One (Really) Nice Comment...

I wrote a blog entry a few months ago titled "One Nasty Comment".  I won't go into the specifics, but if someone really needs to know the specifics of that, the entry was from October and can easily be found via the blog archive on the right.  But this isn't about that, but rather about a very nice comment that was relayed to me this morning.

When M came home from work this morning she asked me if I knew a particular lady - which I did not; but apparently this person knows J from her time there before she took her promotion and transferred.  Well, M went on to say that this person had ran into her this morning and had asked about J and then said she saw a photo of J and I on Facebook and asked if that was me.  M told her it was and apparently her comment was how pretty I looked and how she'd never have guess that I was P's biological father.

Now I know some would take offense at the latter part of that comment, but I am not one of them.  Don't get me wrong, I understand why some people don't like comments along those lines, but I really and truly believe that the vast majority of people who do make comments like that are honestly trying to be nice.  And the first part of her comment about how nice I looked, well that would have made my day regardless.  I, like plenty of other trans-women (and plenty of cis-women for that matter) don't really see myself as pretty or looking nice.  Yes J tells me I do plenty of times, and for that matter so do plenty of others such as M, and even random people from pictures I've posted here, on Reddit, on Facebook, etc.  But when J and/or M do it, I always wonder if they are just saying that because they care about me.  And when others do it in response to photos I've posted I also don't always put a whole lot of weight into it simply because the majority of those people are either friends or they are also trans-women (or trans-men in some cases) and I believe we as a community go out of our way to accentuate the positives when it comes to pictures.  I'm not saying that's a problem, in fact just the opposite as often times those kind words provide a much needed confidence boost.

But when somebody who is for all intents a stranger to me goes out of her way to say something nice, to me it just means more.  Now some who are more cynical than I tend to be might question her sincerity in what was said, and since I wasn't there I can't necessarily say with 100% certainty that they were genuine, but from what M has told me of the person she believes they were and that's good enough for me.

So long story short (or tl;dr for those who like Reddit) - a random person made my day this morning.  :)

With that I'll wrap up, and since I like to have a thumbnail when possible and I ran across some pictures on the camera that I haven't used here before here's one from early December - I believe I was going to a therapist appointment.

- M

Some Tech Support Gripes...

I normally don't talk about my job much here, other than the fact that they didn't handle the revelation that I was a Trans-woman very well.  That being said, I'm going to make an exception and do so here.  Without getting into too many details, I work remotely for a small software company.  It's a very small company and as such I do a little bit of a lot of different things.  Among them are second level support, documentation, some development, installation packaging, re-seller training, as well as managing things like our Exchange server and the like.  A great deal of that isn't really what I was hired for, but working at a small company you adapt and I do like my job and other than the issue above, I do like my boss.  We sell our software via re-sellers and not direct to end-users and as such our support is limited to those re-sellers and they are responsible for supporting their end-users direct.  As with anything some of those re-sellers have better people than others, so here are a few things that just drive me up a wall.

A couple of "disclaimers" first:

1. Now keep in mind, that I was hired away from one of our re-sellers so I spent several years doing that job and must have done it well as not only were my own customers happy, the re-seller made a huge issue about me leaving, and my current company felt it was worth it to hire me away and deal with the aforementioned issue that it caused, so I've "walked the talk".
2.  I'm a bit lazy tonight so anywhere you see C/E that means "call(ing)/email(ing)".
3.  All of these things aside, I do honestly like my job, but every so often I have to let off a little steam. :)

 That all being said, here we go:

