Entries tagged with vision

Entry tags:

Office 2007: accessibility problems

The word came down from on high at work: Office 2007 is being pushed to our machines, no opt-out. (Yes, we're slow adopters. Big companies are often like that.) We've known this for months, so since I have to customize my environment for vision reasons, I asked a coworker who already had it to give my Windows theme a spin. The result was pretty terrible, so I sought help from the IT folks. Uncharacteristically for large-company IT departments, I got routed to someone who both cares and has a clue, so he's been experimenting for a while on my behalf. He had to consult Microsoft, but he finally sent me a screen shot asking if this was acceptable. It was, so I accepted the push at a time that he'd be available to talk me through the re-configuration.

( reality wasn't so straightforward )

I've had a lot of discussions with the IT guy about how to fix this. He agrees that this is unacceptable, but there seems to be no way to make Windows, Office 2007, and my accessibility settings play well together. So tomorrow morning we will restore Office 2003 (with luck the fact that I received 2007 once will keep the auto-push from coming around again), and he will begin the approval process to get me set up with a virtual machine. In which I will run Office 2007, because sometimes I'm going to need that. Using a different theme, probably, because I won't have to live in it, just visit it from time to time, so it's allowed to kind of suck. Eventually maybe we'll figure out the right juju to make things work for real, but meanwhile, I'll keep using Outlook 2003 (the Office application I use the most and really need to work) outside the VM and, as needed, Office 2007 inside it.

I don't understand the design intent of the various settings in Windows. If I had a model for what things are intended to do maybe I could find a path to a workable color theme, but I haven't been able to derive that model despite years of using Windows. This business with layered themes with the "superseded" one still having unpredictable results completely confuses me. I find myself wondering whether Microsoft employs anyone with my kind of vision problems and, if so, how I could arrange to have a conversation with that person to learn how he gets around.

Entry tags:

movies,
vision

Avatar

We finally saw Avatar today. Because we dallied, our only options were 3D (digital or IMAX). To see the plain old 2D version we would have had to head off to the wilds of Bridgeville or Tarentum or the like.

Consensus on the Google-indexed parts of the Internet suggested the the odds were better than 50-50 of the glasses for digital 3D fitting over my glasses, so we opted for that. (Almost everyone agrees that you can wear the 3D glasses over glasses; they'd be crazy not to consider that need. But my glasses are thick and I didn't know if there'd be enough room.) This concern was easy to mitigate; we asked to try out the glasses at the ticket counter before buying. The other unknown for me was whether the 3D effect would work for me: do my eyes work together well enough, or would I just see a blurry movie? Only one way to find out. (The cheapo red/blue 3D glasses of yore never worked on me, at least for 3D comic books. I've never seen a 3D movie before.)

I could in fact see the 3D effects, yay. The glasses would have been annoying if they'd had any weight to them; on the ears they were perched on top of my regular ones, and there wasn't a lot of room on my nose to support them. Since they were made of light-weight plastic that was ok; I just sort of wedged them in place, and I'm not sure to what extent they were even in contact with my nose. If they'd been heavier that wouldn't have worked.

As for the movie itself... ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

interviwed by devreux

The interview parlor game is back. ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

kallah: (some) services

I attended a variety of services at the kallah (though I did not manage all three each day due to schedule complications). Here are some thoughts on some of them.

Shabbat morning had about six different options. I went to the service led by Rabbi Marcia Prager and Chazan Jack Kessler. I had been planning to go to one described as "standard renewal" to see what that was about, but I was in Jack's class all week, I was impressed by him, and he asked the class to help with something during the torah service, so I went there. It was an interesting service with a lot of good singing and a very unusual torah service. ( Read more... )

Friday night there were two options, one obviously "main" and one more specialized. I went to the main one, which was led by an Israeli music group named Navah Tehila. (Locals, they'll be at Rodef Shalom in a couple weeks.) The music was generally good and powerful, once I got (back) into the right frame of mind. I had been in the right frame of mind when I walked into the room, but something there threw me out of it and it took about an hour to recover. ( Read more... )

I also went to some weekday services. These were very much a mixed bag. ( Read more... )

Entry tags:

cascading effects

A few months ago I was talking with my ophthamologist about the difficulties of sitting at a computer all day (eye-strain headaches, which I could mitigate somewhat by doing ergonomically-bad things and getting neck/shoulder/wrist aches instead). She said that's because I need computer glasses rather than trying to use one pair of glasses for everything. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my employer would even pay for this -- cool!

