This was a bit of fun.
we spoke about how my dog can be so intellegent while in harnis but such an idiot when off on a free run.
We also talk about searching for holidays, first aid and radio and my new website, well, it’s more of a page than a website: www.ei8iz.me
Email sent to Freedom scientific regarding two Jaws bugs
This is an Email I have just sent to Freedom scientific regarding two bugs that are causing me particular pain every day. Even though these issues were reported well in advance of the recently released hot fix, they have yet to be resolved. If you are experiencing any issues with Jaws, I would encourage you to use the contact information below. More people need to speak out.
I am personally tired of the situation we have found our selves in as users of Jaws. Since around version 5, we have waited with bated breath for the next release to come out only to find that they’ve released new features and along with it, new bugs. What is even worse than this, they’ve continued this trend by building on this. They advertise that a bug has been fixed and in the next release, they’ll break the very thing they fixed the year before! For example: Jaws 8 fixed a bug in Jaws 7 with remote desktop. After some time in remote desktop, the alt key would stick. Obiously, it wasn’t a keyboard problem. The issue only emerged when Jaws was running. This was fixed for Jaws 8. The release notes said that customers who used remote desktop over slow connections encountered an issue where the alt key seemed to stick. In version 9, 10 and 11, this issue has returned with vengence. In fact, it has even been found in Jaws tandem! AGain, we report bugs, we pay our SMA upgrade fees, and again, we put up and shut up.
I’m tired of it. I’m not shutting up any more. I will email Freedom scientific continually until I am happy that the bugs that I am encountering are resolved. If the issues I am encountering are not bugs then I expect that as the maker of this software they at the very least give me instructions that will assist me in solving the issue my self. Instead, every email is responded to with a cannd paragraph telling me to upgrade my version of Jaws to the latest available from the Freedom scientific. website. If I emailed them telling them that the world was going to end, I bet I would get the same stupid response.
I’m through ranting.
Contact details: Manager at the top: BGahan@freedomscientific.com
Manager of Technical support: Bcarver@FreedomScientific.com
Escalations manager: johncarson@FreedomScientific.com
Here is the email:
Dear John,
Telling me that if it cannot be duplicated then the issue will be closed is not acceptable.
If I can duplicate it and document my system then you as Freedomscientific and the developer of this product have an obligation to fix this fault.If you had a car where the drivers side door was particularly stiff to open but the manufacturer couldn’t reproduce the fault on their side would you except that there was nothing that could be done to fix this? Even if the manufacturer of the car couldn’t resolve the issue, the least you would expect would be that they would communicate a number of tried and tested instructions that would determine the cause of the problem and its associated solution.
If there is any information you require that would enable you to determine a solution to this then please contact me.
You acknowledge once again that the Windows explorer issue has been assigned to a development team. You have however not given any justification as to why, even after a hot fix has been released, paying users of Jaws are still left with a major bug without even a patch or an estimated time to the next hot fix.
Bringing this back to a common sinario, If you bought a TV and one channel didn’t work your first action would be to contact the manufacturer. If the manufacturer said that the issue was known and the relevant department were working on it, you would validly assume that an update to your TV would be released shortly to rectify this. Surely, after paying for a TV, the company would recognise that as a supplier, they had an obligation to you to ensure the product you had purchased was up to the task? In fact, you are protected by law to ensure that products you purchase are “suitable for merchantability”.
If an update was released after you had reported this fault I’m sure you can understand that you would be particularly frustrated that your new TV had still not been fixed and you still had an empty channel after shelling out good money for it.It is not unreasonable to expect and in fact even demand that a product is free from defects. Of course. Being aware of the challenges Freedomscientific experience, it is understandable that certain issues are not caught during testing. However, it is not acceptable for those issues to be ignored or in the very least extensively tested and retested. I am aware and thankful that my reports have been actioned but more communication as to what is happening is required from Freedomscientific. I cannot afford to experience problems with my interface to my job and indeed my life any more. I am not sure if you are sighted or if you use Jaws, but imagine that tree views showed more information than you needed or wanted before the item you were looking for. Imagine that the title bar of Windows explorer wasn’t read. Imagine that, as reported earlier today, your monitor froze and went dim when two third party applications froze. Imagine that when you got in in the morning, your monitor wouldn’t turn on until you turned it on and off a few times just because you’d left your computer on overnight. Imagine that in Lotus notes 8, your monitor only showed the top part of the message in certain messages until you pressed tab for an undefinitive amount of times. You wouldn’t…. No. You couldn’t use your computer productively every day.