• Is it really asking too much for those providing first level support to actually be able to convey the problem, including any error messages?  Nothing quite like getting a C/E and the person contacting us has no idea what the issue really is.
• On that note, as first level support, how about actually at least making an effort to duplicate the problem and troubleshoot it before C/E us for support.  Maybe it's different elsewhere, but that is the expectation our company has and one that I always followed.
• If you have to legitimately C/E for support, how about having somebody familiar with our product doing so?  Part of our re-seller agreements is that we are only supposed to take calls from people we have trained.  Now we're pretty flexible on that as for the most part a trained person can share enough knowledge with others to handle most support, but nothing like trying to help somebody who has C/E and they don't even know how to sign into the product and navigate their way around in it.
• If you are going to C/E about an issue and you aren't on the current maintenance release - or even worse not on the current version - or worse than that, on a version that is several versions back - how about checking the Readme's to see if the issue is fixed first?
• If you are doing to upload a database for us to troubleshoot/duplicate something, how about not using something standard like .ZIP or even .RAR to compress things with and not the "flavor of the day" file compression tool?
• And how about providing login information with the database?  
• I understand some people are more likely to be willing to be beta test sites than others, but as re-sellers, how about at least downloading the beta of a new version and spending at least a few minutes looking over it and the readme/documentation?  It's really frustrating to take C/E from re-sellers who don't do that and then come to me with end-users complaining about the way something does/doesn't work.  I've had the same one do it twice this week for two different sites.  They just upgraded them to a version that is 2+ years old and some things have changed.  Well, now that the version in question is 2+ years old, some things just aren't going to be changed since so many others are accustomed to them.  
• If you open up a support call and a fix/workaround/patch is provided, how about letting us know when you put it in place and if it took care of the issue.
• Speaking of the documentation from above, how about actually checking there every so often.  You might be surprised what you find and it might well save you a C/E and make you look a touch smarter with YOUR customer.

I could go on and on, but I think I've just about got most of this out of my system now.  As always thanks for reading. :)

- M

Alphabet Soup....

A short little quiz - who knows what the following mean?

• LGBT?
• SRS?
• GRS?

I would speculate that a large majority of those who are reading this probably can identify all of those, but for those that might not be able to, they are in order:

• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender
• Sex Reassignment Surgery, though I've also seen Sex Realignment Surgery and probably a few others.
• Gender Reassignment Surgery is one, but there are others such as Gender Realignment Surgery, Gender Reconstruction Surgery, Genital Reconstruction Surgery, and so on.

Many would refer to the above as Acronyms, but I believe in these cases that they are really Initialisms, but I'm not here to split hairs on acronyms versus initialisms. So what am I here for?  Well it comes down to the initialisms above and quite a few more - do we really need so many of them and even if we do, can't we try and settle on a common meaning for them?  If those of us that these intialisms really carry meaning for can't agree on what they stand for then how in the world do we expect those who they don't carry meaning for to understand them?

Now maybe I'm sheltered, or maybe the people I tend to interact with are sheltered, but in general a good portion of those people I interact with don't know what the term "cis" means.  Frankly, until I was into my own transition I didn't know what it meant.  If the public at large doesn't know (or possibly care) what the term cis means - do we really think that they are going to pay any attention to what GRS means, especially if we as a group cannot agree on that ourselves?

And it's not just those terms above, there are plenty more, here's a sampling:

• GAS / GCS
• AFAB / AMAB
• FAAB / MAAB
• QUITBAG
• LGBTTQQIAAP

And the list goes on and on.  Let's look at the first three sets of terms to start:

• Gender Affirming Surgery / Gender Confirming Surgery, but also Gender Affirmation Surgery / Gender Confirmation Surgery, and probably others.  Really?  Do we need even more terms to describe the process considering we have SRS and GRS.  And truthfully I had to actually look up for GAS stood for as that was one I hadn't seen before I started doing a little research for this post (yes believe it or not I actually do often do that before heading off on a tangent <G>).
• Assigned Female At Birth / Assigned Male At Birth - okay, fine.  But then we have:  Female Assigned At Birth and Male Assigned At Birth...  Really?  Two completely different initialisms for the exact same thing?  It really makes me want to bust out my favorite John McEnroe outburst - the relevant part occurs at about the 15 second mark for those who have never seen/heard it.  Even if we need one set of these, and I'm not saying we do or don't, do we really need two different (albeit similar) versions?

Now lets look at the other two terms, and before I get to them, is there anybody who can tell me exactly what each of these means without looking them up?  I'm sure at least someone can, probably more people than I'd expect, but I'm guessing the vast majority reading this wouldn't be able to identify every one of them:

• First off I would consider QUILTBAG to actually be an acronym, but that aside, can anybody actually agree on exactly what it stands for?   I've seen the Q stand for Queer and/or Questioning, the T I've seen for Transgender and/or Transsexual and/or Two-Spirit, the G I've seen for Gay and/or Genderqueer.    Most of the other letters seem to be more straight forward:  Undecided, Intersex, Lesbian, & Bisexual.  You'll notice I've avoided the A and that's because I've seen it generally used for Asexual, but I've also seen it used as Ally which has caused more than a few disagreements.  
• And then we have the elephant of initialisms: LGBTTQQIAAP which my understanding would stand for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning, Intersex, Asexual, Ally, Pansexual.  Again, how many people could have really listed all of those off, simply off of the top of their head?  And even then, I've seen people who cannot agree on those letters - though it's my belief that what I've had listed is probably the most common interpretation.  And even then there are those that say people are still left out.  Really?  How many letters do we need?  How far do we need to segment things?  At what point is enough really enough?