The nice thing about this is that the glasses can be focused at a more-normal distance, which means I was able to push my monitor back on my desk instead of keeping it at about 8-10". It's now at about 20", give or take. (I did have to change some font settings and some apps, like Outlook, don't respect all the settings, but that's managable. And I'm used to the software world not fully supporting the visually-impaired.) That, in turn, meant that I could finally support a second monitor -- commonly available in my company, but I could never get that much screen in visual range before. But now...

My second 22" monitor arrived yesterday. My plan had been to set it up in portrait mode (which would allow me to have more than 45 lines of text visible in an emacs buffer), but my graphics card's default driver doesn't support that. There is a newer driver, but it has other issues.

But, my computer is coming up on the end of its lease, which means I'm going to have to move off of it in a few months anyway. So, worst case I wait a few months to be able to rotate my monitor, or best case maybe I'll be allowed to switch early. Moving to a new computer is a pain in the butt, especially with all the security exemptions and stuff (to install non-standard software), so I never would have expected to find myself saying "I hope I can replace my computer soon". :-) (Holy cow, I just realized this will be computer #5 for me... maybe I can safely delete the archives from #2.)

I wonder if I can get a trackball or similar pointing device, too. Not to replace the mouse -- to augment it. This is a lot of screen to move across, and I'd like to spare my mouse hand the broad traversals. (I've never been any good at fine control with a trackball or touchpad, but if I could have both that and the mouse... I assume I can plug in two USB pointing devices and they'd both work, and that trackballs etc come USB these days. Something to check.)

Entry tags:

vision

new glasses, take 2

The Monday before last I took my new glasses back to the optician for two reasons: acutely, one lens had fallen out (heat + new plastic = bad; wash them in less-hot water, she says), and more seriously, the placement of the left bifocal was subtly off.

She measured the glasses, re-measured me, and then measured my old glasses. Verdict: the new ones are "right" and the old ones were incorrectly made. (Given all the trouble NeoVision gave me over the old ones, I'm not surprised.) The old ones had the wrong pupilary distance, she said, off by a total of 6mm between the two eyes. Why did my brain accept that? Dunno, but it probably got masked by the whole taking-a-week-to-adjust-to-new-glasses thing. My brain learned to cope with the error, I guess.

She asked if I thought I could get used to the new glasses. They were, in fact, ok for everything except working with my computer at work -- but that's pretty important, and I'd spent most of a week trying to get used to it. I asked if the bifocal could be moved without affecting the distance vision; nope. I asked if I could have a bigger bifocal, and she said that was possible. (Alas, the jump to the next size was 7mm, when I was hoping for about 4mm.)

This was about to lead to the uncomfortable conversation about who pays for this (it's not their fault the previous guys did something wrong, but we did use that as a partial baseline), but she called my insurance company and apparently they will pay for one "no-fault" remake. So I sent them back for a wider bifocal and no other changes. (I considered asking them to lengthen the focal distance on the bifocal, but decided that would be borrowing trouble and risk leaving me with nothing usable.)

I picked the new glasses up Friday morning. It took me a little while to adjust distance vision to work around the extra bifocal width, particularly when looking down. But I was able to read the computer at work more easily (after moving the monitor some). Reading paper (after minor adjustments) works fine. I read torah this morning with them. Ironically, I was having a little difficulty with my computer at home tonight, but it's gotten better over the last couple hours, so I guess I'm adapting. At one point I wondered if I was seeing worse with the new bifocals than the old, but three seconds with the old glasses told me otherwise. It is a crisper image; maybe the light is reflecting differently or something, and these lenses aren't yet as dark as the previous ones (plastic does that and transition lenses do that over time, apparently). It's almost certainly all really minor stuff, but I'm really sensitive to minor stuff. I'll get used to it.

