Imagine a world with limited technology is available with just a house and you.
You had to manufacture your own timber to build your home yourself.
Heat your home with wood because it gets very cold and damp during
those night or day hours, cook with your wood stove, no plumbing or
electricity, no siding, gutters, insulation for those cool evenings or
days, drafty windows and you get around in a two horse powered carriage.
Don’t want to imagine it? It’s
ok for a week-end get away or a hunting cabin besides, we live in the 20th
century where advancements in technology are steady.
Let’s
imagine this same house but use today’s technology to build your home
for you and refurnish it. Let’s
put in a natural gas heating system also put an indoor bathroom with
plumbing with a flushing toilet and a shower with a hot water and
electricity to run an exhaust fan. Use
that same electricity to power a cooking stove, microwave, refrigerator,
washer and dryer. Put
some siding on it, gutters, a shingled roof, insulation for those cold
damp evenings or days and double pane windows.
Let’s add something extra because you work so hard to keep your
home running. You bought a 42 inch HD TV with a stereo sound and a Bose
surround sound system. Enhanced the sound with a 110 watt receiver, buy a
HD/DVD player and a 300 CD disc changer. Because of the summers sizzling
heat, you also purchase an air conditioner. Drive to work in bran new
Hybrid Ford SUV fully loaded.
Outside
the home, is just jam packed with today’s technology making our lives
much easier! Driving you gas
guzzling SUV to use an ATM machine and stop to a screeching halt because
the traffic light changes to red. In
a way, we let technology that run our life’s literally but without it,
we be in that world of limited technologies.
Let’s
paint a picture of how your technology is taken away from you in just a
heart beat. Wow! You survived
whatever destroyed everything you worked for to gain.
What happen? You’re
asking yourself.
I want to use my disability as
an example to tell you on ways today’s technology can be adapted so you
can accommodate your very own handicap.
First-,, I need to
make it known I did not get shot, stabbed, get in car accident, fight,
attack by terrorists, fall victim to a drive by shooting, born disabled do
drugs but the #1 of serious, long-term adult disability in the United
States and the #3 killer, stroke paralyzed me. There are countless types
of stroke and mine left me with quadriplegia unable to verbalize.
If
your a survivor of some kind of disability, its human nature to fight to
survive but don't quit surviving life’s journey to the unknown.
Remember even though disabilities requires a good chunk of life’s time
to heal and then discover with all your hard recovery work; your not
100% cured. It’s just a bump in the road
Today’s
technology can be used to improve your capabilities.
Those new capabilities are only available through your ability to
learn by challenging the free market products to help assist your
disabilities. All my products
came from The Home Depot, Internet, or Value home centers and not pricey
medical suppliers. All my
ideas are considered to be one of a kind because I know and have had
pre-stroke experiences handling these products.
This
is my computer laptop. It reads, talks and has wireless technology.
I do all my banking on-line and bill pay because of the fact my
laptop doesn’t argue it just shows mistakes. My laptop is also
my TTY machine. and rely operators are available. Coming
home from the hospital with no speech was extremely complicated.
The communication method I had to learn took several minutes to
ask for a drink or snack. A
friend of mine who had a stroke and unable to talk; introduced me to
what is known as a letterboard. I
took this letterboard and modified it to make bigger letters for my
poor visibility. Because
it was always hard to find I had it laminated to laptop and it's ten
times quicker way to ask for a drink. This letterboard can be access
at http://www.dave13.com/letterboard/instruc.htm
and printable in 3 sized. My
automatic door opener is operated by a remote control I keep mounted
on the tray by using Velcro. This
allows me to come and go as I please. I have a 42 inch 9 light door
for a front door. The
automatic door opener I have are at the hospitals or stores that open automatically
for wheelchairs by pressing on an activation button located at their
entrances. This
red rubbery color paint pointed out in the picture above is used for
applying to your tools to make a better grip for your hands.
I had the problem of a cup and other item laid on my tray
sliding off to the ground during transit.
Coating this to my tray solved the sliding problem and the best
part I always wanted a red tray. These
products that were mention can be bought and sold in the free market
because it’s an item used often in our technology world making it easier
to use. Hope this helps you
invent your ideas other than those pricey medical stores.
My wheelchair laptray for an example can be purchase at a medical
store for $250.00; this wheelchair laptray was cut from a piece of Maple
ply-wood (8 by 10) bought for $30.00.
Making a laptray requires using a hard wood such as Oak, Birch or
Maple, these woods feature a better ware and tare in addition it’s very
hard to dent the surface My
ideas couldn’t be created without the availability in technology.
Without technology, I be in the home surviving like the house
imagined described in the beginning of this chapter.
We can live without technology but in my case, it is completely
necessary to survive as long as I have. Battery
life is at a limit for your talking device but if you use an electric
wheelchair, you can use the power from the wheelchair batteries.
The talking
device I use is a laptop and I use my wheelchair to supply the
power. I
can watch DVD movies to pass the time on a long road trips, 12 volts power is same as a car
battery. Diagram #2 in the picture on left is that 24v-12v converter. My laptop requires 19 volts of
continuous power. Diagram #3 in the picture on left is is the
converter that supplies those 19 volts for my laptop. The
converter uses those 12volts to convert my necessary 19 volts. ***All
my converter boxes are direct current (DC) Because there are not
an on/off switch feature on my 24 volt -12 volt DC/DC converter box,
I added this to turn the power off going to that unit during
while charging my electric wheelchair. (Illustrated on the picture
above as diagram #1) This is a must so my unit to cool down and last
longer than the warranty. Interested in this
set-up details can be found at http://www.powerstream.com/dc1-isolated.htm
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This a free service you can download off Internet!
http://www.nextalk.net/nextalk62/nextalk.pl
This
is my set-up I use to power my laptop. To draw the proper
power from your electric wheelchair 24 volt system without
injuring your performance, you use a converter that converts 24
volts down to a 12 volt source.
