Coming home for the summer, I wasn't sure if I'd be able to find an ASL class; when I did find a place to take classes, I was worried it'd be a beginner's class, and not all that useful. The class I started on Tuesday, however, is excellent. It looks like most of the class will be freeform conversation, which is perfect, and we'll be starting to work on interpreting skills - voicing for each other, and so on. In the 11 person class, we have 4-5 professional interpreters, so things are moving pretty quickly! Should be a blast. Even better, there's a beginner's class in the same building at the same time - Dad's taking that as a review, so I have a driving buddy. This is definitely the sort of class that could be repeated in the future, although I don't know how many more summers I'll be coming back to live with the 'rents anyway.

I recently re-read the BMEzine article about magnetic implants. Obviously a very different beast than the cochlear implant I'm - getting installed? hmm - next week, but I think there's some interesting parallels. Body enhancement, a delay between installation and utility ("For the first month I thought this was a failure; my main goal was to be able to sense things and I hadn't sensed anything so far."), 'cochlear moments' versus 'magnetic moments' (" Todays event was rather significant, it was not planned, nor was it forseen.") - yeah, yeah, laugh at the bad pun there. Quinn Norton, in particular, wrote some interesting stuff about human augmentation in general, though I seem to have lost said link.

There's even a bit of a reverse parallel - I'm toying with the idea of 'alternate uses' for my hardware. Will the CI magnet work to open my car door (which has a magnetic sensor)? Can I, uh, "hang stuff" from the magnet in my head? Nothing heavy, but more decorative-ish. I guess I'll get to find out soon!