The Grumble Thread - No energy for a full on rant.

[interzen]

Is it not time that hearing aids came with a rechargeable mini usb port so you could charge at your PC like every other gadget?

I'd be more inclined to look at increasing battery life - 10 days is a bit, well, shit really.

Not that I know much about hearing aids, mind - I'd wouldn't have thought that they were a particularly high power application, but then again having a honking great battery attached to the side of your head is hardly ideal either. Even so, 10 days?!

(this has sort-of piqued my curiosity - I'll have to ask my Dad how long his hearing aid batteries last)

[barakta]

Tiermat's vibes must've hit me, my sodding hearing aid did the beepy bastard mode and I forgot to change after first beep so it started going off while I had a client with me (ffs). So I did a quick "excuse me, hearing aid's gone flat" delved into my coat and switched to the other hearing aid so I can use that one's battery first..  No idea where my packs of batteries are - I'd have to actually open my drawers which are untidy and full of munchies, tools and postits of stuff to find them...

As for how long they last, mileage varies, I get 6-10 days but my HA is a BAHA which means it has a great big honking transducer in it.  Much will depend how much of the HA's capacity is being used e.g is it being used at full volume or not, how many hours a day etc.  Mine spends many hours OFF as well as in use but if I have bad tinnitus I use music which drains it more...

I think HAs do a pretty good job considering how tiny they are, how they have to live in sweaty environments, do a load of DSP and be reliable.  Cheap, fast, good, pick any two.  USB chargeable batteries would be useful but probably not very efficient or something.  They're just about releasing HAs with bluetooth in them in they're swanky...  My hearing aids will be 10-15 years behind the curve cos they're obscure.

[jsabine]

10 days doesn't feel a long time, and I was going to comment on them being zinc-air batteries which (AFAIK) start to self-discharge fairly rapidly as soon as they come into contact with air.

But they do seem to have greater energy density than silver-oxide cells, which would be the obvious alternative in that sort of size: looking at typical cells on the CPC/Farnell site, the ZA31s sit at 210mAh, while SR44s are slightly bigger yet offer only 165mAh. (The alkaline equivalents, LR44, are even worse at about 110mAh - no wonder they're so shit in cameras ...)

[barakta]

Yeah, and the 44s are the bigger ones which I use a 675 cell.  Tiermat and most hearing aid users have 13s which are smaller with orange tabs on them usually...

I am just old enough to remember box aids... Just.

[Kim]

Is it not time that hearing aids came with a rechargeable mini usb port so you could charge at your PC like every other gadget?

Cochlear implant processors often do (well, use rechargeable Li⁺ batteries, no idea about USB specifically).  I can see BAHAs doing so at some point, when they catch up with the technology curve.  Regular air-conduction hearing aids (even those with funky DSP in them) aren't that power-hungry, though, so a battery that lasts a week or two seems like a reasonable approach.

The long-term solution to this one seems to be to power them with body heat, or even longer off, to power implantable devices using glucose from the blood.  There's research progressing slowly in both areas.

[Kim]

10 days doesn't feel a long time, and I was going to comment on them being zinc-air batteries which (AFAIK) start to self-discharge fairly rapidly as soon as they come into contact with air.

I measured the current draw of barakta's old BAHA at one point.  It was only a few times greater than the specified self-discharge of the zinc-air cell.  Becomes pretty significant if you're turning them off overnight.

[clarion]

*imagines Tiermat sat at his desk with his head bent down so his ear reaches a USB port*

[Kim]

*imagines tiermat sighing in frustration, standing up and then bending backwards inna limbo-dancing style to try again, because USB connectors are always the other way up*

[Mrs Pingu]

 

[clarion]

Kim wins.

[Ruth]

+1   

[Cudzoziemiec]

What the fuck has happened to yahoo mail? It looks ghastly, no differentiation between lines, my folders disappear every time I look at the inbox, and worst of all, the actual mails have been inverted - instead of having a reply appearing at the top, above the original mail, it now appears below. Or in the middle. Or somewhere but you can't find it all, even though you know there's a new one. I don't want bloody pretty pictures to choose from, I want clarity!

[interzen]

What the fuck has happened to yahoo mail?

It's the Dilbert Principle - to whit: if it ain't broke, fix it until it is.

[tiermat]

Going back to battery life and HAs.

Part of the reason I "only" get 10 days is that I actually need a fair bit of amplification in the ear that is affected.  There is also the fact that, yes, they are ZAs, so start running down as soon as you remove the orange tab.  The third thing is that the design is old, I have the NHS standard BTE* digital hearing aid, a Danalogic 6 (also known a GN Resound <something or other>).

