Granted, I can still hear, but it is probably at about 75% of what I normally could hear at. It is annoying listening to people on the phone and it is like they are talking through a wet towel. It became highly apparent today during my one on one with my team lead and I honestly had issues. I could hear what she was saying, but it was very muffled to say the least.

Over the last two weeks I have had to listen very closely to what people have said, when they talk really low it is a crap shoot as to what they have said. I smile and giggle a little bit, or I move closer towards them to listen. It has been interesting to say the least. Jocelyn is annoyed beyond belief.

The doctor said that it has to do with some tubes behind my nostrils that are not working properly, they are letting things in, but they are not letting them out, basically clogging my ear canals. The suggestion is to get permanent ear tubes placed into my ears. This would eliminate me from being able to swim pretty much unless I used those heavy duty ear plugs which would in affect render me almost completely deaf while in the water.

Though on the positive side of things I would in fact not have any issues with flying, which could open up the path to doing more air based activities. I have an appointment set for Jun 16 to get more information on what I can and cannot do once this procedure is done.

This is finals week at Mesa. So basically two more classes and I am off for the remainder of the summer, then back again next fall for the second installment of ASL. Rather enjoying the class, I love the movements, I love the ability to communicate without speaking. As I have said time and time again, I could go through out an entire day without saying a single word and not complain in the least. Technology has allowed me to do that. I can chat with people online and email to communicate. It is the perfect medium to live without speaking. A day without spoken word is attainable.

Now, if I can communicate via sign, then i do not even need to talk to people if I can find others to sign with. It would in fact be epic. I would not want to lose my hearing, but it would be good to just not say anything.

I have been using Turbo Tax online now for probably the last three years and will do so again this year. So I was a little confused. I wandered up tot he library and logged in on my laptop to see the email message in full view and noticed that someone had used my email address for notifications. His name was similar to mine, first initial the same and last name being the same. I was one of the first folks on gmail and had set it up in that manner for myself, so I kind of lucked out. Well this guy in Kentucky may have fat fingered his notification email and it ended up on mine instead. So I was in fact getting his notifications. There was NO PERSONAL INFORMATION being emailed to me, just status updates.

This is where it got a little interesting. I decided, hey, if I was this guy and he was getting my emails about tax stuff, I would want him to reach out to me and tell me that it was messed up. I had his address, knew where he lived, knew his name, but had no phone number and had no clue what his email address actually was. So I did a search online and found nothing, facebook, myspace, and other locations with no luck.

I decided that I should contact TurboTax and see what can be done. Did the online chat with somebody that took almost twenty minutes to respond back to me, by then I had had enough and closed out of chat and decided to call up TurboTax directly. I believe that I ended up somewhere in India with the wonderful Indian guy named Peter. He was of absolutely no help, so I hung up on him after 5 minutes and made a post on twitter about how annoyed I was.

Lo and behold, I got a response from someone at @TeamTurboTax, a young lady by the name of Chelsea. She asked me to driect message her and I did, she followed up by sending me her email address and I forwarded on the correspondence to her. By morning I had gotten an email from her and Bob telling me that they have let the person know and that it has been taken care of. I have heard stories of how people have been helped on twitter and in general, I tend to use twitter to just rant and rave about stupid things and stupid people, but after 4600+ tweets, I finally found a good use for the service.

I did not need to talk to anyone, I did not need to do much, and all in all was very pleased with the quick response that i got. I felt comfortable that it was being dealt with by people that understood that I was not doing anything wrong, if anything I was just trying to help out someone that made a mistake. I also felt very good that the emails that i did get in regards to status notifications did not really allow me to log in as this person to get to any real pertinent data.

I will continue to use TurboTax in the future. The funny thing is, working with One Reverse Mortgage, a Quicken Loans Company, we are always associated with the good folks over at Intuit and much like how the folks over at Quicken Loans use twitter to help their customers, I felt very happy that our friends at Intuit were doing the same.