I'm not trying to marginalize anyone's feelings, but I really think that all of these acronyms and initialisms are out of hand.  Maybe I'm wrong, and it wouldn't be the first time, but rather than throwing more labels at ourselves, I'd rather that we had less - ideally none.  Should it matter that I'm a "trans woman" and a "lesbian"?  I don't think it should.  I see myself as a woman and to me it really shouldn't matter beyond that.  Why do I need those other labels?  Personally I can't come up with a good reason for them, all they do in my mind is push me away from where I want to be and who I am.  I don't need/want to be seen as "special" or "different" because I'm a Trans-woman versus a Cis-woman or because I'm in love with a woman versus a man.  I'm just me, and I think if the world as a whole would try and make more of an effort to have a similar viewpoint - well I think it would make things better for us all.

As always, just my opinions - feel free to agree or not.  :)

- M

Laser And "The Parts" - A Not So Fun Part Of My Transition...

I still need to get a few other posts finished, but I thought I'd write about this now while it was still *very* fresh in my mind...  I've talked about my own laser hair removal experiences off and on here and for the most part it's been a fairly good process.  But this isn't about my face.  Rather it's about the area due south of my face.  The main reason I'm choosing to write about this experience is that while I could find *a lot* of information about having facial hair done, I didn't find very much discussing the experience of having that area done - at least not from a Trans-woman's perspective.  Since I've benefited so much from information others have shared, I thought this was another chance for me to hopefully help others they way so many of them have helped me.

With that being said, I do wish to have SRS, and have been targeting 2016 as my goal for that.  The surgeons that I've looked into all at least recommend hair removal in the area if not flat out require it. To be clear, I'm not saying that *all* surgeons suggest/require it, I know for a fact that some don't - and I even believe there's at least one or two who discourage it, but the surgeons *I've looked at*, do at least recommend it.   I had been holding off on it both do the cost - since I'm still working on my face - as well as the fact that I wasn't sure where I could get it taken care of.  After much consternation, I finally decided last November to see if the same place that was doing my face could also handle this.  In hindsight I guess I was a bit embarrassed about broaching the topic, but my laser technician was wonderful about it and said it wouldn't be a problem.  The only real concern was my orchiectomy as they prefer to not touch any area that's had surgery until a year has passed and that won't be until the middle of February for me.  We agreed that I'd run it by at least one of my Doctor's - either my GP or the Doctor handling my HRT and get their opinion and assuming they had no issues, then we'd see about doing at my next session which would be in January.

Well, as it was I had appointments with both Doctors in the interim and neither one had an issue with it, so I was prepared to go forward when J and I had our appointment about 10 days ago.  After taking care of J and then my face, we had a quickie consultation.  It was similar to the one I had for my face a couple of years ago - basically she looked at the area in question to see what she would be dealing with, though in this case she also wanted to check the incision area to ensure she was comfortable with how it had healed before committing to work in that area; we also discussed cost as while they do post costs on their website - which by the way is something I wish more companies would do, their costs are always a "range" and they don't commit to a specific number within that range until they know what they are dealing with; and lastly we discussed what exactly I wanted done.  By that I mean, using Dr. Bowers for an example, she an outline of what she recommends on her website and in her case she suggests leaving some hair along the sides to help cover up the surgical scars.  However, I opted to have everything removed as I'm not really worried about visible scars down there as I'm happily married to J, so it's not like I'll be out dating/etc.

