Perhaps the nastiest trigger for my seriously dark bouts with depression come as a result of my relationship with FS/HJ. I spent six years there and got chucked out on my ass three years ago. In all honesty, if I was CEO of the company at the time and the VP/Software Engineering performed as poorly as I did during my last few months there, I’d have fired him too. Getting rid of me was the best thing for the business at the time.
In the three years that followed, though, they have threatened me with legal action quite a few times and, for all intents and purposes, kept me from working in the blindness business for two of those years.
In my final months at FS, I didn’t behave poorly just because I felt like it; I did so because I was in constant pain. My hands, wrists, forearms, shoulders and neck hurt so badly that I had to either deal with the cognitive distraction caused by the injuries or take serious pain medication and deal with trying to manage an important department with a serious codeine buzz. My mood (amplified by large doses of steroids injected directly into my spine) caused me to bounce between bursts of tears and manic episodes greater than would be caused by an 8 ball of cocaine.
During this period, I knew things were wrong and went to my boss and told him that I was “overwhelmed.” He said, “vice presidents don’t get overwhelmed…” and, twice, walked out of my office without offering any help. On the Monday of Thanksgiving week, 2004, he brought me into his office and sent me home to go onto our private disability insurance program and return when I got better. FS posted my job for replacement on the day after Thanksgiving weekend so I get the feeling they didn’t plan to have me back. In January 2005, FS force me to resign or face a lawsuit. I chose resignation as I thought that would be the easier path but a few years of harassment later, I wish I had done otherwise.
As Thanksgiving is approaching again, I feel like I am falling back into the darkest part of my personal abyss. My repetitive motion injuries are flaring up badly and I’m back on serious pain killers and I’m no where nearly as productive as I would hope which may mean I need to cut down on my hours and, hence, my income. More than money, I am deeply committed to the notion of getting free AT software to people who need it and, with my left arm in really bad shape, I don’t know how productive I can be as I’m back in the state of being distracted by pain or impaired by pain killers.
Also, while my mood this morning definitely falls on the depressed side of my bi-polar bear symptoms, I suppose some of the mania and hypercharged ego still shines through. I seem to believe that either my pain or the effect of my pain killers knocking me out of commission will cause a major set back for the entire population of blinks who use computers. As FS has shown in the three years since my departure, JAWS, the world’s most powerful and most widely used screen reader has carried on quite nicely without me. FS has released versions 6.xx, 7.xx, 8.xx and I’m now running the public beta of 9.xx, a very nice release.
Also, in those three years, two screen readers (Mobile Speak and Talx) have come out for Symbian phones without any help from the almighty me. Code Factory and Dolphin have released screen readers for Microsoft Windows Mobile and Smartphone Edition, Humanware has done its very cool VoiceStream, GW Micro has done a handful of releases, Serotek has implemented some of the coolest screen reading concepts I’ve seen in a long time, Sun got orca working pretty well, Apple has put a credible screen reader on Macintosh and all I’ve really done is unsuccessfully try to get a few projects going and wrote a bunch of blog articles that have little more effect than pissing in the wind. Hence, the world of technology for people with vision impairment continues merrily without me and I still struggle with the same old demons that haunted me three years ago.
Plain and simply, I am not nor ever was a terribly important component of the AT biz; my manic moments, however, led me to that irrational belief and it cost me the one opportunity I had to make the greatest possible effect on software we blinks use – namely working on JAWS. I wish I could say I don’t care; I wish I could just forget about all of this stuff, retire and go fishing almost every day. Instead, I let the ghosts of BlindChristian’s past haunt me and rent a ton of space in my mind.
Fuck it…
Afterward
In JAWS 8.xx and the betas of 9.00 (I didn’t look at earlier versions), I noticed an odd little pronunciation issue that isn’t a “bug” or something actually worth fixing but it is an anomaly that I find amusing. If, with the US English settings turned on I type $5, JAWS will, instead of saying “five dollars” will, instead, say “dollar five.” If, however, I type €5 JAWS will read “five euros” rather than the reverse. It shouldn’t be hard to fix the location of the word dollars in a phrase, especially as it has already been done for Euros so, for consistency, sake; I think the JAWS guys should make the change. I just checked and “yen” is also spoken like dollars.
Also, why don’t semi-colons cause a full stop as they do when a person who knows the purpose of the symbol would read it if looking at the page visually?
— End
Howdy Comrades!
To borrow a phrase from a former President, “I feel your pain,” Chris. In the late 1980’s, I ran a Randolph Shepard Vending facility, and try as I might, I could not earn enough to get off SSI. As is my wont, I made a good deal of trouble for the Business Enterprise Program back then, and they certainly deserved it. At least half of the facilities made so little that many operators even qualified for food stamps, quite ironic when you consider how much food these vendors sold. Well, one fateful day, I decided to save some money and accepted a ride on the back of a motorcycle. According to the police report, we were traveling at a high rate of speed when we turned off Avenue D onto 45th street where we collided with a Dodge Ram pickup truck. I was lucky to have survived, but the agency seized their chance to kick me out of the program after I fell behind on my sales tax. I spent years depressed and angry over how I was treated, and the injuries from the wreck still cause extreme pain, sometimes requiring opiates to deal with the pain in my messed up knee and back. BC is a fine blog and very popular among the cool blind crowd. I respect your accomplishments with your blog and envy your ability to write both imaginative fiction and technical articles. You have a great head on your shoulders, Chris, and I hope you rebound from this tailspin to accomplish far more than you could have at FS. You deserve better than having to work at a company that inflicts such a poisonous and callous business culture on their employees. Remember that pissing is essential to life. May you live long and prosper.
Regards,
Chairman Mal
Power to the Peeps!
BC, I was offered a job at FS. A very minor place in one of their departments but obligations forced me to refuse their offer. From your writings and conversations I had with employees, I’m glad I did.
I have followed your blog on and off for sometime. Sometimes the content is interesting, but mainly, I come back because I can’t stop myself from watching the train wreck that is Blindchristian’s life…a mad-at-the-world, depressed old programmer with a substance abuse problem. I feel guilty reading your blog though because it feels like I am sneaking a look at your diary or eavesdropping on a private conversation.
Thus, I am going to offer you some free advice to help you get your life back on track.
First, delete this stupid blog. Every potential employer is going to Google your name, read your blog, and move on to the next candidate. We all have our private demons; your blog shows that you are overrun with them.
Second, move on with your life. Maybe you got a bad deal from Freedom Scientific, so what, it happens to all of us at some point in our careers. Although I will say that your description of your departure does not match what is now common knowledge in the industry – namely, that you were asked to resign because you had been stealing from the company.
Third, look for jobs outside the assistive technology industry. There are thousands of jobs out there for good programmers and managers. If you insist on staying in the assistive technology industry, it will take longer as you will need to rebuild your reputation and court the company’s that have formed a bad impression based on your blog.
Good luck.