RantWoman is just not on top of THINGS TO PUBLICIZE from her email.
Luckily, it's not too late to sign up for
Open The Paths: the ride not taken
Seriously, check it out.
One thing that stands out to RantWoman: the invitation to "Bring a Device."
RantWoman's options:
RantWoman's newish Pixel 7 phone
RantWoman is not charmed by the responsiveness, a current habit sometimes of the screen flashing on and then resolutely off, so resolutely that RantWoman just has to restart the device. RantWoman needed a new device NOW. RantWoman is looking for trade-in options but that won't happen before Thursday.
RantWoman's laptop, a reconditioned 32-bit Windows 10 machine with all the browsers and accessibility tools RantWoman usually uses. It's not super zippy but functional. Problem: battery is wobbly and RantWoman usually just runs it permanently plugged in. The Open the Paths venue has lots of ways to plug things in. RantWoman just would rather not have to.
An even slower Thinkpad someone just handed RantWoman. NVDA instead of JAWS and for some reason office 2010. RantWoman fired it up today, ran some updates and is surprised to see the Microsoft Copilot appear. Fear not though: RantWoman is not super fluent in NVDA and even less fluent in MS native screen reader Narrator. If RantWoman brings the Thinkpad, though, RantWoman will simply experiment in the vein of "What is the equivalent of a 20-year-old Honda on today's internet?" RantWoman is also wondering whether the Thinkpad will be of use for one state website RantWoman has to interact with once a year. Last year the only way RantWoman succeeded was to use Chromie 2, below.
Chromie 2. Someone also just handed RantWoman a new Chromebook, awhile after Chromie the ambiguously gendered Chromebook ceased functioning. In the spirit of treat all new toys with respect, at some point RantWoman has messed up Chromevox trying to make the system function in Spanish. RantWoman can still sort of navigate the screen but the contrast is pretty weak and RantWoman can never get as much done as she hopes.
Chromie 2 did help RantWoman with one field on a state website that would not appear any other way last year. But STILL.
Chromie 2 also has a touch screen which might or might not be useful for some kinds of map interactions.
The Hand-me-down iPad. Again another hand-me-down device. OS not upgradeable past iOS 10.3. VERY SLOW. RantWoman uses VoiceOver imperfectly and does not use Siri. In fact RantWoman mainly uses the iPad to read Kindle books. So RantWoman is probably NOT going to try out anything at Open The paths.
RantWoman also has an old Kindle. RantWoman is not even going to charge it up.
RantWoman offers another post about why on earth these trips through the technological garage are similar to other technology configurations RantWoman hears about. But never mind: sign up and check out the event.
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