Ageless Passions by Karen Putz

Tag: zvrs

  • If You’re Deaf, How Can You Use the Phone?

    kso putz zvrs

     

    “If you’re deaf, how can you use the phone?”

    For most of my life, the phone was my enemy.  Even though I grew up hard of hearing, my brain couldn’t interpret sound into comprehensible English over the phone. My dad tried for years to get me to practice by calling him at work, but all I heard was a bunch of sounds that made no sense.  Every once in a while, I’d get lucky and understand a phrase or two. We came up with a system where I’d ask him questions and he’d respond with a “No, no.” or a “Yes.”

    As a teenager, my dad handled all the calls coming in, including the ones from guys.  You can just imagine how fun it was to deal with that.  “Yeah, Dad, tell John I’ll go ice skating with him. What time is he picking me up?”

    When I first became deaf after a fall while barefooting as a teen, I had no idea at the time it was going to turn out to be a blessing. After a few months of struggling in my classes at Northern Illinois University, I had an epiphany one morning: I could continue to be miserable about being deaf, or I could change my attitude and become the best possible deaf person I could be.  I chose the latter and began to learn American Sign Language.

    Little did I know, that decision would lead me to be able to access the phone in a whole new way.  In fact, most days, I’m on the phone interviewing someone for articles or an upcoming book. ‘

    So, how does a deaf person use the phone?

    For me, it requires a sign language interpreter on a videophone. I simply dial the person I want to call and the interpreter appears on the screen.  I use my voice to talk on the phone and an interpreter signs everything the other person says.  I use ZVRS for this service.  Keith St. Onge (2x World Barefoot Champion) and I spent two and half years on the phone while writing his book, Gliding Soles, Lessons from a Life on Water.   When we first started working together, Keith and I didn’t know each other at all.  We spent hours and hours on the phone crafting his life story with interpreters switching places to keep the conversation flowing.

    The ZVRS team came to the World Barefoot Center in Florida to capture how a deaf mom and a World Champ wrote a book together:

     

     

     

     

  • Videophone Incompatibility–I’ve Had It!

    man on videophone

    I think videophones are the greatest invention since dark chocolate peanut butter cups, but today, I’ve had it.

    I had an interview set up this afternoon for my next book. The person called me using an ntouch by Sorenson. I used a Z-20 by ZVRS. We could not see each other.

    This is actually old news in the videophone industry and I’ve been aware of it for a while now. But today, I became rip-roaring mad. If you know me, it takes a lot to set me off. When I can’t run my business because of videophone incompatibility, it makes for one cranky entrepreneur.

    So I’ve had it. I’ve filed a complaint with the FCC, but my complaint is just one of many, many, many complaints that were filed with the FCC. It will take up to two weeks to submit my complaint to Sorenson and they have 30 days to address an answer to me.

    A call to the FCC confirmed that they’re aware of the issue and working to ensure that all videophones are compatible, but the slow pace of this fix is frustrating. The ntouch was released ONE YEAR ago this month. Prior to this, I could call a Sorenson videophone, but since the ntouch was released, it’s been a real problem. I still can’t leave an answering machine message when I call a Sorenson videophone. A call to Sorenson provided no answers as to when this compatibility issue will be fixed, just that they’re “aware of the problem and working to fix it.”

    Today, I couldn’t conduct business and we ended up turning to an alternative way to connect. That is totally uncalled for. Can you imagine Verizon and Sprint pulling this kind of thing off? If they so much as went one day where someone couldn’t make a call because of cell phone incompatibility, the media would be all over it.  Can you imagine an AT & T customer calling a T-mobile customer and not being able to access voice mail because of “incompatibility?”

    For crying out loud, (and we can’t even hear it) let’s get this incompatibility issue FIXED so we can go about the business of connecting with one another.

  • Greg Pereira, Delivery Driver

    Tell me about your job, career or calling. How did you get into this line of work?

