Lawler told police she “thought it was a vicious animal” and feared it would be a danger to other customers, so she grabbed a spray bottle of Clorox cleaner off a shelf and sprayed the animal in the eyes and back.

I understand not everyone in canada/the US may not be from this continent, let alone canada or the US, but this does not, under any circumstances give you cause to pull such an absolutely boneheaded move.

“I realize now it was a mistake,” Lawler said when reached by telephone Monday. “I have a fear of dogs. It was just a big dog with a big head. I was just afraid.”

I understand fright, but I do not condone the reaction.
Let’s move on.

Lawler said she takes medication for schizoaffective disorder, and paranoia is one the symptoms associated with her mental illness.

sorry, I call absolute and utter bullshit. Mental incompitency? Hell no. The dog was wearing a harness, and clearly visible, so again, I bullshit on letting the meds control your actions, because that’s what your saying is your excuse, sorry, I don’t believe it.
oh, it gets better.

Although the dog wasn’t exhibiting aggressive behavior, Lawler said she got scared when she saw it and asked Shore to leave the store with the dog. When that didn’t produce results, she said she resorted to the spray bleach to get rid of the animal.

So the dog’s calm, not causing problems, but you *still* resorted to bleach, you fucking moron.
She felt the dog would go wild, bite someone, seriously? kindly fornicate something.

But I still feel like a dog doesn’t belong in a place like a grocery store.”

one. the dog’s a service animal, highly trained, so what you feel is still no grounds for your actions.
In my opinion, she shouldn’t get one year or a $5000 fine, she should get both and never allowed to own an animal ever!
What do you think, do you think the punishments too leaniant?

We get to the first weekly update. It’s not good, and the person passing along the update knows this. Everything I’ve reported, there seing it, including some things I missed or that didn’t start until his return. They have had no lluck fixing it. Nobody’s giving up yet, though, let’s give it another week, I’ll call you next week.
I hope, prey, and continue hoping, but in the back of my mind I have to prepare myself for that call that says he can’t continue working.
Fast forward to March 15, 2013.
The phone rings, I grab it.
It’s the person delivering reports on cleveland.
It’s been determined that Cleveland cannot continue working as my guide, they can’t refocus him, they need to retire him from active guide work.
I’m told the next steps, what happens now, and the call is ended.
From that point onward it’s been an immotional time for me, why did I even bother, I should have just bared the brunt of it, keeping cleveland working, etc. A couple of people who immediately stepped up after his retirement was announced, I’d like to give special thanks to, you know who you are, because of your experience with dogs, and immediately not asking any questions, called me or in person kept me going, I thank you so very much. Everyone here in Toronto, back in Ottawa, the guidedogs counselling department, other graduates, all of you have continued to support me and I do sincerely thank you.
There has been the question of will I return to GDB, or will I recommend them in the future?
If you’d asked me that last week, my answer would absolutely not be fit for this blog, I blamed them, I blamed me, I blamed cleveland’s raisers, I was hardist on myself for giving up on him.
But now? Me personally? I honestly think as a new handler, and this is just my personal opinion, so please remember this. I think the two weeks is a good idea, in theory, and maybe if I’d done more research, I could have known the questions to ask, but the two weeks as a new firsttime never seen walked with a guidedog in my life, handler? sort of two much. Would I do it again? If I got a call right now from them saying we have a dog for you, I’d seriously have to ask myself if I could do two weeks. With what I know now? I probably would. I’d know the questions to ask, what to look for, who’s ear to ramble off.
Recommend it to others? It all depended on your individual situation. Blankitly, I would, but as an alumni member of GDB, I’d have to ask you individually questions and give you a recommendation at that point.
Will I get another dog? It’s in my future deffinitly, but where I might aquire the dog from will take a lot of consideration, thought, and talking to a lot of people, and making my choice from there.
If you’ve read this far, thank you.
In closing, thank you to guidedogs for still supporting me and taking my questions, my concerns, and thank you to those that took the brunt of my argumentative behavior when I wanted to scream at the injustice of it all. Thank you to both of Cleveland’s puppy raisers, names omitted unless they comment here on this post, for raising such an amazing dog, even if he had to retire early. Your dedication to him is boundless, and I thank you from both of us. To the person that has taken him in in his retirement, thank you for loving cleveland like I loved him in his working life. Once again, thank you, each and everyone of you reading this weather it’s by e-mail, rss, facebook, on twitter, etc. Thank you all for your support.
Talk to you all next time.