This is what I am encountering.
I administer a system with hundreds of virtual servers, hundreds of physical servers and thousands of work stations. Believe me, I am not exaggerating the numbers. In 1 OU in active directory there are 690 computers. This is the average size of an OU in this organization. I am fighting to keep my job as it is becoming known at a high level that my screen reader is causing problems for me when navigating around VMware VSphear, I cannot access the Dell Console utility, I cannot access Dell open manage, I cannot access IT assistant, I cannot access the lists in Trend micro, I cannot access any of the HP SAN software, I cannot access the SAN switches. The list goes on. I am fighting to keep this job and it is not helping that I have had to send you almost ten emails today alone to highlight defects, problems and issues in your software. It is not helping that I cringe every time I want to look around active directory because every tree view is speaking a lode of irrelevant rubbish before the item. It isn’t helping that I cannot use Data protector because it is also an MMC based application and I am having issues with the tree view in this also.
I expect an acknowledgement of this mail detailing a summary of steps that will be taken for all the issues that I have reported to Freedom scientific today as well as a time frame for the resolution of same.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
From: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 20 May 2010 15:45
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
As stated in a previous email, the title bar issue in Windows 7 using Windows Explorer has been duplicated by us and is assigned to the development team.
As to the issue with the MMC in Windows XP, this issue has not been duplicated by us, and is currently being looked at by our test department, if it can be reproduced, then it will be assigned to the development team for resolution, and if it can’t be duplicated then we will close this issue.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [mailto:d@digitaldarragh.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 20, 2010 1:54 AM
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh; John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Jonn,
I have not recieved a further update from you in relation to what Freedomscientific are doing to assist in determining a solution to this issue. As specified in my origional message on this matter, this is having a particularly noticeable affect on my efficiency therefore I require an answer detailing the steps Freedomscientific are taking to address this.
I await your response.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
http://www.lalrecordings.comFrom: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Sent: 07 May 2010 11:28
To: John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello John,
Sorry for the delay in getting back to you.
I have run Jaws 11 with the default settings and in fact, this morning, I had the opportunity to install Jaws 11 on a new installation of Windows XP and a second poweredge 1950 server running Windows 2008 standard and I replicated the issue again.
The steps are:
1. Start mmc from the run dialogue box.
2. Start something like computer management by adding it to the console.
3. Open system for example. Now arrow around the items below system.
4. Jaws will speak the sub title of the window. I.e, the line below the menu bar.
Again, this only happens with Jaws 11.This is the very latest version of Jaws11 available from the Freedomscientific.com website.
There are no applications installed on the Windows 2008 server. I have not even applied any updates to it as for obvious reasons, I needed to install Jaws on it first.
If you like, you or someone in your department can tandem onto my machine to verify this. The port should be open. At least, it was 6 months ago when I was using tandem every day of the week. If this is something you would be interested in doing let me know and I’ll ask our firewall person to open the required port for my machine.
Thanks for your assistance iwht this. As I’m sure you can understand, I use the MMC very regularly at work so although this would be considered a minor bug it’s very frustrating when I’m trying to do things very quickly like adding a cert to the default route authority. Actually, come ot think about it, I was manually configuring group policy on a stand alone server earlier and I found the same problem in the tree view in the group policy editor @gpedit.msc@ so maybe it’s a larger tree view related issue?
Darragh
From: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 05 May 2010 20:16
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
Thanks for being able to assist us in working towards a resolution for you, however, an audio file in is not necessarily what we need.
If I can be more specific, we need information from your computer, such as what configuration settings do you change in JAWS?
Also, if you run JAWS in default mode, does this still happen the way that you originally described?
You can run JAWS in default mode by following these directions if you are not familiar with doing this already:
1. Unload JAWS with Insert + F4
2. 2. Go to the Run dialog and type the following: JAWS11 /default and press enter.
Then test your application with the steps you provided to us.Thanks again.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.From: Darragh Ó Héiligh [mailto:d@digitaldarragh.com]
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2010 2:47 PM
To: John Carson
Subject: RE: Escalations Issue # 198219John,
I will record the audio produced by Elequents to demonstrate the issue tomorrow in work.Thanks for your assistance.