    First of all, I work two jobs. I serve both the hearing and deaf population. I am currently a full-time delivery driver for Markwell in Miami, Florida. I drive a van from the offices in Opa-Locka as far south as Homestead and as far north as West Palm Beach. This covers roughly around a 100 mile range. I deliver cases of staples, nails, stretch film, and other supplies to warehouses in the area that are involved in woodworking, upholstery, bedmaking, furniture, flower farming, and lobster trapping. Markwell is an industrial tool and packaging distribution company that is family-owned. Yes, my family owns the company. My brother is a part-owner as well as my father and I came aboard about three months after my brother bought the company. Think I got the job because my brother is the owner? Think again–I had to earn this opportunity. I come from a hardworking family of businessmen–my brother was a longtime Verizon executive who rose through the ranks from his outstanding sales work. He earned every bit of his promotions, so when I went to work for him I had to earn the job. After some time in a trial basis, I became an employee of the company (not an owner) and I earned it because I worked hard and did what I was asked to do. It took some time to find a role, but it has been solidified by the fact that I have a safe driving record and I love to drive, so deliveries have worked out for me. I also do projects on the side. Another reason that I earned this job is that sales have been in record numbers since I started delivering for the company, mainly because of my willingness to drive anywhere.

    My second job is with ZVRS as a Z Associate. My job is very simple, I just install the wonderful Z phones we have and I do some sales work as well. I also enjoy working with customers and meeting with new people. I worked for 6-7 years in human services (working in group homes and private academies) and I decided I wanted to change my career and have always been interested in working in the videophone business. I work with great people and the job is a lot of fun!

    What is the best part of your job, career calling?

    The best part is I get to work the front lines with both jobs and talk directly to the customers. I get to listen to a lot of feedback and generally the customers are very nice and we exchange questions and answers, for the purpose of growing a good working relationship. Another great part is I get to explore parts of places I have never visited since I am on the road often. For instance, I did not know South Florida had a lot of farmland. Tourists don’t generally associate South Florida with farms, but there are a lot–and areas west of Homestead have flower farms where the supplies I deliver ensure the survival of the plants that are growing there. The best part is that the farms have been thriving since Hurricane Andrew hit back in 1992. Andrew destroyed Homestead with 200 mph wind gusts that took about several hours, but it left a lot of rain in the area which strengthened the soil and allowed the crops to flourish. One of those things in South Florida if you are a longtime resident like I am, to think about how something so powerful can eventually help in the long run. Another part of the job that stands out for me is my co-workers. In Miami, there are many people that are living there for a long time and do not speak English. The warehouse guys I work with do not speak English well but we work well together because we found ways to communicate through gestures and a lot of patience. I learned Spanish while living in Colombia back in the 1990s and I was able to communicate in Spanish with them even though I am not fluent.

    What are some of the challenges?

    To know me is to REALLY know me. I speak so well that hearing people assume I can hear out of the left ear which is completely deaf. I’ve had hearing people come to me and start whispering in my ear for no reason. I say, “This is my bad ear.” They go around to the other side and start whispering into my hearing aid. “Nope, this is also my bad ear.” They get puzzled then I tell them not to worry, I can lipread and I can read Spanish well. I do get feedback from other customers who compliment me on my ability to speak so well. I also am told they are surprised I can drive a van. I often say, “I don’t need my ears to drive..all I need are my eyes that tell me what my hands should do with the steering wheel.” Another challenge is the language barrier. In Miami, there is a large influx of immigrants that mainly speak Spanish but also speak French Creole (those from Haiti) and my hearing customers often do not speak English. However they understand the routine I do for deliveries but sometimes they do not have much patience trying to communicate with me. The best approach that works for me is to just be patient with them myself and show them what I am trying to say to them so this way communication is smooth. Patience is also a virtue when it comes to doing home visits with customers who have a hard time understanding instructions. I myself am not 100 percent ASL. I use a mix when signing to customers and generally they understand me well. The best way is to show customers what to do–I have found they learn much faster this way. On the other hand, I was the same way growing up, I learned better when people showed me what to do as opposed to receiving verbal instructions.

