Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler The Daily Gripe

Alex, it was going over quite well as a simple discussion of tools until some members chose to use it as a cesspool for their political/social thoughts.

I stopped viewing Facebook almost completely when it became Bragbook. I only go in now if somebody gives me a heads up that there are some family photos or something.

I don't have any of those problems with my friends on Facebook.

Common occurrence around here anymore John.....

Facebook is a stalker. I can't stand it. It was sorta cool at the beginning, then grew into a beast. I hardly, if ever log onto it.

So, I am sitting at the drive in ATM waiting for the auto machine to rape me for the ATM fee that they are charging me event though they no longer need to pay an actual person to do the transaction (OK, that's item #1).

I have had to make a few intricate turns to get the car into the slot I am sitting in and before my money spits out out of the slot, my eyes wander over to the keypad sitting just outside and above my car. Note that I used my eyes to get where I am and will certainly need them to drive home successfully.

What do I see on the keypad? BRAILLE!!! At a drive-in ATM. I panicked and IMMEDIATELY looked in my rear view mirror. Whew - no unsighted person careening at me. Safe.

WAIT - if they are blind, they could be coming from ANY direction.

Grabbed the cash and beat it home. Won't go back. Too incredibly dangerous.

Now lest we get excited about being abusive towards folks that have sight problems, that isn't what is going on here. The issue is the need felt by the government to put braille on a drive-in ATM keyboard. Certainly a friend could drive them to the braille enhanced keys, but the walking around to the keyboard is gonna be tough and I haven't seen a single example of it happening. Of course, I don't use them anymore because they are dangerous.

This happened several years ago before I retired. As I was pondering the whole scenario over the next few days, I needed to attend a large meeting for work at the local giant Hilton hotel. Parked my car and went into the elaborate, large and multifunctional lobby. Walked around searching for a few minutes and found the monitors announcing the location of the conference room. Then found the escalator that went to the next large multifunctional floor (no conference rooms on that floor). Then took the escalator to the third floor where there were lots of conference rooms and many nooks and crannies where they were hidden.

Good news thought. The names of the conference rooms were on nice quality medium sized signs on the wall outside the doors. Sometimes to the left of the door and sometimes to the right of the door. Whew, quite a trip but I found my way there. Several people were late making their way through the maze to get to the meeting.

Did I mention that each of the conference room name signs also had braille equivalents on them? Ya just gotta wonder how the sight-challenged guy who drove over from the ATM was able to find his way to the conference room sign so he could read the braille?

I think the intent is noble, but sometimes the common sense of implementation might come up a tad short.

I suspect that on the ATM keys are generic and they just use the same keypads for all of them.

I'm not so sure that this can be blamed on the Guvmint. It may be an ADA thing, but it's just as much, if not more, likely that the manufacturer just doesn't want to get sued for a gazillion dollars.

My assumption of course, is that all things that are wrong are the fault of lawyers. Of course, half my clients are lawyers!

Speaking of ATM's, to make a payment through the ATM to my line of credit account I had to choose 'savings'. Now that just does not make any sense Aren't they like polar opposites of each other?

Are you bragging about how your friends don't brag on Facebook?

I'm part of the problem. I do like to check in at restaurants and try to make other people hungry or jealous. More people should go out to eat with me, that's all.

Charles, if it helps, I've probably eaten ~600 or so extra snacks since July 20, 2006.