With that out of the way we made me a subsequent appointment for my first session in that area.  That appointment was last night.  Do to poor planning on our part, we scheduled the appointment without checking J's schedule rotation and she had to work which meant that best case was that she might be able to leave directly from work and meet me there.  I considered re-scheduling to make things easier as I not only wanted J there, but I knew I'd need her help in advance to ensure the area was completely shaved since portions of it weren't going to be easy for me to get to on my own.  But since I was eager to get this process started we elected to keep the appointment, which meant that not only would J have to meet me there as I said above; but that J would have to help me shave that area before she left for work which meant us getting up at 5am.  As usual, J was great and did get us up early and actually did most of the work for me - I simply cannot say often enough how much I appreciate all she does for me and how supportive she's been and continues to be.  I know there are plenty of great SO's out there, but I have a hard time believing that there are any that are any more supportive and helpful than she's been. :)

As it was, the laser place called about moving my appointment up some.  The initial time they suggested simply wasn't going to work as it was 15 minutes after J was to be off of work and she's nearly a hour from there, so we settled on 7pm which was a hour after J was off of work.  I knew it would be a stretch, but they have been so good to work with I went ahead and committed to that and hoped J would be able to make it.  Well, as she always does when I need something, she did get there right on time and we headed in.  The prior client was checking out (paying/making her next appointment), so we pretty much went straight on back to get started which was strange for me since normally I get there a hour early to have numbing cream put on my face.  That was/is an option for this, but just as with my face I wanted to try it at least once without the cream so that I'd have an idea of what it would feel like.  If it was too bad I figured I could opt for the cream there in the future, or do that myself since my GP had written me a prescription for Lidocaine cream which I have had filled.

Now at this point, I'm going to get into the actual process as it went for me.  I will point out that just as it was for my orchi, I didn't really "watch" the process as I'm a bit of a baby.  Most of what I'm going to say is based upon how "it felt".  However, as J was there and did actually help some - which I'll get into in a moment - if there are any questions about the process I can have her answer them and I'll update this accordingly.  So with that being said, here's how it went for me.

In one corner of the room there is a stool which is secluded by one of those three panel privacy screens.  The process started as it did for my consultation the session before.  I went back there and removed my clothing from my waist down.  In this case it was my shoes, socks, jeans, and panties.  Actually, I guess this is a good point to share a picture of what I was wearing as I just realized I haven't shared any pictures of me in a while:

The jeans are actually new and in hindsight were a poor choice when matched with those shoes they are longer jeans and with the wedge sneakers it made them ride up a bit (you can see the wrinkles around my thighs) - I should have worn a pair of flats or heels instead, but I digress.

Once I had removed things, I wrapped up in the sheet and went out and got on the "treatment table".  Our technician got J and I the protective eye wear and then had me shift into a better position which in this case was for me to fold my right leg up some and tuck my right foot against my left leg - sort of like a "Tree" pose in yoga, though my foot was more at the knee level than the inner thigh.  At that point she pulled the sheet back and took a look to ensure I was shaved sufficiently.  As it was, we hadn't been diligent enough in a few spots, but for the most part she said it was pretty good.  Now they will do the shaving for you, but if they have to, there normally is a charge for that; but even though she ended up having to touch up some places, she let it go - though she did point the areas out to J so we could do a better job next time.

At this point, she did clean up the missed areas, with some assistance from J as I am still a "bigger girl" and even in those areas where that wasn't a concern, it's easier to shave skin that is pulled taught that, so J was generally either helping keep things out of the way or pulling things taught for her.  This took a couple of minutes and then it was time to get started.  Now, as I said above I was NOT watching, but from what I could feel she was using a mid-sized attachment - it wasn't the small face one that I'm used to, and it wasn't the larger one she's used on the back of my neck, but it was similar to the one that I've had on my neck in that it uses the vacuum technology where it "sucks the skin in" and then zaps it.  She started on the area above the "parts" and really that didn't hurt much at all.  In fact, I suppose it almost made me cocky that this would be a piece of cake.  I'm not saying I couldn't feel it, but the suction wasn't bad and even the actual zap was more than bearable.  On a 10 scale with 10 being the most painful, I'd rate this area as a 1 or 2.  As she moved down the sides and around the parts, things did change.