    What was it like growing up Deaf/Hard of Hearing?

    I am the oldest of all the Pereira cousins, brothers, sisters. Being deaf was a full time job and it still is. I lost my hearing at 4 years old. Why, I do not know. I do not remember myself hearing. But I wear a hearing aid on my right ear. Have been this way since I was a little boy. As was the case in the 1970s, 1980s growing up there was no captioning on TV but I liked sports, action movies, and cartoons. But when television wasn’t around, I turned to books. As I did not learn to sign until I was 12, I learned to speak first and I found I could not follow family conversations so I turned to books to keep myself occupied. My grandparents had a library row full of Dr. Seuss books and those were the first books I could read. Reading then became a passion that took up a lot of my time growing up. I also lived out of the country for a long period of time at different times. I lived in Mexico during the late 1970s and in 1988 I moved to Colombia. Colombia was where I had to learn on my own, to grow up quickly. I did not have a choice. In Colombia, the high school kids I went to school with were neat dressers and looked up to their parents as role models and were very mature and polite people. Down there it was also a wide gap between the rich and the poor, and Colombians took their studies seriously. Family values were the same generation after generation. The more things changed, the more things stayed the same. I picked up Spanish quickly simply by reading, however verbal communication was difficult. On the other hand, I went to the American school and all the friends I made treated me with a lot of respect and I wasn’t the “deaf guy” in school, I was one of the guys. There was no bullying. I wore uniforms every day. On the other hand, Colombia was going through the worst period of violence in their history and I had to be extremely careful about what to say to people there, this is still a trait I follow today when talking to people, I often think of what to say before I say it. I was an American living in Colombia and it was a dangerous time, but I enjoyed my experience growing up. I fell in love with soccer and I adapted living there. Going to school there was wonderful, but I did not have sign language interpreters. Believe it or not, I did not need interpreters as I chose to adapt to having notetakers and I studied every night.

    What advice would you give a Deaf/Hard of Hearing person who is looking for a job, career, or calling like yours?

    One of the things you must understand is that when you look for work, employers are looking for somebody who has the intangibles. Experience is one thing. The other thing is showing them you have those intangibles. What do I mean by intangibles? Intangibles are this: having a neat appearance, having a positive attitude, having a clean record (driving, criminal, etc). The other thing is you have some skills that make you talented–things that people just don’t teach. The other and most important thing is discipline. Discipline is taking the same approach to work every day with positive results. Do not be discouraged if you get turned down for a job, there are others that are waiting to be filled. I cringe sometimes when deaf/HH people think they have been turned down due to their deafness and sometimes dwell on this. People, regardless of who and what they are, get turned down at times. The best thing is to move on and keep looking and finding that job for you. Yes, a job is hard to find with the economy being in a slump, but the important thing is never to give up and keep on looking as hard as you can. Even if you find something that pays less than your previous job, take it! You will always find that you can work your way up and be back to the level you were before, even if it takes some time to get there. The job you have may not be the calling you expect it to be, but sometimes the calling comes in unexpected places. Since I work as a driver, I had to have a clean driving record. Driving takes an enormous amount of discipline. It’s not as easy as it looks. I have been doing this since I got my license at 21. Miami is known for having lots of careless and aggressive drivers, so I have to be able to concentrate 100 percent of the time I am on the road. Trust is also very, very important. Be honest. This is a virtue you MUST have. Employers can turn down anyone they feel they are not going to trust. It used to be they could hire anyone and train them on the spot but this is not happening anymore. Times have changed where there are more stringent requirements a job seeker has to go through. The most important thing is to be patient and have a positive attitude, and be honest with yourself.

