Really happy to hear you are better Steve. I am rooting for you m8. Best of luck. 🙂

I know they can be right because I’ve done a lot of volunteer work with disabled vets and some with people with brain injuries. A lot of their equipment is custom fitted, and it wasn’t done by the medical supply company. The carbon fiber chairs are really great, but almost as expensive as a car. The biggest plus is that the best of them can be micro-adjusted for an exact fit, not just within an inch.

My big problem with the whole Hoveround/Scooter Store mess is something that is common knowledge among the vets: if you don’t exercise as much as you reasonably can, you will go downhill quickly.

I even had a good technical problem to chew on today, one that left me wanting to pummel the faces of the development team that did the latest Mozilla Thunderbird 3 email configuration tool for IMAP email. I still haven’t gotten it working yet because I haven’t defeated its attempt to look up one’s email host in a Mozilla database: failing to find it, it throws up its hands (now there’s a visual image for you) and leaves you (at the wrong place) to configure it manually. I know the password is right, because it logs me into webmail. The other params… port numbers and protocols… I make three guesses before my host cuts me off, then drink coffee until they let me back on to try again. My guesses are informed guesses, but the whole combination hasn’t been right yet. Still, it feels pretty good to be “working” again, even if I don’t get a paycheck. I can’t say I’m wild about Thunderbird, even if it came already installed in Ubuntu 12.04.2 … Thunderbird, once a civilized and useful bit of s/w, is now truly amateurish, and as quirky as one of my uncles who jumped out of airplanes. (In W.W.II, of course.)

Bryan, in fairness to the TP crowd, mobility is truly the biggest issue for a lot of cripples (including me). But anyone serious about getting around again quickly learns that you can throw briefcases of money at the problem, but unless you train and work out, it’s not going to get any easier. I use a wheelchair rented from the hospital and I’m scheduled to go to TIRR’s wheelchair clinic in late March (!?) where they will measure me for a custom wheelchair which, we all hope (except the ins co), will be much better than the crap I’m renting now. But wheelchairs are for long excursions. So far, my uses of this one (or one equivalent) have been trips to appointments in the endless halls of buildings in the Texas Medical Center. But if I am stuck with it long enough, the ins co will say “we’ve already bought you a wheelchair,” and I’ll have to fight it out to receive the good (custom, and expensive) one.

When my Dad couldn’t power his wheelchair anymore, my parents bought an electric model, that we still have. They didn’t expect anyone to pay for it, but them. The VA would have paid for it, and for the van they bought that had a wheelchair lift, but my parents didn’t think it would have been right, and didn’t want to deal with the bureaucracy. If someone needs those things and can’t afford them, then they should be provided, but don’t go around convincing people of a need that doesn’t actually exist, just so you can rip off the system. There are too many things that need to paid for, to waste money on greed.

I think you’ve penned the theme song for the next Tea Party rally, Steve. They’ll go to the mat for Hoverounds and AR-15s.

– SB the YDS

(I think this needs a few more stanzas… %-}> )