Turning Blue

People with hearing and speech disabilities can now use AOL’s instant messenger service to make regular telephone calls via relay service. The deaf community already makes extensive use of IM and this is an obvious extension of that application. AIM has a dominant presence on wireless devices as well, which means that people will be able to utilize relay service from any location that has cellular service. I may even give it a try myself. I don’t think my speech is that difficult to understand, but sometimes I have the occasional phone conversation where I must repeat myself a few times. This is especially true when I make calls for things like technical support. I don’t think those support techs in India have much experience interacting with people on ventilators. I can only imagine how freaked out they would be if they had to talk to someone who used a speech synthesizer. Let’s hope that the other big IM providers like Yahoo and MSN also implement this capability.
My building has been without hot water for the last couple days and my morning showers have become minor cardiac events. I have no idea how civilization endured before the invention of the water heater. It makes me realize that I could never cut it in a post-apocalyptic world. I’d be constantly whining about the things I missed like hot showers and cable television and air conditioning. Except that there wouldn’t be any electricity for my vent, which means I wouldn’t be whining for very long.