  • Deaf and Barefooting Worlds Collide

    Four years ago, Jodi Cutler and I connected in the blogosphere as parents of deaf/hard of hearing kids and bloggers.  Her blog,  An American Mom in Tuscany: Jordan’s Cochlear Implant Story chronicles her life in Italy with her son, Jordan.  After years of connecting via the written word, I gave her a call and we talked on the phone for the first time.  The ZVRS interpreter had amazing skills and the conversation flowed smoothly.  I was so excited to finally connect with Jodi via phone.

    After we ended our conversation, I quickly thanked the interpreter and was about to hang up.  “Wait, don’t hang up!” she signed.  “Are you a barefooter?”

    “Yup!” I said. I figured she must have read my story in the media in the past year.  She pointed to a picture that was propped up on a desk behind me.  “I recognized Keith St. Onge!” she said.  “He taught me ten years ago in a clinic in Ohio!”

    Deaf World.  Barefooting World.  Bam!

    Jess and I skyped one night and she shared her story.  Jess was in fourth grade when her father bought a Ski Nautique and he taught her to water ski. Her father grew up on the Ohio river and he loved hamming it up on the water.  “He could ski on a paddle!” Jess said.  A year later, they saw a guy barefooting and Jess was fascinated.  “I want to learn that!” she told her dad.  So he went over and asked the guy to teach her.  Gripping the boom outfitted in a long-sleeve wetsuit with a vest on top, Jess put her feet on the water and skied away.  “I thought it was the coolest thing!”

    And boy, was she hooked.  Her parents bought property on a private lake.  Jess wanted to learn more, so she taught herself.  In the mid-1990s, she pulled up video after video of Keith St. Onge on the Barefoot Central website and watched them over and over.  She learned the deep water start off the five-foot line through a lot of trial and error.  Jess became friends with another barefooter on the lake, Ron Kara, who trained with Keith in Florida.  “Ron taught me to barefoot backwards, I think in ninth grade,” said Jess. “I struggled with backwards– I couldn’t get my chest off the water.  I ended up bleeding and bruised, but I wouldn’t give up.”  It took Jess a year, but when she finally got up backwards on her feet, it was a sweet achievement.

    Jess joined the Sea World ski show in Ohio when she was sixteen.  Barefooting in a ski show was a whole other form of barefooting– Jess had to get used to skiing in all kinds of water and weather conditions.  Ron brought Keith to Ohio, and he worked with Jess to improve her skills.

    One day, after Sea World practice, Jess was sitting on a bench waiting for her father to pick her up.  She noticed a girl sitting next to her and began to make conversation.  The girl pointed to her ear and shook her head.  “I realized she was deaf, so I remembered some sign language that I learned in second grade and signed to her,” said Jess.  Hi, my name is Jess, she signed and fingerspelled.

    That encounter unwrapped another passion for Jess.  She wanted to learn American Sign Language so she signed up for a class.  After high school, she went to the University of Pittsburg and then transferred to McDaniel in Maryland.  She graduated with a degree in Deaf Education, with minors in education, deaf studies and art history.  “I’m an overachiever,” Jess chuckled.  After teaching in a public school, Jess realized that she wanted to work in a one-on-one setting, so she decided to pursue a Masters in counseling at Gallaudet University, where classes are taught in American Sign Language. She now has her own private practice: Counseling for Children and Young Adults.

    “I stopped barefooting in college, but that summer, I wanted to get back into it,” said Jess.   Her father did some research and located Dave Miller, a competitive barefooter near the D.C./Virginia area.  Jess got back on the water in 2005 and continued to improve her skills.

    I was so thrilled to connect with Jess and invited her to ski at the World Barefoot Center Women’s Barefoot week next year.  An interpreter who barefoots– wow, that’s a path connected by a higher power!  After we ended our skype conversation, I was thankful for one thing:  my procrastination, project-to-project jumping, and disorganization. My nickname may be Skippy because of that, but if I had nailed that picture on another wall like I intended to do weeks ago, I would have hung up on that phone call without two worlds colliding.