But, as I said, it'll take a week, probably. It's annoying in the short term and better in the long term. Given that, I wonder what the optimal frequency of changes is. I used to keep glasses for, oh, 5-7 years before changing, because they were good enough, manual prescriptions were a crap shoot, and glasses were expensive. Now automation gets me better prescriptions and lenses have actually gotten cheaper in the last two decades (huh?), so it really just comes down to the transition period, I guess. Hmm.

It's the 21st century. Where are my high-tech adjustable glasses? :-)

Entry tags:

vision

new glasses, take 1

At the end of last week I got a call saying my new glasses were in. (That was faster than I expected.) Monday morning I picked them up. The frames fit well; the side-pieces are a little more delicate than I had realized, and this is probably only noticable with lenses as thick as mine in the frame, but I think that will be ok. It was immediately obvious that the distance correction was better, and using the bifocals to read something in the office felt "different" but not "wrong".

Monday I had a little trouble with using the computer initially; I ended up adjusting the position of my monitor slightly, which helped. I know from past experience that it takes me a week or so to adjust to new glasses, so I just plugged away.

This afternoon I finally realized what was wrong about the bifocals (other than the focal distance having subtly changed); the placement of the left bifocal, relative to my eye, is a little different than on the old pair of glasses. I don't have quite as much bifocal-covered space to the left side of the field as before, and apparently it matters. Lens curvature prevents me from really comparing them "head to head", but getting them as close as I can I can see the difference. The bifocal looks fine in the lens; it's not obviously crooked or off-center or the like. But it's not quite right for my eyes, so Monday morning I will go back to see what they can do about it. (And I have learned to take a new measurement now: bridge to far edge of bifocal.)

I was going to keep wearing the new glasses over the weekend anyway (won't be using the computer on Shabbat, for starters...), but after doing all this comparing of lenses the new ones were dirty, so I washed them -- and the left lens fell out. Argh! I cannot get it to fit snugly in the frame; I thought I had it in at one point, but it slipped while I was putting the glasses on my face. I wonder what that's about. I inspected the frame with a magnifying glass and I can't see any hairline cracks. (I'm not going to try forcing things and risk creating one.) So now I'm back to the old glasses, and I can't do anything about it until Monday. And the distance vision isn't quite as clear. Bummer.

Entry tags:

ordered new glasses

A while ago I asked about opticians. Thanks for the pointers. On the basis of the feedback I got from a coworker, this morning I took my prescription over to Optometric Associates of Pittsburgh, who seem to have the right amounts of customer care and attention to detail (and proximity doesn't hurt). So far, thumbs-up. (Of course, the real evaluation won't be possible until the glasses come in.)

The optician I met with, Jan, asked me what I was looking for in frames; I said my priorities were lens size/shape, fit, and "not garish", and all other properties were solidly second-tier. I said I wanted lenses no smaller than my current ones because these are my do-everything glasses (not into separate reading/computer glasses), and asked her to turn those comments into recommendations.

I was pleased that for every frame she pulled, she started by having me put it on so she could check the fit of the bridge and withdraw any that weren't right. (I have a small bridge, apparently.) Of the four frames she handed me three were good candidates, and my explanation of why the one wasn't led to some of the other options.

She had been doing this much just by looking. At this point she measured the lenses on my current glasses and the top candidate; the new ones are exactly one millimeter bigger in each of length and width. Score; the current ones turned out to be 1mm smaller than specified. :-) (We had been talking about the size-weight tradeoff; too small and I wouldn't be able to see, but I was mindful of being too heavy, too.) The shape of the new ones is pretty similar to that of my current ones.

I told her that bifocal placement was very important to me (had problems with that in the past), and that one of my current lenses is good and the other is a smidge high. She said the difference was obvious, though the folks who made the glasses had claimed it didn't exist; it turned out to be a difference of half a millimeter. She measured the distance between my pupils with a machine rather than a ruler, explaining that it was more precise. (Having now read a bit about it, I'm glad to see that it "reads" my eyes rather than depending heavily on my maintaining focus in one area. One of my eyes wanders and is hard to keep on target sometimes.)

