A Triumph of American Tenacity

-



Today, I came across the story of Capt. Scott Smiley, a soldier who was seriously injured by a car bomb in Iraq. He was rushed to a medical center for help, and for a moment, flatlined. He came back though, and somehow pulled through the ordeal. The blast left him blind in both eyes. I won't try to re-tell his story, but his experience is one that everyone should know about.

His story is one of courage - courage to serve his country, and courage to overcome and rise above his injuries. He still continues to serve this country on active duty, because he realized that he still had a lot to give, and he still had a lot of fight left in him. His family also deserves our gratitude, because they had to deal with the situation as well. In the churn of daily news, it seems that all we hear about are the misdeeds of the rich and famous, instead of talking about men like Capt. Smiley. It seems like we expect to hear all the bad, all the time. We should never forget that there are men and women like Capt. Smiley who are serving this country with courage every day - on and off the battlefield, dealing with hardship - on and off the battlefield. These are American heroes, and they remind us of what the American spirit is all about.

It is a real coincidence that part of his story talks about technology. In particular, he relies on software to help him use a computer for everyday things like checking email and reading documents. We take these things for granted, but for him, special software is needed. This is yet one more reason why accessibility is so important, as I explained in an earlier post. The next time I hear someone say that we don't need accessibility features in websites, I'll remind them of Capt. Smiley.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let's end the archaic management of time

-
Image
Every once in a while, twice a year to be exact, I am forced to go through the house and change the time on all the clocks, and other appliances that have clocks. The atomic clock in the kitchen doesn't need to be changed, my cell phone is ok, and computers auto-adjust, but I still have to make the rounds for the other devices. When we are an hour early or late on our first trip after such time-changing events, I also realize I need to change the clock in the car. Growing up in Indiana, this wasn't as much of a problem, as we didn't change our clocks. The only impact was that TV shows started an hour early (or late) half the year. Fellow Jolt judge, David Dossot , reminded me of "beat time" from the late 90's. It never caught on, but what a concept? Could one time zone for the entire planet be possible? I have heard all sorts of explanations as to why we have to change our clocks, but that is just half of the problem. The other half is the concept of ti
Read more

Product support - not supported

-
Image
I was looking for information, or rather details, on Visual Studio 2010. Looking at the Microsoft website, information is everywhere, but details are hard to find. It's bad enough that Microsoft changes the names of the editions with each release, but trying to find out what is in each edition, and what the differences are from one edition to another is very difficult. I have recently been on something of a quest, to champion the use of UML . Without tools, UML is just a bunch of boxes and lines that simply makes working with Visio that much more painful. I know that in the past, Microsoft has kept UML at an arms length. They have told me personally that they use it all the time when whiteboarding, but when it comes to implementing a design notation in their tools, they want to use their own standard. I can appreciate that because it does give them the flexibility to build development tools the way they want, without tying them to a set of rules defined by some external org
Read more

Pursuing Truth

-
Image
 I was working in the lab recently. I took a blood sample, to examine at it under the microscope. I had done this before, but it still fascinates me to see my own blood cells up close, in such great detail. I saw hundreds of red blood cells, many white blood cells, and I think I even saw some platelets. I have a camera connected to my microscope, and took a picture of the cells. I then used a measuring tool in the program to measure the width of the red and white blood cells. I added notes to the image to record details including what the image was, the date, and magnification. It looked good, and I saved the image. I then thought to myself, "Are my measurements correct?" Of course I am the only one who would likely ever see the image and measurements, but I was curious to see if my measurements were consistent with documented and accepted data. After doing some research, and looking at information from multiple sources, it looked as though my measurements were off by a signi
Read more