When in doubt shop

Please insert virtual trademark signs all the places below where readers think they belong.

The good news: to the extent that RantWoman's version of Make your own job involves figuring how many other people in the world have problems similar to hers, mucking around in digital media and accessibility questions, and figuring out how to unite her discoveries with people who might also benefit, almost anything RantWoman does online MIGHT count for work, that is if RantWoman could figure out who to bill.

For instance, besides the tax, telecomm, and devices themse below, RantWoman:

a. sent off an inquiry about a little old lady with walker peaking problem. Sweet little old ladyies? Uhh, they are Friends of RantWoman so actually cantankerous, opinionated, and very caring are also on point. Mainly they make RantWoman laugh which is why they are in their parking matter is in RantWoman's work queue. They had a question. RantWoman had to say "I don't know, but I know some ways to ask."

b. offered peer support comments about accessibility of multiple online banking sites and business banking issues.


Plus things are slow, in vacation mode at the Friendly Neighborhood Center for Extreme computing. So please come along while RantWoman goes shopping.

RantWoman needs to phone up Beloved Telecomm Provider again. This probably going to happen before Rantoman unearths every single piece of competitive disadvantage tax-man info that might possibly intrigue her. Deadlines focus the mind.

RantWoman approximately weekly receives solicitations from Neighborhood Broadband Provider. Neighborhood Broadband provider's reputation for cost-effectiveness and customer service is also iffy. The flyer offers RantWoman unlimited something and a Terabyte / month of something else. Look! RantWoman already has way more infostreams than she has time to deal with. RantWoman goes around all the time sayind No, she is not interested in all 18 petabytes of information flowing through the internet every second. RantWoman wants the right 3 teaspoons and will be happy to argue with anyone who does not think teaspoon is a valid measure in the midst of info floods. For a single person, the Terabyte thing just sounds terrifying.


RantWoman's cellphone getting insistent about nearing data cap. RantWoman used the convenient online resource to figure out why she hit the cap so much sooner in her billing cycle than previously.

1. RantWoman was out of town and thus doing more on her phone, less on her computer options.

2. RantWoman has discovered she likes videos on her phone. That is the visual part of the video is pretty pointless most of the time without serious magnification, but listening to the audio works better for content options than text-to-speech reading many websites.

RantWoman can think of all kinds of reasons it might make sense just to upgrade RantWoman's mobile data plan. Then RantWoman digressed to looking at tablets available through said provider. RantWoman's experience with Android devices is that accessibility features performance can be quite uneven. Then RantWoman looked at the accessibility page. RantWoman is not surprised that the accessibility page glibly assumes that the accessibility features will work as expected. No. No! No more digressions for now in that direction.

AND....

RantWoman has a laptop but some of the time RantWoman is quite content with smartphone plus... early edition Kindle. RantWoman's beloved early edition Kindle with a real keyboard has decided to become indisposed in approximately the same time frame where RantWoman received another contribution to her Amazon gift card balance. No reading PDF's in configurable font on a screen bigger than a cellphone. No reading Kindle content except on cellphone either. Whine. Grumble. But considering the resource stream, should RantWoman add a device upgrade to the queue?


Soooo besides the limbo between website info streams and talk to a human, for now off we go to our search engine and product reviews.

--The Kindle Paperwhite has no text-to-speech engine built in. A step backward from RantWoman's old Kindle although it still has the adjustable screen characteristics that RantWoman likes.



--A kind of cool video about one reviewer's favorite e-readers. Rantwoman includes the video here because of info about screen presentation options. RantWoman was not paying attention but thinks that Talkback, Android's text-to-speech engine can be downloaded to some of the devices. Not surprisingly, none of the devices are availabe through Amazon.





Interesting digression for a device RantWoman is intrigued by but not intrigued enough to want to experiment with right now.
Amazon Echo Always connected and fast


Oh, and a couple reviews of the Kindle Fire. The short version: definitely part way there. Part way, as of 2013

Serotek review of the Kindle Fire

NFB blog review of the Kindle Fire

Okay....Now what?