She was very friendly and accommodating when I explained past problems I've had and would like to avoid. She explained the quality-control process ("you won't even see the glasses until I've confirmed all these measurements are exact"). Even if that's just part of the patter, I left feeling confident. Now I just have to wait a few weeks.

( stats )

Entry tags:

a first

This morning at my ophthamologist's office, through the collection of lens parts that she used to mock up a new glasses prescription for me, I read a letter from the 20/30 line. I have never done that before. Woot! Yeah, office conditions are probably optimized compared to real life, but even if the raw numbers don't matter the deltas should. And yeah, it's only one letter, but it still passed a threshold. (If I understand correctly, this would mean a rating of 20/38 on that single test.)

Now if I can just find an optician to correctly make them for me. I had rotten luck with that last time around. (The guy I used before those guys was excellent -- but he retired, which is why I went to someone else.) Locals, any recommendations? I have a complicated, finicky prescription and complicated, finicky needs on things like the precise placement of the bifocals. I need someone skilled and detail-oriented who (1) is that scrupulous about what comes back from his lab and (2) can work with me on this. I recognize that this is a non-standard level of service for which one should expect to pay extra. (I would also like someone to advise me on frame shape to optimize my vision; most places want to optimize their bottom line or some sense of "fashion".)

Bonus points for proximity to either Squirrel Hill or South Side Works, because even if he is excellent I'll probably have to make a couple extra trips as part of this. My glasses just don't happen as one-shots. So running up to, say, Cranberry at lunch time (because places aren't open at 8:30AM) would be a challenge, though doable if absolutely necessary.

( geekiness for the curious )

Entry tags:

interviewed by hlinspjalda

The interview meme is making the rounds again.

( singing, adaptive technology, trope, food, retirement )

Entry tags:

usability,
vision

Blogger captchas

Dear Blogger users,

I would like to be able to comment on your posts at times, but the Blogger captcha (the prove-you're-a-human-and-not-a-spambot image with distorted letters) has been getting harder and harder to read over the last several months, such that it usually takes me 3-4 tries and today I failed after 8. I infer that clicking on the little wheelchair icon is supposed to give me an alternative, but it didn't do anything for me.

Does Blogger give you the ability to whitelist IP addresses? Is there some other way to solve this problem? Or do I need to stop believing that I'll be able to comment on posts?

Entry tags:

new monitor

A couple weeks ago at work we got our first look at the new version of Bugzilla, which we'll be forced to upgrade to soon. (Our current version is incompatable with the version of Perforce we're upgrading to.) Both Perforce and Bugzilla have web interfaces, and in the new versions, both assume a much wider browswer window than I am prepared to provide. That I have to jack up the font size doesn't help, but, fundamentally, people are, more and more, designing inaccessible web sites on the theory that of course you can spare 1000+ pixels in width. The web-design industry is mature enough (or at least old enough) that we should be past that... grumble. But I digress.

So, while talking with my manager about some of the things we were trying to do to address this (our build manager, in whose lap all this falls, has been wonderfully helpful), my manager said "I just ordered some new 22" monitors; I'll put you on the list". (I could, if I like, have a pair of 18?" monitors, but I can't actually place two monitors such that I can see everything.)

This morning the monitor fairy came. :-) 22" turns out to be widescreen (not the 4:3 or whatever of regular monitors); the new one might be half an inch shorter than my old one. But it's tall enough, and the extra real-estate is nice. The recommended resolution is only 1680x1050 (or something like that), which surprised me. (I expected to see a number over 2000 for the wide dimension.) That resolution actually works for me; yay! This was also the highest setting available on my computer; I assume that's a function of the graphics card and not the monitor. (I would not be able to put higher resolution to good use.)

One problem: I noticed some pretty significant color distortion in the top quarter of the screen. We actually thought it was defective, so we swapped it out for another one (slightly different model). The problem was less pronounced on the second one but still there. That's when I noticed that it changed with my height; if I raised my chair a couple inches the problem got much better. But I can't raise my chair a couple inches because then the keyboard will be in the wrong place. (Tried it for an hour. No.) If I could tip the monitor forward a little that would make a difference, but it's already at the max setting there. Perhaps I will channel my inner MacGyver and rig something to let it tip a bit without falling. (Ok, that's more like my inner MacGyver's four-year-old apprentice or something. MacGyver would rig it to track my eyes and auto-pivot in both dimensions, using nothing more than duct tape and pocket lint.)

