macular degeneration, macular, diagnosis Parts Is Parts – My Macular Degeneration Journey/Journal

Parts Is Parts

Today was sort of an ‘eye day’. Spent most of my day talking about vision or dealing with my ‘toys’. “Mama said there would be days like this.” [Lin/Linda: I don’t know if Sue intended this but this song came to mind!]

Toys first: my CCTV is broken again.

Apparently when they say portable they don’t mean what I mean: hauled everywhere and set up and torn down twice or three times a day. I lost another pop rivet so my document tray does not slide properly.

Also, my vertical hold comes and goes. Remember Outer Limits? “We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical.” Whoever is controlling this is not me. It gets flipping enough to make me sea sick!

For future reference should you have this problem, we think it might be a loose wire. When I flipped the camera to distance viewing and brought it back, the flipping stopped.

Needless to say, it is going into the shop. It is going into the shop as soon as I get a loaner; that is…..Oh, and I am not paying the $50 diagnostic fee either. The cursed thing has a two-year warranty.

What can I say? I am hard on parts.

[Lin/Linda: if you were wondering about the title, when I read the above sentence, my mind went to the Wendy’s TV commercial where the catchy line is “parts is parts”.  Click here for the commercial.]

Today was also the vision loss support group. As anticipated, I was the youngest one in the group. I was also the most informed. I am half ashamed to admit that I ‘held court’ and lectured on my toys and some of what I considered to be AMD basics. The ladies – and they were all ladies – seemed receptive and asked me back.

I was a bit disturbed that several of the ladies admitted to owning iPads and having shoved them in a drawer!  They have no background or understanding of computers and they are afraid of them. The lack of knowledge about basic electronics – especially things that can make your life 100 times easier – was scary.

When I said you could get things in the app store I was asked if that was in this town or a town nearby! Oh my….

Which made me think some of you may be in the same boat.

The App Store is a blue and white icon on your desktop. It has a big A right in the middle.

Touch the icon/symbol and you will get a page of whatever apps they are featuring, often games. In the upper right hand corner there is a gray box that says search. Touch that and you should get a keyboard. Type in a keyword or phrase and then touch enter. Examples of keywords might be magnifiers, low vision apps, or knfbreader. Remember many apps are free but some like the knfbreader are for a fee. The ones for a fee you will need an Apple account. Actually, I think you need an account no matter. I always have to put my password in to approve the download. Lin, what do we have about opening an Apple account? [Lin/Linda: I’m posing that information below.]

That is about it for now. I have to email the group leader and remind her about passwords. Next month they are bringing their iPads!


Click here for a good place to start learning about your iPad.

Click here for instructions on how to create an Apple ID.

Click here for the ‘Dummies’ series For Seniors: Use the iPad Online User Guide.  There are also topics on this website about iPhones and Android devices (smartphones & tablets).

Next: coming soon!

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