Tango, cycling, & technology...from a Portlander.

For the past few months, I've been seeking a new place in inner-SE Portland. My reasons have been simple; despite the novelty of having a workshop in my condo, I miss having a real garage. I look forward to soon having the ability to use my lathe and CNC, without spending equal time cleaning up afterwards, and to complete fiberglass layups without ~1.5hr drives across town.

Though, what does this all have to do with sex? Continue reading "Phishing for SEX! WOOT!"

I've been promising a status report on my current hearing aids for months, and now that a full year has elapsed since my initial review...I've run out of excuses The next few blog postings will detail three primary points:

The current status of my hearing, and attempts to mitigate a fairly recent profound loss.

Recent experiences using technology to help mitigate the loss.

An "outsiders" view of the hearing aid industry.

To immediately address one major point; there are two major types of hearing losses. A conductive loss is what you experience while fighting head colds, and while there is often a comparatively-mild impact on the quality of sounds you'd hear, a conductive loss largely impacts the quantity of a sound, not the quality. A sensorineural hearing loss is a totally different experience; it involves a reduction in the ability to hear certain frequency ranges, which significantly impacts communications by affecting speech comprehension accuracy, and the loss of an ability to process certain frequencies extinguishes the ability to perceive the related sounds. In-effect, a sensorineural hearing loss hinders the quality, not quantity, of a sound. To better understand, see this illustration.

One major point I intend to make over the course of the next few postings: Phonak's claim that their Phonak Naida V UltraPower hearing aids are water-resistant is, without any doubt, wholly-false. Once you get beyond, and accept this indisputable fact (which I'll clearly document in the next posting), they're not bad little gadgets. Though their false advertising has significantly hindered my ability to enjoy liberties that many otherwise take for granted...and has done so at a great financial and emotional cost. Continue reading "A quest to hear & enjoy life; three years after a profound hearing loss"