on Tuesday and replaced the motherboard in my computer, and now it’s working, Alhamdulillah for that. (And apparently, it was a woman technician as my husband informed me during my lunch break at work that *she’d* called him to inform him that the part had been replaced and that the computer was working so Mashallah for that, always good to see women in what seem to be male-dominated professions like, well, “cable guys” etc. I actually did have a woman come out to install my cable once, but I digress).

So anyway… I was reading the Blind Confidential blog, which had an article about WebVisum, a Firefox plug-in which adds many accessibility features to the Firefox browser, the most breath-taking and exciting for me being the fact that WebVisum uses OCR to solve the always-frustrating and highly dreaded “captcha” problem faced by blind and visually impaired computer users.

So this morning, I installed the WebVisum plug-in, and this afternoon, when I got home from work, I put it to the test, by going to Imam Zaid’s New Islamic Directions site and commenting on an article, the one I selected was called “Disabled Society”, and whadaya know? It worked! There is a shortcut key that you hit, and WebVisum gives you a message that the captcha has been submitted and the result will appear momentarily. Which it does in a few seconds, at which point you get a message saying “the captcha code is ready for pasting”, at which point, you paste it into the field that asks you to enter the image. And it worked! It actually worked! At which point, I ran out and told my husband about it!

This is just all kinds of great and wonderful and exciting and any other words of joy and excitement at having been provided with the means to do something I heretofore could not do.

Alhamdulillah and Allahu Akbar! This wasn’t the “big access technologoy” companies that did this, it was, well, just some average everyday guys who knew something about computers and made something happen that all the “big guys” seemed to think could not be done, i.e., solving the captcha problem!

Alhamdulillah!

Allahu Akbar!

Assalamu alaikum, well, I’m not quite sure what I did or how I did it (I think changing the display from 1024 by 768 to 600 by 800 helped), but Jaws seems to be working fine now Alhamdulillah on my on-loan-from-work laptop!

Inshallah, it will continue to work smoothly, and my telecommutting process will go smoothly from here on out.

Anyway, I’m tired. Trying to solve computer problems wears me out!

Update on my Computer

Assalamu alaikum, my computer is still dead, or as I’ve been saying, it’s taking a long nap! And no offense to people from India, or wherever the tech support calls are outsourced, but, whoever thought of this idea was, well, let’s just say I don’t think it’s a good idea! It seems you spend the majority of the itme just trying to understand the person you’re talking to, and they trying to understand you! It’s quite tiring, and for some reason, they got the idea that my husband (who was assisting them with doing some things within the gutts of the computer) is not named Glenn. And now I’ve got that song “My Name is Not Susan” stuck in my head.

So anyway, we spent probably 2 or 3 hours on the phone with tech support which, if we were techies or a techie had come to our house, probably could have figured out in a few minutes, which was, that perhaps, or maybe not, it’s the motherboard that has gone out. Or who knows,it could be something else when the technician gets here on Tuesday (and no we don’t know the time they’re coming, they’re supposed to call us back for that!) *sigh*

The thing is, maybe my husband’s laid back nature and patience is wearing off on me, but when this happened to me last year (yes I had to have my Dell machine replaced last year at about the same time), I was so upset and frustrated about the whole thing. And now I’m just like “well we’ll get it fixed eventually).

Anyway, I’m watching old hip hop videos on VH1 Soul right now (they’re playing Roxanne Roxanne by is it UTFO?) So I’ll probably just vege out in front of the TV for the rest of the day, because I won’t obviously be on the computer.

Inshallah, my computer gets fixed soon.

When It Rains … It Pours!

Assalamu alaikum, and so it goes withthe plethera of computer issues I’ve had to deal with since yesterday. The first of which is the fact that Jaws is being quirky with my laptop, choosing not to read some edit boxes, address windows in browsers, and the Jaws cursor won’t read the desktop, just gives me a “blank, blank, blank” when I know there is stuff there.

Some applications that aren’t necessarily Jaws-friendly require the effective use of the Jaws cursor, as the PC cursor won’t always read things in these applications to you. And there is one application, in particular, that I use in performing my daily job functions, that I absolutely have tohave the use of the Jaws cursor.

So in essence, no telecommuting until I can get this fixed, as this is ostensibily why I’m being issued the laptop in the first place.

Now, just when I’ve seeming got this figured out, something on my home desktop computer (we think it’s the power supply), has died, as the computer will come on, but it just sits there and the fan blows at full speed, and nothing, and I mean nothing, comes up on the screen. This happened after I heard a strange, incessant, beeping noise coming from the CPU of the computer. At thiat point, I tried shutting it down, but the computer had lociked up, and when I tried to turn it back on, it turned on, and just sat there, the fan going and nothing else. So anyway, once my husband gets home, we’re going to call tech support back as they needed me to look at some things, watch for what color the on/off button was flashing, etc., which I obviously can’t do.

So there you go… You know what is interesting, though, I’m not mad/upset/frustrated… I’m just kinda like, “we’ll get this worked out eventually”.

And Inshallah, everything I need for work will work with Jaws, which I think it will.

Make dua for me please.

Switching TV Services

Assalamu alaikum, today I switched my cable service from Bright House to Verizon FiOS, and so far I really like it. The coolest thing for me is the fact that I get Bridges TV, and I don’t have to pay extra for it. Bridges TV isn’t perfect, and I’m sure that we could have a lot to complain about it, but it’s a form of Muslim media, and they do have some shows/documentaries that I find myself watching (and cricket isn’t one of them). But my feeling is that we’re not going to have the quality Muslim media that we want out there if we don’t support the upstarts that come on the scene.

There is also a BBC World News channel, Boomerang (which is a classic cartoon network), and some other channels that I was not getting with Bright House, that I’m now getting. And I might actually save a bit of money (which is another reason why I changed services).

Having said that, though, Bright House has very good customer service, which it seems that Verizon might have issues with if you read some online sources, and I’ve had nothing but positive experiences regarding them.

The guy who came out to install the service was professional, pleasant, answered any questions that I and my husband had, and he even helped change the contrast on my computer room TV for me (I guess there was hardly any color and I didn’t know that and my husband never mentioned it to me). My Spanish-language skills came in handy, though, as somehow the menus were switched to Spanish, though with the guy and my husband spelling out/trying to read the Spanish words to me, we figured out how to switch the menus back and get the contrast changed to a more pleasing level for the sightlings. Add to that, the Verizon guy also helped my husband hook up his DVD player to the TV in the living room and he even showed him how to switch back between the TV and DVD. The guy was on time, he arrived just after 8 or so, I didn’t even hear him knock at the door, all I remember was my mother-in-law coming to the bedroom door and telling me the “tv Internet guy” was here. Anyway, the installation went smoothly, took about 3 or so hours, and no setting of fires or other installation calamities occurred. So there you go. As if I need any more “bread and circuses”.

Racial Profiling Studied for Terror Inquiries | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL

WASHINGTON | The Justice Department is considering letting the FBI investigate Americans without any evidence of wrongdoing, relying instead on a terrorist profile that could single out Muslims, Arabs or other racial and ethnic groups.

Racial Profiling Studied for Terror Inquiries | theledger.com | The Ledger | Lakeland, FL