Mind, I will find ways to live with the color distortion if necessary. The real estate is worth it. It's not a perfect solution; I have to roll my chair sideways a bit to fully utilize the screen. But it's pretty good, and if it just plain gives me the room to have some extra-wide windows that I can move around as needed, that'll do.

I failed to record my monitor customizations before removing the old one, so I was recreating color depth, brightness, etc by feel today, but I thought I'd written this down somewhere and, sure enough, I did. So I'll try those settings tomorrow (they're somewhat different from what I came up with today) and see how that affects my color distortion.

One other problem (handily solved): the first monitor did not have buttons but rather touch controls. With tiny little labels that are impossible to read in dim lighting. I had to borrow a flashlight and use my magnifying glass to configure the monitor. The second one (an older model) has buttons. Yeah, I'll keep that one. What was Samsung thinking? Touch controls?! (And finicky ones, too.)

Entry tags:

vision

20/what?

The results of my distance-vision test this morning were a little better than normal. In fact, my weaker eye scored its best ever. (We only got the "denominator" into double digits in the last year...) I commented on this and my ophthamologist said it might be partially due to her newer equipment: the contrast is better on the new LCD "eye chart" than it was on the old projection chart, which in turn gives better readings than the posters of yore. (Personally, I think my gadget-assisted glasses prescription helps, particularly in the weaker eye.)

Measured visual acuity depends on the equipment. What it also depends on (based on my own observation) is operator variation. Your vision score includes a judgement call by the person administering the test. Whether you get an extra point can depend on how quickly or how certainly you read a letter. When you say "um, I think it's an F -- no, wait, it's a P", what happens to your score is not well-defined.

This doesn't really matter for an individual patient with a consistent doctor (presumably what the test was designed for); what matters is not so much your raw score but whether and how it changes from year to year. But when that score is used for other purposes, like deciding who can drive and who can fly a plane, it gives me pause. According to today's eye test, if both of my eyes were as bad as my weaker one I would still be allowed to drive (albeit only during daylight). Yikes.

Entry tags:

random bits

I've noticed that when there is a great feline tussle in my house that leaves piles of hair around, the vast majority of the time the hair belongs to Baldur. I see several possibilities: (1) his greater surface area makes him more likely to be hit; (2) his hair just doesn't stay attached as well as the other cats'; (3) he gets picked on a lot (he's the biggest cat BTW); or (4) he has developed the "eject hair" escape technique. Hmm.

I missed the first episode of the new TV show "Pushing Daisies" but caught the second. Wacky! Surreal! Fun! The narration as commentary is a nice touch. Yeah, that it's written by the person who did "Wonderfalls" shows; I hope "Pushing Daisies" fares better. ("Wonderfalls" was great for about 8 or 9 episodes, then sucked for a couple more, and was then pulled after 13.) I'm also watching "Journeyman", about which I'm undecided.

We drove through the rockslide zone of Route 28 on the way to visit my parents today. No rockslides were in progress at the time, and it looked like last week's had been completely cleared. The news had said inbound lanes would be completely closed for the weekend, but we saw continuous traffic while we were driving outbound so we didn't look for an alternate path home. It turned out that one lane was open. That was fine for a Sunday, but I'll bet it sucks for commuters right now. That said, rockslides suck more.

Two Shabbatot ago a first-time (in our minyan) Israeli torah reader asked me to be his checker. I expressed concern that I wouldn't be able to keep up; he said he reads holy texts slowly. His "slow" was too fast for me. Then this past Shabbat a different reader asked me to check for him and I figured this wouldn't be a problem; I had just a bit of trouble keeping up. Both times I was checking from the new Plaut (oodles better than the old Plaut), and using a magnifying glass to be safe. I conclude that my problem is Plaut + magnifier, not necessarily me, and I should only check when I can do it from larger Hebrew text such as what Trope Trainer produces. (I'm not the only torah reader in our group who uses that software, and in fact I have been handed TT output to check from at times.)