If I had a couple of grand to spare, which I don't at the moment, I would be going for a Phonak Naida 3, which is offered in a type that would suit my hearing loss and is waterproof.  The latter point is relevent, as I have gone through 3 of these units in 5 years, all failed for the same reason, water ingress (one from forgetting I had it in and getting the shower, the other two from cycling)

Oh, yes, Kim wins on the USB charging stakes...

*Behind The Ear, as opposed to In The Ear, as the latter are only suitable for mild hearing loss and make you look like a Martian.

[barakta]

I'm sure the NHS can do some Phonak Naidas but I suspect they don't do the waterproof ones.  I have only twice had close misses with waterproofness as an adult which is impressive as I can't tell you if the BAHAs are in or not without tapping my head to check.  As a child my sister did a good line in chucking my old aids in the bath but we got good at shaking the water out, and drying them overnight.

I have very little choice of aids although more than before as Oticon got in on the market and I hear their aids are better.  My issue is I don't want any of that stinking programmable shite unless *I* can programme it myself kthx etc.  I just about tolerate a digital non-programmable BAHA with the "AGC turned as low as it goes" and there are still sound situations it is atrocious in namely engine noise (cars, buses) and live music which it tries to squelch.  If I didn't listen to my music via direct audio input leads that would be a dealbreaker although in my case I *had* to upgrade as I was previously using an analogue BAHA released in 1993!

Can you get those hearing aid superseals a la http://www.connevans.co.uk/catalogue/187/Super-Seals ?  People seem to speak highly of them and my mum's deaf pupils (Mum's a teacher of the deaf) have them too if you have the tweezer tool it's a 2min job to put them on and off.

ITE aids are weird and not half as discreet as people think, and much less reliable as well as only being suitable for very few people.

[tiermat]

I *believe* our NHS trust can do waterproof/splashproof HAs, but trying to get to see the ENT specialist is a right royal PITA, so I just go along with getting the thing replaced every couple of years or so.

[barakta]

Ah one of those ENT has to recommend it jobs?  My mum's ENT and audiology seem to act like completely different entities to the point audiology wouldn't give her copies of audiograms because "they belong to ENT" so mum would have to pester them to print 2x copies and then ask the ENTdoc who would be like "yeah but why didn't you ask audiology".

And more annoyingly, she gets a hearing test before ENT appointments but they can't test her hearing before programming her aid and as her hearing has not yet settled to a stable level that means her hearing aids are wrongly tuned for weeks on end.  And this is an assertive ToD who keeps going back cos her moulds are badly fitted and is giving up and going to her pet audiologist colleague for alternamoulds even if she has to cough up for them herself..

Stepping Hill = shithole.  I wouldn't do audiology there if I could do anything else, they're really not very good and snotty with it.  Shame cos its previous instance in Stockport audiology pre 1993 or so was a lovely man who knew his stuff and was very good to me and his old folk.

[Bledlow]

Kim wins.

True. 

[matthew]

*imagines tiermat sighing in frustration, standing up and then bending backwards inna limbo-dancing style to try again, because USB connectors are always the other way up*

But surely that is the point of having a USB hub in the monitor.

*imagines tiermat sat with his back to the monitor, because the hearing aid is in one ear and the usb port on the other side of the monitor*

[interzen]

I'm an idiot.
I usually forget something when I go to work, and today that something happens to be my blood glucose monitor 

It's not even USB-powered, either ...

[peliroja]

What the fuck has happened to yahoo mail?

Marissa. 

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

Our electronic client record system thingy is called SWIFT and it is a) a heap of fetid rats' cocks, and b) very badly named. They've bought a new interface thingy for it so SWIFT still staggers* along in the background but the bit we see and do things with is different and much easier to use. So far so good. But, in old SWIFT (which we have used since April 2006), the search screen has surname above given name, and the shiny new interface has given name above surname. How long do you think it'll take us to get used to that? And, old SWIFT lets you clear the search screen with shift+F4 (although, to be fair, it didn't always actually clear things) but the new one has a CLEAR button and no shift+F4. I think that's going to take a while to get used to too.



*there's a reason I didn't say runs in the background

[barakta]

My Fresher's "flu" was getting better yesterday and has come back with a vengeance today.
Annoying colleague dumped me in a tech advice chain without giving me the full-story so the advice I gave was completely useless - a headsup would have been nice...
DRUGS!

<B>EDIT - AntiGrumble</b> Ibruprofen is my friend *noms*! I haz TEA. I'm managing some productivity one step at a time. Only one student today. Other departments in uni are being lovely and helpful.   Can see bottom of inbox even if not the bottom of TODO.

[Guy]

O what a godawful morning
O what a godawful day
I've got a horrible feeling
The rain isn't going away

[Guy]

I was wrong about the rain. It did stop. Yesterday afternoon. Ten minutes after I got home yesterday afternoon.