  • A Size Six? You Gotta Be Kidding

    Over on AOL That’s Fit, I shared my story of losing weight and taking up barefoot water skiing again.   Here’s the link:

    Karen Rediscovered Her Passion

    The story was posted earlier in the week and was featured on the front of the AOL website several times.   Emails, tweets and Facebook messages have been coming in, mostly with people expressing shock at the before picture.  At a recent ZVRS presentation, a senior citizen came up to me and said, “Wow, you lost weight!  That’s much better!  You were so fat before!”  Gotta love those seniors, they tell it like it is, in colorful sign language.

    My oldest son even did a double-take at the photo of me.  “Mom, I didn’t realize you were that… big,” he said.  He glanced at me and then came over and gave me a hug. 

    Debra Poneman, the gal behind the “Yes to Success” seminars, said, “I nearly fell off my chair when I saw the photo of you at 220 on the That’s Fit article.”  

    Well, Debra, you and me, both.  I guess that’s why I avoided the scale and the mirror for a long, long time.

    I still have a ways to go to get rid of the rest of the pounds.  It’s a work in progress.  During the last couple of weeks, I have been going to Bikram Yoga.  Most days, I actually enjoy the challenge of getting through 90 minutes of poses in a hot, hot, hot room.   Then there are other days when I want to run screaming out of the room into a tub of ice.

    The most amusing part of the whole losing weight saga has been the comments left on the That’s Fit story.  Here’s one:

    I am really happy for her and her weight loss. But somehow I find myself wondering when I read this article and many magazine articles where people are said to “finally buy a size 6 jean” at 168 lbs??? I bobble between 158-162 and I am in a 12 comfortably and can still squeeze in my 10’s on a good day. I might get one leg in a 6. Exactly what kind of jeans are these people buying??

    I have two pairs of size six jeans, one from St. John’s Bay and the other from Target.  At 168 pounds, people are scratching their heads trying to figure out how that could possibly be true.  I wonder the same thing myself at times, because I weigh exactly the same as I did back in November when the barefooting photo was taken, yet have gone down two sizes since then.  But then again, jeans vary in sizes like crazy.  I can’t get into a size six in jeans from Eddie Bauer. 

    So to give you an idea of my jeans one year ago and my jeans today, take a look:

  • ZVRS Reveals VRS with iPhone4

    Over 200 folks gathered at the Hard Rock Cafe in Philadelphia on July 7, 2010 for a private event hosted by ZVRS. Tim Rarus took the stage and talked about the history of video relay service. “In the old days before the TTY,” he explained, “if you wanted to make an appointment with your doctor, you either had to find a neighbor to make a phone call or drive to the doctor’s office to make the appointment.”

    Now… imagine…  today…

    “You reach in your pocket and pull out your iPhone4 and you make a call using video relay.  Yes, today, it is now possible with ZVRS to make a video relay call!”

    Three people from the audience, including Gallaudet president, Dr. T. Alan Hurwitz, made historical video relay calls from the stage.  It was absolutely amazing to watch each of them communicate via using a cell phone– how many of us have dreamed of that day?  The day is here!

    Quoted in the Apple Insider: Apple Insider Article

    Quoted in the MacApper: MacApper Article

    Quoted in the Today’s iPhone:  Today’s iPhone

    Engaget Article:  Engaget

  • ZVRS and Barefooting, Crammed in Two Days

    I arrived at the World Barefoot Center on Sunday evening in time to have dinner with Swampy, Lauren Lindeman and a great group of younger skiers from all over the world, including A. J. Porreca, a 17-year-old barefooter from Willowbrook, Il who is featured on the cover of Water Skier magazine.  After a great dinner, I headed back to the Z Team home that I was staying at.

    At the ZVRS headquarters, we filmed a VCO Plus video all day.  Because Ann Marie Mickelson and I are no actresses, we ended up with a lot of shots for the blooper file.  Hollywood will not be calling us soon.  Nonetheless, we had a blast and after the first half hour of filming, we kicked off our shoes.  Roger Vass put me on a cardboard platform so that Ann Marie wouldn’t tower over me.  I begged Roger to airbrush 30 pounds off of me but no amount of money could convince him.