Without saying anything about the merits of Al Gore's work, I do admit to being puzzled by how this is a peace issue. Of course, in political processes all bets of rationality are off, but still... isn't there a more appropriate category in which to consider his work?

I heard a cute story recently: One night at dinner the seven-year-old girl asks her parents "where did I come from?" Oh crap, the parents each think; we thought we had a few more years before we'd have to deal with this. They exchange glances and then fumble through a discussion of birds, bees, and what happens "when mommies and daddies love each other very much". The girl says "oh" and everyone sits in silence for a few minutes. Then she continues, "my friend Becky comes from Cleveland".

Entry tags:

vision

eye tests

I like the technician who did some routine tests for me this morning. She talks and shares reports. :-)

( Read more... )

Entry tags:

interviewed by steven

( Read more... )

For the two or three people reading this who haven't already seen the interview game, here's how this works:

If you want to be interviewed, leave a comment saying so.
(I will probably fail to get back to you for some time, because this is a busy time of year.)
I will respond, asking you five questions.
You'll update your journal with my five questions and your five answers.
You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

Entry tags:

vision

ophthalmologist: new practice

My ophthalmologist left her old practice and set out on her own. This morning was my first visit in the new digs. Hey, new gadgetry!

An assistant read the prescription from my current glasses and then crafted a new one. (I hadn't asked for a refraction, but I wasn't charged for it so that's fine.) She now has a gadget similar to the one at NeoVision; I stared into the thing at an image (this one was a house in a field) and watched its focus change as the machine auto-adjusted to my eye. I love that thing; it's much less frustrating (and I imagine more accurate) than 15 minutes of "which is better, A or B?" (while they change lenses too quickly for me to focus and evaluate). They still do that to refine the prescription, but I had to evaluate no more than half a dozen configurations (so I could feasibly get them to slow down).

All that said, my ophthalmologist said "I'm not an optician; if you have one you like you should go there". I don't have one I like, but I'll keep looking. But now I know that I'm likely to get a good prescription from her if I need to -- one at least as good as what NeoVision did, anyway.

The eye chart has also been updated. Who thought there was much they could do there? But the lighting was more uniform and I think the resolution was better. (It was a display, not a projected image.) The remote control suggested to me that it could be infinitely programmable (though I didn't ask), which is refreshing. (I fear memorization giving false positives.) For the first time that I can remember, the post-slash number for my weaker eye was a two-digit number (20/80). The stronger eye also produced a better reading than usual. I know there's a great deal of variation in how those numbers are generated and interpreted (20/20 is not the universal standard you would imagine), but I have to assume that the improvement is due to the tools and not to a change in my vision. (It could be the new glasses; I didn't think to bring the old ones along for comparison.)

A small thing, but she was also able to give me printed, rather than hand-written, prescriptions. I'll bet pharmacists wish more doctors would do that. :-) The down-side of the same underlying cause: there was no physical chart for me to browse while waiting for the doctor after the preliminaries. (Hey, it's data about me and funded by me (or at least on my behalf); I should be able to look at it, right?)

I have no idea what she charges my insurance company. (My deductible, of course, has not changed.) My out-of-pocket cost actually went down; while she's farther away (= more gas), I no longer have to pay $5 for parking (and it was nowhere near $5' worth of gas). So, a win on everything except time, and the time hit isn't that bad (Fox Chapel).

Entry tags:

glasses again

In the past I have recommended NeoVision to folks in Pittsburgh. Put that on hold for a while, ok?
( the adventure continues )

Entry tags:

vision

new glasses

Grumble. This should not be this difficult!

Yesterday I picked up a new pair of glasses. There were obvious problems with bifocal placement, so I returned today to see what could be done. (The bifocal for my dominant eye was not centered left-right in my field of vision, among things.) They made some adjustments to the frames (so maybe my glasses are a little off-center now? can't tell).