Posts That May Or May Not Be Related

• Cleveland update cane travel and papa sangre
• a month home with cleveland.
• GDB adventures podcast 10, May 19 2012. I’ve made it through training, pregraduation, and more!
• GDB adventures podcast, episode 3, May 7, 2012, juno walk, we meet cleveland, and more!

To those that crowd the front of the bus/streetcar when there’s clearly an entire back of said vehicle available. Kindly do us all a solid and move back and park your rear in an available seat, or hey you can even stand back their to! miracles! Oh, I’m sorry, that would be common curtisy. and some ttc riders are so all and mighty they’d rather not actually be curtius. DO not get me started on huge strolers, treatment of bus/streetcar drivers, etc. because I’d be here all day. Related: To you that think that not giving up a seat to a disabled rider is a good idea. how about you lose the use of your legs for a day and ride the TTC, then we’ll talk, k? thought so. In closing, learn you some common curtisy, you require one seat, put bag in your lap, or *gasp* under the seat, wear your children,leave the huge strollers at home, and use a smaller one. like duh, move to the back of the bus if it’s not crowded, or to prevent overcrowding, and if a disabled rider gets on, for the love of all that’s squeaky get your sighted non disabled bum out of the seat.

That’s all I have to say.
Comment away!

Posts That May Or May Not Be Related

• administrative reminder: a formal reminder about our polocies. Fitchburg state university, take note.

A Professional Apology from your Web Host

So like. Ok check this out. We have this big data center right? And this big data center is like really big and stuff, and it uses a lot of this power stuff. Well like ok so you know when you have really important stuff like I dunno your computer or your Xbox or something and if the power goes out you want to keep it from just suddenly turning off right? Cause there’s nothing worse than when the power goes out during a game of Call of Duty and it’s like “Oh Crap man I was just about to win and shit just got real and the hell?”

So you plug it in to this thing like a UPS or something kinda like the dudes that deliver packages and I always have to sign for shit. I mean it’s no big deal anyways since I don’t work during the day and deliver pizzas at night and the UPS guy is always here around 2:30 or so. Oh yeah. So ok About that.

So our really big data center is supposed to have a UPS which it does… I think. But apparently like ok so some squirrel was like chewing on the wires again and it’s like “stop it damnit”, but anyways. So this squirrel is all up there omnomnoming the wires, and like zap! The squirrel is now like a McSquirrel or something which probably wouldn’t taste good even with cheese and mayo, but like the power got all funny and the data center went pop and apparently the UPS was never plugged in cause Joe was like all like “Dude I’ll do it tomorrow.”

So now our customers like can’t run their websites and stuff which sucks because now the world is all like “Omfg where’s all the websites with cat pictures”, and some 15-year-old can’t see lolcats or something and kills himself and then it’s like on the news abouthow we really fucked up and the headline is all like I Can has funeral and everyone laughs but it’s a real dick move.

So we’re trying to fix it, but it’s like difficult and we think we got it so we want to apologize if your site wasn’t working but it should work now so don’t cancel your service. We promise this won’t happen again. Until next week.

yeah, that’s so
dream host
as seen
over here
and why I’ll not go back to them again. Nice and stable, right? /sarc/

Posts That May Or May Not Be Related

• dream host gets renamed Nightmare host.