Best regards
Darragh Ó Héiligh
http://www.lalrecordings.comFrom: John Carson [mailto:johncarson@FreedomScientific.com]
Sent: 05 May 2010 19:46
To: Darragh Ó Héiligh
Subject: Escalations Issue # 198219Hello Darragh;
Recently you contacted our technical support department about an issue with JAWS 11.0.1430, specifically, you’re reporting 2 issues, one in Windows 7 with insert T not speaking the title and the second is in Windows XP running the MMC.
I am writing to inform you that the first issue, pressing Insert T while in Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has been reproduced, and is being assigned to our test and development team for their review for possible resolution.
The second issue was also tested, and we can’t reproduce this issue, the MMC loads the correct scripts, and the tree view worked fine during our testing by using the steps you provided. If you have any further information that you can add that might help us to reproduce this issue, please provide them to me so that we can test further, otherwise we will close this part of the record.
Thank you for reporting these issues to us and we appreciate your patience in this matter.
Kind regards,
John H. Carson, Jr.
escalations Manager
Freedom Scientific, LLC.
Your thoughts would be very welcome.
Browse the Internet without the crap.
I was asked to block a number of websites on indevidual computers without using a Proxy. It was a really quick dirty fix. But, it works reasonably well.
Afterword, I found the following website with a very comprehensive list of websites that can be blocked.
http://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
Is Scotland closing?
During a conversation last night, the eldest child of the person I was speaking to asked if Scotland was closing on the 18th of June. It took a second but I copped on that the child must have heard some of the advertisement telling of the pending closure of the Halifax bank. Halifax is a trading name of Bank of Scotland. The child must have picked up the advertisement incorrectly and concluded that Scotland was closing on the 18th of June.
Priceless!
Still busy.
Things with me are as busy as ever. Ever hear the saying ask a busy man if you need something done? Well, that’s how it’s been with me. I’ve three jobs at the moment. I’m doing my 9 to 5 job, I’m almost finished creating the website for an online radio station called Mushroom FM and I’m also doing work for a local charity. They use to get me to do work for them a few years ago but they made the silly mistake of getting someone else in since 2008 and now their regretting it and I’ve been asked to pick up the pieces. They have increased the number of PC’s they use in the office but there are no policies or restrictions in place to keep people from messing things up. The result of this is that a virus has been spread around every computer and there’s a lot of crapware installed such as tool bars and other non-work related applications.
I’ve a huge task on my plate over the next few weeks to completely over hall their PC and telecommunications infrastructure. I think I’ll try to document a lot of the changes I make on the blog as it will possibly be interesting to some of you.
I’m also attempting to complete a few projects I’ve started at home. I’m changing the house phone system over to VOIP. IF this is successful and reliable, it is something I will implement in other places as well. I’m doing this by interfacing a Trixbox machine with Blueface. Again, More documentation will be forthcoming on the blog but first I have to figure out a problem that I’ve encountered with connecting both systems. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to figure out because although documentation is available and people have blogged about their experiences with getting Trixbox up and running, a lot of the information out there conflicts with its self.
The final project I’m working on at home is radio related. I’m now broadcasting on 70Cems and 2Metres on the amateur radio frequencies. I recently purchased a Kenwood tS2000 radio so I’m active on the airwaves again. I’ve also purchased a multiband antenna and I’ve purchased a magnetic ballin for a long wire Arial for HF so I’m hoping to be up on those bands very shortly. I need to brush up on Morse code. I’ve not been active on HF in about ten years so I’m very rusty. Actually, first, I need to buy a new mores key. The one I have is just a straight key but I’d rather paddles instead.
A protected post will be along shortly writing about the work situation. If you have an account on the site you’ll be able to read that. If you don’t, now is the time to create one.
Basic comparasons between Irish Broadband / Imagine and Vodafone Ireland.
These are basic tests done via Irish ISP test, pings and downloads.
- Vodafone Ireland: Connection jitter: 0.2ms.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Connection jitter: 1ms.
- Vodafone Ireland: packet loss: 0.0%.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Packet loss 0.0%.
- Vodafone Ireland: Connection mos score: 4.2.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Connection score: 4.1.
- Vodafone Ireland: Download speed: 3.02mbps.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Download speed: 3.45mbps.
- Vodafone Ireland: Upload speed: 316 kbps.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Upload speed: 3.10mbps.