That gave me enough to reveal the second-order problem: the bifocals are fuzzy at the old focal distance, and the new focal distance is too short. It was already short; reducing it from about 9" to 6" is Not Acceptable. This is most noticable with a computer monitor, but it applies to print too.

The ophthamologist (/optician) was there today (that's why they said I had to return today to deal with it), and he said the price of good distance vision is poorer close vision, or something like that, and really, I need to get a special pair of computer glasses. He started by saying that using a bifocal to read a computer screen is bad ergonomics anyway; I said I've been doing it for close to 30 years. He countered with "your eyes have changed in 30 years", and I responded that they haven't changed appreciably since yesterday, when this worked fine with my old glasses. He suggested that there's an adjustment period, which I was willing to grant, so I took the new glasses away again.

I don't think adjustment periods can fix focal distance, though. That is a problem. I think he's right that the distance vision on the new glasses is a little better than on the old ones, but he didn't warn me that the new prescription would impede the bifocal so. If that's a trade-off, it needs to be a customer-specified trade-off.

Why can't I have both? The bifocal is just a magnification layer on top of the base (distance) lens, but why can't we precisely control that layer? And if layering can't yield the results, is there any technological reason one can't make an actual compound lens, with part of the base lens sliced out and replaced?

I'll try the new glasses a while longer (I won't be using the computer on Shabbat, after all). Maybe I'll get lucky. But I suspect I'm going to be back in the optician's office on Monday.

Without blinking I would pay a four-digit number of dollars for user-adjustable glasses, even if I had to look like Geordie LaForge (though I'd rather not). That would give me both context-switching and adjustment over time. Depending on the specifications, I'd pay a lot more. Being able to see as well as possible is important. Is there anyone in this space of optics work who can deal with an end user (with an end-user's budget)?

Going back to the optician's "you're not young any more" comment, I asked why my coworkers my age and older don't all have two pairs of glasses, and he said my eyes are Hard in ways theirs probably aren't. (He also accused them of abusing their eyes.) His answer for me is separate pairs of glasses, but management there is an invasive hassle. I did have a pair of computer glasses once (when my employer was willing to pay for them); changing glasses every time I got up or sat down, and sometimes just while in my office but switching to speaking with a visitor or using the whiteboard, was a real hassle. And that was without the problem of carrying them around. (I didn't carry them between work and home.)

Entry tags:

vision

not a good eye-care day

I got my last pair of glasses from NeoVision in Shadyside and was highly satisfied with the experience. It's time for a new pair (sort of), so a couple weeks ago I made an appointment with their office on the south side a block from work. (Appointment because this time, as last time, I was having them produce the prescription as well. I'm a big fan of one-stop care for this kind of thing, having in the past been caught between the glasses place and the doctor's office when the resulting glasses weren't right.)

The people at the new location today were really disorganized, and they didn't seem to grok customer care. The doctor (same guy as in the other location) is good, but the rest of my experience today was pretty poor, from the long wait before anyone even acknowledged my existence to losing my paperwork (and repeatedly failing to get my name right so they could retrieve it -- it's only six letters, for crying out loud) to pretty much abandoning me when it was time to actually choose frames. At each stage I thought I was five minutes away from success so I didn't walk out. I think they call this "being nibbled to death by ducks". :-)

Then I came home to find a letter from my ophthamologist's office. (Oh right, I thought; I owe them some money from my last visit. Must be that. Nope.) My doctor is leaving the practice. The practice is happy to offer their other fine doctors, they say; I've had personal experiences with two of them and judge them not-so-fine. So Monday morning I'll try to find out where my doctor is going. If I can't follow her, I don't feel particularly constrained by the current practice.

NeoVision's doctor is actually an ophthamologist (surprised me!), so on one hand he's a possibility. (I'd want to research him, of course.) I like him, which is a good start. However, it would mean dealing with his possibly-incompetent staff more than once every few years. Or I guess I could go to the Shadyside office; that could work. (Hours are limited.)

Funny, I expected to lose both my vet and my primary-care physician before I lost my ophthamologist. (VCA has trouble keeping good vets and the physician has got to be close to retirement by now.) I have hopes that I haven't really lost the ophthamologist; we'll see.