From: David M. – Dropbox Support
Sent: Thursday, March 14, 2013 12:28 AM
To: Shane Davidson
Subject: Dropbox Support – Re: interface changes do not always mean accessibility.

## IMPORTANT ## Text below this line won’t be added to the ticket
You can add a response by replying to this email.
Please be sure to reply with the same email address that you used to originally contact us.

David M. – Dropbox Support, Mar 13 09:27 pm (PDT):
Hi Shane,
Thanks for contacting Dropbox.
Our engineers have been notified of this issue and are actively working towards fixing it. Unfortunately, I can’t give you an exact timeline that a fix will be available but I’ll be sure to notify you when it’s released!
If you have any additional questions or concerns please let me know.
Best,
David

I’m really hoping these aren’t just words and that this does mean dropbox devs are actually working towards a fix to bring back accessibility to dropbox 2.0.
We’ll see what happens in the coming days.

Posts That May Or May Not Be Related

• an open letter to dropbox, interface changes don’t always mean it’s accessible.
• wordpress apparently fails at accessibility in version 3.3.
• That’s exactly how you promote accessibility and uphold the law in hamilton. really, it is.
• follow up to: is freedom scientific losing their touch?

as a longstanding user of dropbox, I’ve grown to love it, from it’s ease of use, to it’s support on so many platforms, windows, mac, android, and iphone. So when 2.0.0 was early released and put up as the perminant stable download I thought nothing of it, until I noticed the right click menu was no longer accessible.
I did some research and noticed I wasn’t the only user experiencing this issue, and not the only OS effected, as the mac was effected as well.
I tested with JAWS, window-eyes and NVDA and got the exact same results.
So like so many others, I decided to compose an e-mail to dropbox support, asking them to please fix these issues. I post it below for your reading. The comment boards await you.

From: Shane Davidson
Sent: Wednesday, March 13, 2013 3:42 AM
To: ‘support@dropbox.com’
Subject: interface changes do not always mean accessibility.

Hello;
As a longtime user of dropbox, starting in 2009, and it’s paid service, becoming a paid user back in 2010, I’ve gotten used to storing important business and personal documents in the cloud, sharing folders with friends, and I referred people to your service since I highly recommended it.
It’s simplicity, ease of use, and ability to install it on everything, your computers, your iphone, your android, it was perfict.
Your recent doubling of paid users and adding more paid plans with more space screamed keep me, and I kept referring users, participating in contests, etc. earning more space.
Recently, you early released version 2.0.0 as a “stable” release to a select number of users, some of those users being totally blind that rely on screen access technologies, the three main ones being JAWS for windows from Freedom scientific, www.freedomscientific.com Window-eyes from GWMicro www.gwmicro.com and the free and open source NVDA www.nvda-project.org.
Reading your blog post at

https://blog.dropbox.com/2013/03/discover-the-new-dropbox-menu-on-your-computer/

and the forum post at

https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97895

I saw you had changed your dropbox menu. Ok, no big deal, right? Still able to right click. Actually no. The old style menu we were used to was gone. Utterly gone. I thought there was an issue with my access technology, in this case JAWS, but after discussion with other users via twitter, facebook, and seing this topic on the forums

https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=97907&replies=1#post-533140

it seems that this is not the case and the latest version under both windows and mac, the menu is not accessible.
We still have the ability to move files around in explorer/finder depending on your OS, but this menu gave us access to the preferences, our space usage, recently changed files, and the ability if necessary to shut down the client if the need arose.
Myself, and others are begging, and imploring you to please, please fix this major accessibility issue before releasing to the public as a whole.
Your prompt attention to this matter would be greatly appreciated and a lot of users would thank you.
Your attention to this issue would show that a mainstream company is willing to listen to a group of people, and willing to keep accessibility in mind when making changes to a UI.
As a note, this e-mail, and any communications minus personally identifying information that may be included, will be posted as an open communication for all to read on my blog at
www.shaned.net
weather the feedback is positive or negative, it will be posted to the above linked blog to be read by all.
Thank you for your time and attention.