- Vodafone Ireland: Quality of service: 57%.
- Imagine / Irish broadband: Quality of service: 91%
When downloading a 96MB file from a site in the US I got the same download speeds on both connections: between 230kbps and 240kbps. Interestingly though, on Vodafone, I found the download speed started at 280kbps but on Imagine / Irish broadband, the download started at a much lower speed.
Pinging a server on the Blacknight network, I got a response of 11MS from Imagine / Irish broadband but with Vodafone Ireland the response came in at 33ms.
These tests were carried out within seconds of each other.
I’m going to contact Vodafone via Number Finder tomorrow to cancel the contract for both my home phone and broadband. Imagine, please don’t mess this up!
I’ll shortly change over to a VOIP provider, or if I’m feeling adventurous I’ll set up a server here for it.
I’m just a tad concerned about the Jitter result. it’s point 1 percentage higher on this new connection. ha. na. I’m being too cautious.
In fairness though, I’ve had such a bad nternet connection for so long, I’m afraid that I’m just subscribing to more problems.
Faulty towers wouldn’t get a look in.
Picture this:
I get home from work on Tuesday evening and begin cleaning the house. I then start the organization for a meal that I hoped would be something different. See, yesterday marked the beginning of our third year in the house. On the 14th of April 2008, two major things happened that changed things for the better. First, after three months of hard work, we moved into the house. The place wasn’t finished yet, the living room was still a building sight, there were still tools everywhere, our bedroom was just about finished, The spare room hadn’t been touched yet, my computer / music room still needed furniture and there was still a whole in the floor in Emma’s sowing room where the builder had sunk the pipes that had been surface mounted by the previous owner. Still though, we were too relieved to have the main work done to care about the work that was yet to do. We’d installed a new heating system, replaced all the windows and internal doors, fitted new floors into five rooms, blocked up a fire place and dozens of other jobs.
The second thing was me starting my new job with Fujitsu who were contracted by the houses of the Oireachtas. For the non-Irish people who read this, the Oireachtas is the main government office. It is where the government chamber is where parliament meets. The job description was specific but actually not entirely accurate. What I thought was a sideways move was actually a nice step up. The employer I worked for before was terrible. I can definitely say, the best move I ever made was away from that last company. I had a lot of accessibility challenges at the start but they got sorted out as time went on.
So, I wanted to celebrate our mutual success yesterday.
After cleaning the house, I set about preparing the food for yesterday. I marinated some vegetables with some mixed herbs, and I peeled potatoes. Everything was going well. I’d even bought a new table cloth so it would look a little different.
Yesterday, I made sure I got home early and I roasted the chicken, flavoured the potatoes with other herbs and roasted them too after partially boiling them before hand. I also did some mash potato as well. For starters, I did Chicken and vegetable soup and for desert, I picked up her favourite as well.
I tell you all this to make you hungry. hahahaha. Oh, and to explain that I put a lot of thought and work into it. I probably don’t do it as much as I should so I’d some brownie points to score. hahahahaha.
Right. So everything was going well.
Emma got home and I had everything ready right on time. I mean, everything was sitting ready. It was perfect timing.
I sat her down at the table, pored her drink and went to serve the soup.
Here’s when things began to go very wrong.
I touched off a glass on the table and sent liquid everywhere. Ok, not everywhere, it wasn’t a very big glass but you know what I mean. It wasn’t the best start.
No. It gets worse!
After the starter, I heated up some sauce for over the chicken.
It was some weird stuff. I don’t even remember what flavour it was. It probably would have been very nice though.
Most of these packets are microwaveable.
I even got someone to read out the preparation instructions before I used it.
Not once did they tell me that this packet cannot be put into a microwave.
Most packets like this can so I hardly gave it a second thought.
I put it in and turned on the microwave.
Bangs, cracks and pops could be heard from it.
Emma said there were blue and white sparks lighting up the kitchen.
No, not really a good sign. Is it?
I could possibly have just turned it off from the switch but there was so much noise coming from it I thought it would be safer to do it from the trip switch instead.
So, that’s what we did.
Have you ever smelled slightly singed microwave?
It’s not as nice as roasted chicken.
But it’s certainly stronger.
Hahahaha. All I can do now is laugh.
It didn’t ruin things though. We had another sauce that was used in its place. You know, one spare just in case I decided to try blow up the house or something like that.
