[Nfbsf] Minutes from December NFB Chapter Meeting

[Jim Barbour]

Attendees:
Ed Vaughan
Joanne Vaughan
Bryan Bashin
Christina Daniels
Tim Elder
Al Arnick
Ed is Vice President
Ed and Joanne are going to the Opera.

Next Chapter Meeting: Tuesday, January 13th.

Then, every 2nd Tuesday of the month.

I have attached a calendar invitation to this email, but I'm not sure if the listserv will allow it through.  If there is a calendar attachment to this email, you can click/tap on it to add an event to the calendar of your choice, including your iPhone calendar.

Making Calls:
These fine folks have each agreed to make 5 phone calls.  Ed, Kate, Al, Jim, Tim, Christina.  Thanks to you all!  Expect an email from me in about a week.

2015 Scholarship Applications are Out: https://nfb.org/scholarships

Washington Seminar is approaching, delegates have been selected.  Two of the issues are: Fare Wages and the Teach act.  The third issue is not yet decided.

NFB's Bid For Equality ended Thursday.  Sorry, your secretary didn't get this out in time to include a link.  I'm hoping those who wanted to bid were able to find the link.

Holiday Party is happening on December 13th.  See the invitation at the bottom of these minutes.

The blind blood drive is coming on January 21st at the San Francisco Lighthouse.  Please participate and give back to the community.

Bryan received an email from Romania asking if we were really having a
blind blood drive.  They convinced the medical authorities in Romania
that blind people giving blood is okay.

Bryan talked about a civil rights issue where a blind guy from Holister who was at a VA clinic.  He's a guide dog user who was told by an administrator of the VA that he could not have his guide dog in the waiting room.  The gentleman was escorted out.  Bryan and Tim are working with this gentleman.

The latest presidential release is here: https://nfb.org/images/nfb/audio/pr/pr434.mp3

If you want to subscribe to the presidential release as a podcast, you can give this URL to your podcast listener of choice:  https://nfb.org/images/nfb/audio/pr/pr-rss/rss.xml

Favorite iPhone Apps, tips and tricks:
Tim has an iphone 5, but wants an iphone 6.  his favorite apps are facebook, stocks, tweetlist pro (for managing and posting tweets), mail, and messages apps.  

Tim and Christina each like the voice dream reader.  This is an app that reads long text based content, including unprotected daisy books, html, pdf, html, etc. offering many different text to speech voices.

Christina likes the kron4, politico, huffington post, cnn, slate, and NPR apps for news.  Also, access world has an app.  The TV Guide app is also accessible.  The BARD app is a great way to read NLS books.  The Kindle app is accessible.  The verizon account management app is also accessible.

Bryan likes the KNFB Reader Mobile app for reading text.  Very accurate and very, very fast.  Blind Square and The Seeing Eye GPS are both great orientation apps.  You can use them to figure out what streets, stores, points of interest, etc. you're passing.  The Seeing Eye app can route you to a destination.  If you use Blind square, you'll need to rely on apple or google maps, both accessible, for routing.  The newsline app is an app that reads newspapers made available by NFB Newsline.

Kate likes the S F Gate app.  Kate also likes routesy, which is a great app for getting public transit schedules.  Kate also uses flywheel, which is a taxi haling app. Kate uses the NPR app as well.

Comcast has started doing accessible set top boxes.  You'll need the X1 box.

Invitation to Holiday Party:
From: LIsamaria Martinez
Subject: Ticking Down The Days Until We Can Celebrate Together!

We're a little late in getting this invitation out this year, but we hope that you can mark your calendars for the Bakker Martinez annual holiday party and white elephant gift exchange.  So bundle up, get into your preferred mode of transportation and join us this year to celebrate because we can.

For those with young ones, bring them along; Erik is hosting too!

What? A fantastic time with friends to celebrate the wintery holidays and white elephant gift exchange (See below for rules).  Where? The casa of Joe, LM and Erik located conveniently near the Union City BART station; or for those driving: 34904 Herringbone Court, Union City.  When? Saturday December 13, from 7:00 pm until midnight.  Why? Because we do it every year.

Please RSVP to Lisamaria (LM) via email at lmartinez217 at gmail.com or call/text 510-289-2577. See you at our home soon!

Cheers,
Joe, LM & Erik

White Elephant Rules

1. Each guest must bring one wrapped gift that does not exceed $15 and place it with other gifts under the tree.

2. Each guest will have the opportunity to draw a number to determine order.

3. The person who draws "1" gets first pick from the pile, making sure to describe the gift to other participants.

4. Once opened, the person who draws number "2" starts the second round. They can either choose to "steal" the first person's gift or open an unwrapped gift from the pile.

5. Once number "2" has gone the person who drew "3" repeats the same process of choosing to "steel" an opened or unwrap an unopened gift.

6. Gifts can be "stolen" 2 times per round, and gifts cannot be stolen back from the person who stole from you.

7. Game continues in this fashion until all gifts have been opened.

8. The person who drew "1" gets a chance at the very end to "steal" a gift or remain with the gift they have.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: text/calendar
Size: 1999 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://nfbnet.org/pipermail/nfbsf_nfbnet.org/attachments/20141208/e7104b61/attachment.ics>