Hearing Loss Association of Escondido

And All of San Diego's North County

                             April 2010

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GENERAL MEETING:

WHERE:  Joslyn Senior Center Auditorium

WHEN:   Saturday, April 10, 210

TIME:  10 am until noon                                                                                       

PROGRAM:  : Chris Vigeant, who is with  
CHRISMIX A/V & Assistive Listening Systems and Services. 

   Chris and his wife are members of the Pasadena HLA Chapter.  He is an audio engineer and is profoundly hard of hearing in his right ear.  He says,

   “We all seem to be attracted to looping California this year.  Well, I am now carrying these wonderful Induction Loop Systems for personal and home use as well as systems for professional and commercial installation for California.  These systems are far superior to FM and IR, easy to install, requiring no maintenance and much less expensive.” 

   Note:  Our by-laws say no salesmanship is permitted at our meetings, but if you are interested in what he has to sell, well then by all means approach him after the meeting.

   ALSO:  Mitchell Levy, Product Manager with Hamilton CapTel is going to give a brief talk  about his products before we have our coffee break.  This will be a good time to talk to Mr. Levy if you wish.

   Eric will start the meeting promptly at ten, so please come early to sign in, and also to give you time to buy the raffle tickets for the 50-50 drawing.  Bring your money and get in on the fun.  (Please:  No $20 bills!)  You are also helping our Chapter’s treasury this way.  Remember, there is parking in the back of the Senior Center and you can enter through the kitchen. 

___________________________________________

   We welcomed these visitors who came to our meeting in March.  The ones who signed in were Anna R. Murcura from Oceanside; Zondra Hendrix from Carlsbad, Hope Briggs, from Vista and Velma Carter from Escondido.  Thanks, ladies, for coming and we hope to see you again. 

      Eric will start the meeting promptly at ten, so please come early to sign in, and also to give you time to buy the raffle tickets for the two $10 drawings.  Bring your money and get in on the fun.  (Please:  No $20 bills – unless you want to buy $10-20 worth of tickets!) 

  Remember, there is parking in the back of the Senior Center and you can enter through the kitchen. 

    We’ll have our midmorning coffee break.  This is a great time to socialize with one another.

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     After the break and before the program we’ll have the drawing.  Our winners last month were Ellen Petitt, a visitor, and Joan Ireland.

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           Keep on grinning – it makes people curious

FROM  MY COMPUTER:

   Since Jackie Wistort, our treasurer and membership chairperson was away on a trip to Israel during our March HLA meeting, Sylvia Hedlund, with a little moral support from me, did the honors of signing in the members and visitors and taking care of the name tags.  Phil Denham took care of my job selling the raffle tickets.   Dorothy 

                Good News from National  

(Congress was working on slapping a hefty tax on hearing aids and listening devices.  Well, National came through for us again!  Yay!)  Read on:

   “We received word late today (March 18, 2010) that hearing aids were SPECIFICALLY exempted from the proposed device tax language, which reinforces the Class I exemption which also remains intact even though a very serious effort was made to remove it to broaden the device tax base. Of course, we all know it's not over 'til it's over - but it's looking very good tonight.
   “Our thanks to those of you who made phone calls or sent emails to your representatives in Congress. They heard us!”

                                       Toni Barrient

  FCC Announces New Closed Captioning               

                          Complaint Form

   Consumers can now file complaints directly with the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), thanks to new closed captioning (CC) complaint rules by the FCC effective February 19, 2010.  These new CC) rules, requested by Telecommuni-cations for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing (TDI), and other consumer groups in 2004, make it easier for consumers to report CC problems.  When you see a television program that has no captions, missing captions, delayed captions, captions that are garbled, displayed too fast, or unreadable, please file a complaint with the FCC. 

   CC complaints must be filed within 60 days of the captioning problem.  File your complaint with the FCC.  The FCC will send your complaint to your video programming distributor (the TV station or your cable or satellite TV service.)  The distributor must respond to your complaint within 30 days.

   You can file your complaint by using the FCC’s online Disability Access Complaint at: https://support.fcc.gov/sform2000/formClinput.action?

                                 Form page=2000C

TDI Note:  Form 2000C on the FCC’s website erroneously states that if your complaint is about CC, you must first contact the station or video programming distributor.  In accordance with the new rules, the FCC will accept this web form without your first trying to contact the video programming distributor.  The form will be changed shortly, but in the meantime, contacting the station is not required.

File your complaint by Email to: fccinfo@fcc.gov

Fax your written complaint to:  1-866-418-0232

Or write a snail mail letter to: 

     Federal Communications Commission

     Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau

     Consumer Complaints

     445 12^th Street, SW, Washington, D.C. 20554

                                      Source: Valley HLA newsletter _________________________________________   

   These nice people brought cookies to our March meeting:  Heather Chapman, Audrey Klein and Millie Koenig.  We had more than enough but Syl has a separate freezer to store them in for our future meetings.  Many thanks, ladies

From Dana Mulvany <dmulvany@usa.net>for you Computer Buffs <>  March 6, 2010.
   As I hope most everyone knows, YouTube recently started providing automatic transcription/captioning for all new videos uploaded to YouTube..
   I just did a search for a new video to double check on how to make the captions appear. It turns out that there are a couple of steps to take to turn the automatic captioning on for the first time, and that
merely seeing the "CC" with a red background on the bottom of the video isn't enough to see captions now.
   For example, go to:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtZLvFrl6qk&feature=aso  Click on the "CC" on the bottom part of the video and wait for the menu to pop up.
   Click on "Transcribe Audio (Beta)" at the top. This turns on the automatic transcription/captioning which is done for new videos.  (Most older videos won't have that feature enabled yet.)
   After activating the automatic captioning, one can then choose to change the caption settings (the font and the size of the captions) and one's account settings (if you don't have an account on YouTube, it's
helpful to set one up so you can set captioning preferences, save your favorites, create playlists, etc.). I just changed my YouTube account settings so that automatic captioning is always activated.
   The captioning is pretty cool!
   Note that the automatic captioning will invariably have errors in it if the owner of the video hasn't corrected it. Some of the captioning will probably be funny when it hasn't been corrected yet.
                                               Dana on E-Chat

                                Board Member:  Bob Broxholme – 746-1929                        

Board Member:  Gil Needle – (858) 485-0300

 Two men got out of their cars after they collided at an intersection.  One took a bottle from his pocket and said to the other, “Here, maybe you’d like a nip to calm your nerves.”

     “Thanks,” the second man said, and took a long drink from the container.  “Here, you have one too,” he added, handing back the whiskey.

   “Well, I’d rather not.  At least not until after the police have been here.”               American Legion Magazine

                                                         all stations in the commercial FM Band 88-108 MHz for your listening enjoyment.

                                                         But if you don’t know what channel is being used, you may push the down or up “scan” for 1

                                                                                                      second and the receiver “finds” the channel for you. 

                                                                                                           Uses 2 AAA batteries (not included.)

                                                                                             Leaving the party late, two friends compare notes. "I can never

                                                                                             fool my wife" the first says "I turn off the engine, coast into the

                                                                                             garage, sneak upstairs and undress in the bathroom. But she always                  

                                                                                             hears me. She wakes up and yells at me for being out late."

                                                                                             "You should do what I do" says his buddy. "I roar into the garage, stomp

                                                                                             up the steps, throw open the door and start kissing my wife. And she

                                                                                             pretends to be asleep."