    Joined the Z Team for dinner:

    Then I went for a walk on the beach at dusk and stayed out until it was pitch black.  Just a sliver of the moon and a bright star shone in the sky.  Turned off the hearing aids and walked in dead silence– every now and then it’s nice to tune out and just enjoy the visual stuff.  The house I was staying at was a few steps from the beach.

    Yesterday morning, we finished up some filming and I had this awful urge to go barefooting.  I paged A. J. Albrecht, who also works for ZVRS as a Z Specialist and asked him if he was available for the afternoon.  I’m working the HLAA conference the next four days and Texas the weekend after, so I figured I could play hooky for the afternoon. The only catch– he was two hours away.  Did I really want to drive four hours in one afternoon?

    Heck yeah.

    And I’m glad I did.  A. J. and I had an amazing afternoon on the water.  I started off on the boom, back to the basics.  Get up, sit back down on the water, get up again.  Over and over.  Here’s A. J. showing me what to do:

    I asked A. J. to teach me how to barefoot on one foot — something that eluded me as a teen.  Every time I would lift a foot, I’d end up face first in the water.  Kicking off a ski was tough for me.

    My first attempt ended in a face plant.

    Here we go again, I thought.

    My second attempt ended in success– I shifted my weight and lifted my foot up!  Did a couple more of those and rode a little longer to make sure it wasn’t a fluke.  That felt good!  The last several weeks at the gym, I practiced  balancing on one foot and I guess that paid off.

    I switched places with A. J. and drove while he showed me his stuff.  He jumped out of the boat on to the boom while I drove– take a look:

    The next trick– a backwards deep water start and then he got up barefooting backwards, then flipped around from a back-to-front:

    A. J. is a master on the chair ski/hydrofoil, I was in awe of all the flips he can do.   Take a look:

    I worked on the deep water start on the five-foot extension off the boom and had no problem getting up each time.  I moved to the back of the boat on the long line and out of five attempts, I got up once for a short run and promptly landed face first again.  The long line continues to be a battling beast for me.  A. J. turned around to take a picture and of course, I crashed at that moment:

    When we finished, a storm was brewing so I went back to the boom and practiced skiing in rough water back to the landing.  We pulled the boat out and covered it just as it began to pour.

    I hit the road back to Tampa and sat in the airport until ten p.m.  Needless to say, I conked out on the plane.  I sure hope my snoring didn’t bother anyone.

  • Join the Z-Team at the Chicago Z-Fest!

    It’s been a busy year for the Z-Team– we’ve launched a new Z videophone: the Z4! Come and join the Z-Team at the Chicago Z-Fest on Saturday, March 20th from 5 to 8 p.m. at the Hinsdale South Cafeteria  at 7401 S Clarendon Hills Rd, Darien IL.  Pizza and pop will be provided. You’ll have a chance to meet folks from the Z-Team and learn about the four different videophones that Z provides.

    You can RSVP on the Zvrs Facebook page: Chicago Z-Fest

    And guess what, we’ve got some new services coming up– join us to find out what they are!

    Some photos from our visit with the folks from St. Louis Deaf Professional Happy Hour:

    See you at the Z-Fest!

  • Are You Ready to Leap?

    Last week, I hit the library in search of some books for a weekend getaway.  Jane and I dropped off our daughters at DeSales Center in Michigan for a workshop with Sean Forbes from D-Pan and we planned to hang at the hotel and do nothing but read all weekend.  While at the library, my eyes caught a title in the “Hot” books section: The Leap: How 3 Simple Changes Can Propel Your Career from Good to Great. 

    Hmmm, I figured, can’t hurt to know how to go from good to great where I’m at now.

    I spent Friday night wading through emails, Twittering time away, chatting with folks on the Z4 and watching the Comedy Channel.  “Ahhh, this is so nice,” I said to Jane.  “No one to interrupt me, no dishes to wash and a whole bed to myself. I could get used to this.”  Jane just smiled– she was deep into a Harry Potter book.