I and others await your comments. We’ll see what dropbox says in the coming days.

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• wordpress apparently fails at accessibility in version 3.3.
• application review: papaya broadcaster
• welcome to open communication, pizza pizza.
• an open letter to wind mobile, gets sent for a second time. this time, from me, the actual customer.

State of Touch Typing – Fleksy goes free
by fleksy on 15/2/2013

Fleksy was first released on iOS in July 2012. As we turn Fleksy into a free app 8 months later, we feel we are starting an exciting new chapter in our story, and we take some time to explain our decision.

Fleksy started from our own frustration when typing on today’s touch-screen devices – a frustration shared by two thirds of smartphone users today. Right from the start, we felt that typing was one of the functions that made smartphones feel not so smart.

We set the bar really high – a typing system that is so intuitive, you don’t have to always look at the screen to type. Just as you do on your laptop. And thus Fleksy was born.

We looked for a market to launch our technology to – a group that we felt would most benefit from our inventions, and arguably a group of users that would challenge us to keep innovating until we deliver on our promise. So we launched an app for blind users.

In a space of a just a few months, our users have propelled us from an accessibility app to being recognized as a mainstream technology and one of the biggest innovations to come to mobile devices in a while.

Firstly, we want to say a big and honest thank you.

We have always seen our keyboard as a universal technology, and as something that can help millions of users be more productive in their daily lives. We are today very happy to see that we are well on track on this mission, and we are working hard to integrate our technology in the next generation of hardware and software to come.

We realize that a good virtual keyboard is something users expect to be integrated on their device and be available in every application. This is by far the biggest request from our iOS users, and one that we can unfortunately not provide until each platform we target supports such functionality.

In our effort to bring Happy Typing to even more users, what we can do is make Fleksy on iOS free for everyone. We feel that making Fleksy part of the daily lives of many more people will help us continue to showcase how smartphones can be made both more accessible and useful for everyone.

Your App Store reviews, tweets, feedback messages, support, and advocacy can help us achieve this. Please, keep it up – there’s even a button in the app to do that!

We will continue to innovate and research, as well as support and update the Fleksy iOS app in the way you’ve come to expect from us. We stay fully committed to the iOS platform.

And as a final thought, we wanted to thank all those users who have downloaded and purchased Fleksy to date. We would have not been able to create or support the technology without your help, let alone expand our efforts to bring it to the hands of many more users.

If you haven’t experienced eyes-free typing, try Fleksy. We think you will never look back.

Thank you, again, from all of us here in San Francisco.

Happy Typing!

The Fleksy Team

OK, so let’s move on to the responses.
I’m apart of the
VIPhone
mailing list hosted on
google groups
and when the blog post I posted above is mailed out, this andy person replies with the following, and I quote the message for you.

—–Original Message—–
From: viphone@googlegroups.com [mailto:viphone@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andy Baracco
Sent: Saturday, February 16, 2013 1:46 AM
To: viphone@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Fleksy is now free

This is the kind of thing that really pisses me off.

Andy

I replied to this fool, basically telling him the following, in list form.

• companies have the right to make there apps free
• what right do you have to complain about an app that’s gone free that you had to pay for?
• if people like yourself hadn’t supported this app, weather at it’s original price of $15, it’s sale price of $9.95, it’s then reduced perminant price of $4.95 and the odd sale for $1.99, would the app have then gone free? a big fat no!

in summary, nock off the complaining, it’s unwarranted, and unnecessary.
I bought this app at a reduced price, as I caught a sale, would I have paid $15? Now that I’ve used it so much? Yes. Did I initially think it wasn’t worth the price? I’ll honestly say I did, but after I finally decided to bite the bullet and purchase it, I wouldn’t live without it. Will I complain that my support made this app free? Absolutely not. It’s the nature of the beast, and people need to remember this.
Thanks for reading.
Have a great night all.