She still enjoyed it. Even though I almost ended our second year by ending the house.
Ha. Why she puts up with me I’ll never know.
Maybe it’s the dramas from time to time?
So, here’s to another two years.
Weird nightmares.
There’s a nightmare I have reasonably regularly. I’m not one for analysing dreams or anything like that, but this one is kind of obvious so to see what others thoughts are, I’m posting it here.
My question is: If someone is in your house and your there as well, would you (A) tackle the intruder and defend your property or (B) leave and just let the person take what they want.
My answer seems to be (A). If your in my house, I don’t care if I’m out matched, I’ll do what ever I can to get you out.
So, let me give you some backround. About five years ago, I lived in a horrible apartment at the back of a housing estate in Raheny in Dublin. The area it’s self was very nice but I was in a secluded part of it and security wasn’t great. I never really worried about it at the time though.
Years later however, I have a repeating nightmare about returning to the place to find the door unlocked.
Two things happen after this. The first is I look around and nothing is strange and the dream finishes with me assuming that I must have just walked out without closing it.
The alternative ending though is that I walk in and find the place completely trashed with a lot of things missing. I call the gards and then a friend or two to ask what I should do. The dream ends with me inspecting the place and seeing what is missing.
Last night, I had a different dream along the same lines.
I was finishing locking the house up for the night. I’d just teddered the dog and was locking up the living room.
For some reason, I could hear change being collected up stairs. I don’t know why I heard that. It’s not like I ever have money in the house It was a weird thing to happen. Two seconds later, I felt a breeze from the kitchen coming from the direction of the window. Three things happened next really quickly. I slammed the kitchen door quickly and locked it and pulled the key out, ran towards the bottom of the stairs and shouted loudly and with as much confedence as I could muster. At the same time, I heard someone walk down the first three steps toward me. After that, I woke up.
Weird isn’t it?
I’ve been in the situation where someone has been in the same apartment as me without me knowing. I’ve also been in the situation where I’ve walked in to find someone standing in front of me. I know what I would do with reasonable certainty so it’s weird that this keeps coming up.
So, what would you do if someone was in your house or apartment?
Disregard the law. I know what’s legal and what’s not.
How to frighten the shit out of a person delivering junk mail.
I hate junk mail.
The amount that I recieve seems to be increasing lately.
This morning, I was letting the dog out before starting the walk to work. He was his usual giddy happy self as he always is in the mornings. I opened the front door and he jumped out before I had a chance to get it open all the way. At the same time, I heard the letter box being pulled back.
With fright, I very loudly shouted “HAY!”.
With that, he dropped his bag or what ever it was he was carrying.
I opened the porch door and the dog raced out. Now, the dog didn’t care that he was delivering junk or even there at all. All that was probably going through his mind was, “need a pee, need a pee, going to walk, need a peee, yay! it’s morning, need a pee.” But, to the fella at the door it must have seemed that the dog was not as friendly as he actually is.
As he very quickly left the garden, I heard him mumbeling and cursing to him self.
I have to say, it gave me great pleasure to get back at them for a change. I know, their just doing a job. But I hate the rubbish they put through my door every day of the week. Not even Sundays are free of it!
Installing Team Talk in Linux.
Installing TeamTalk in linux is really simple.
download the archive and uncompress it with:
tar xzvf teamtalk*.tar.gz
Notice, I’m using * there. please use that too. That way, this will apply to almost any version that is released.
Now, change to the TeamTalk directory.
cd teamtalk*
Right. There are a few files here. Readme.html, teamtalkd and an XML file.
The only file you will need to be concerned about is teamtalkd.
Type the following command to check for dependencies.
ldd teamtalkd
Right, you’ll see errors if that fails.
Assuming it hasn’t and everything is ok, run the wizard to get up and running.
./teamtalkd -wizard
Answer all the questions here. It give syou a few default answers if that helps. but usually these questions just want a y for yes or n for no.
Now, when your done, run TeamTalk as a daemon.
./teamtalkd -d
That’s all there is too it. YOu may need to open port 10333 to allow access to this service on your server but other than that, the process is really straight forward. Set up chanels / rooms / what ever their called by logging in as an administrator. To create an administrator account, use the wizzard. It will ask you if you want the account to be an administrator or a normal user.
I installed TeamTalk for LAL Recordings so that users can talk to each other if the need arises.