    Saturday morning found me submerged in the bathtub and I dove into ” The Leap.”  Written by Rick Smith, he describes it best in this paragraph:

    The Leap is a guide to personal evolution.  It’s a “good to great” manual for individuals, a book about aligning passions and skills, and about the amazing energy that gets released when we find our personal “sweet spot.”  All of us have a special place on the spectrum where the best of our ability intersects with what most inspires us.  Too few of us ever find that spot or even know it’s there. But it is there, and it’s magic.  This book will point you to it.

    And sure enough, it did.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.  Back in the bathtub, I dove into the first chapter where Rick describes a climb to success that ended up with him riding down the elevator after being let go by his company.  He had written a best-selling book, The 5 Patterns of Extraordinary Careers: The Guide for Achieving Success and Satisfaction and all of a sudden, he was facing the fact that his career had suddenly ended.

    Rick came up with the idea of putting together a company that would network the top well-known, highly respected executives in the world.  He named his networking group/company World50.  He faced opposition right from the beginning, with nay-sayers shooting down his idea left and right.

    His first customer turned out to be Carl Gustin.  Suddenly, I sat up in the bathtub and read on with even more interest.  Carl Gustin was the former Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak and Apple.  I had met Carl Gustin last summer in Las Vegas when he came to the Zvrs Team Week and gave a presentation.  He also sat through our each of our team presentations where we shared our marketing ideas. I could see that he was a little nervous at first, after all, it was his first opporunity to spend a day surrounded by deaf and hard of hearing folks with all the hands zipping through the air.  By the end of the day, Carl was laughing along with us.  “This company reminds me of Apple in the early days,” he told us at the end of the day.  “You guys have a lot of passion.”   Carl joined us all for dinner and I had the opportunity to chat with him and ask questions.  Soon after, he joined the board of Zvrs and has been with us ever since.

    After I finished the book, I took the “What’s Your Primary Color” analysis over at www.theleap.com.  I found myself smack dab in the middle of the spectrum, a gray-blue color:

    The book is filled with questions to explore– I’m saving those for later in the week when I can focus more on that.  I have some ideas of how I want to go from good to great this year, but I also learned that my work with Zvrs is right where I want to be– my passion and my talents are aligned with where I want to go.

    Now all I gotta do is…

    Leap.

  • Hearing Folks Can Call Each Other, Why Can’t Deaf/Hard of Hearing Folks?

    “I am really frustrated,” said a customer recently.  “Every time someone calls my Z videophone from a Sorenson VP -200, their number shows up as an 866 number and I can’t call them back.  Hearing people don’t have any problem calling from a Verizon phone to a Sprint phone, so why do we deaf folks have so many problems?”

    Indeed, as a Sales Manager for Zvrs, I shared that same frustration as this customer.  Several times, I would see a missed call from an 866 number and I’d have no way of calling that person back.   The 866 numbers no longer function, except when a caller uses a VP-200 to call another VP-200.  When a person uses a videophone from a different company, the call is automatically routed to a relay interpreter.

    I also learned that Sorenson customers automatically have their 866 numbers displayed as the default setting.  This is the reason why the 866 number is showing up in the caller ID instead of a local number.  However, Sorenson customers can change the way the caller ID number is displayed and set it so that the LOCAL ten-digit number is displayed instead. 

    How to change the 866 number to display the new local number:

    Go to Settings > Personal > User and then select “Local.”

    Fo more information about calling 800/866 numbers, read the two editorials by Dr. Z and You:

    The 800/866 Fiasco

    The 800/866 Fiasco, More Information

    Update:

    The FCC has temporarily reinstated the 800 numbers and ordered the 800 numbers to be put back into the national database so that they can function from one provider to the other.  This means that for the next four months, the 800/866 numbers will connect properly between videophones.

    Ed’s Telecom Alert shares more on this issue: VRS 800 Issue.