Not to be too blunt, but when she moved down to the spot right above the anus and zapped there - well that was among the most exquisite pains I have ever felt - on my 10 scale from above, this was easily a 9, if not a full on 10.  The suction hurt some, but the zap - well, words can't really describe how it felt, but I definitely lifted up off the table.  Once I convinced the tech that I was fine to proceed, she continued on.  Suffice it to say the area between the anus and the testicles was fairly painful for me, these areas ranged from probably a 5 to a 7 on the 10 scale.  Not so much the zapping, but rather the suction as it seemed like no matter what they tried to do that it was pinching my skin.  I probably should have said something, but I didn't want to seem like a baby and as such I kept my mouth shut, but it did hurt.  However, not nearly as bad as the zap above the anus so I continued on.  Finally she came back to the penis area and the scrotal sack.  This was actually the area that concerned me - not so much for the incision as that has healed so well it's hard to even see now - but rather because without the testicles in there there is nothing to hold the area snug.  This made it it hard to shave and I feared it would make it even hard to laser because it would be hard to get the vacuum seal on the area.  This is where I really think it was beneficial to have J there.  I probably could have done what she did myself, but it was much easier to lie back and deal with the pain as it came and to let J help get things taut as needed.  She and the technician did such a good job that there wasn't any pinching as there had been in the area below that; but the zaps did hurt worse in this area.  Not as bad as my face does, but I also doubt the machine was up as high as it is for my face at this point either.  For this area I'd probably give it a 4 to a 6 on the 10 scale.

All told, we were in and out of the office in 25 minutes or so and this included a couple minute wait when we got there, me getting undressed/re-dressed, the process itself, and paying/scheduling my next appointment.  Now to mention some time dealing with the spots that were missed when shaving.  So I'd say the actual process itself was between 5 and 10 minutes.  Overall, I'd say it was probably about a 4 on the 10 scale of pain, but there were definitely some areas that were significantly more painful.  That being said, as it sits now I'm going to try another session without using the numbing cream to see how it goes.  One concession I did make is that I'm scheduling the appointments for this separately from my face as I don't think I'm up for that much pain at the same time; though if I do end up going for the numbing cream I'd probably consolidate them at that point.

As far as pricing goes, Infinity does publish their prices, though this procedure is sort of "off the menu" so to speak.  That being said, they do use "price ranges" to allow them some wiggle room based upon the client.  As an example I was paying more for my face than my friend D was - but I have a much bigger (ie fatter) face than she does and a *lot* more facial hair, so it is what it is.  For this procedure, it's running me $199/session - now assuming it takes more than 5, this should drop (I believe to $149).  Yes it's not exactly cheap - but when I was dealing with my face I tried a couple of cheap places with poor/no results.  Infinity came highly recommended and while they are a little pricier that many other places,there is no commitment, it is pay as you go, and they have gotten me results so it's been worth it for me.  And I cannot say enough good things about the people there, especially J and I's tech Susanne.  I'm not here to make a sales pitch for them, this is more about the procedure than anything, but if you are in the St. Louis area, I do strongly recommend at least having a consultation with them.

All told, I'm happy with how the session went, though J and I do need to be more diligent with the shaving next time.  I'm curious to see how things look down there in a few days, I will probably update this then.  With that I'll bid you adieu.  As always, if there are any questions feel free to ask here or via e-mail and I'll do my best to answer them.  :)

- M

Review: doubleTwist

While it was never really my intention to do any product reviews here, for whatever reason the few that I have done seem to hover around the top of the activity list, so as such here's yet another.  This one is a review of doubleTwist for Android/Windows.  For those that aren't familiar with the software (and up until two weeks ago that would have included myself), it allows for the syncing of an iTunes library with an Android device.  In my case that means iTunes for Windows, though I believe they also have a client for Apple computers as well, though as I don't have one of those I didn't delve into the specifics.  The second half of the puzzle is a client for Android which handles the sync and doubles as a media player.

A little bit of background is probably in order before I get into my experience with doubleTwist.  I've never really been an Apple person.  Back in the day I bought one of the first available portable .mp3 players - the Diamond Rio PMP 300 - and used it when M and I would go to Bally's to work out.  Well, our Bally's closed and the player only had 32MB of memory so it quickly got shelved, though I still have it floating around in the basement somewhere.  Eventually M talked me into an early Apple iPod for herself, one of the 30GB models and she loved it; but it meant we needed to start using iTunes to manage our music collection which agitated me a bit as I was happy with MusicMatch Jukebox.  Eventually I gave in and also got a 30GB iPod, but seldom used it except when I traveled.  On one trip to Las Vegas, I did stay in a hotel room that had an iHome alarm with an iPod dock and made the mistake of mentioning that to J when I got home and ended up with one of my own and soon the iPod was relegated to serving as a music source for an alarm clock that I really didn't use.  Eventually the battery died and rather than trying to replace it myself or having it done, it ended up in a box with other old/deprecated electronics.

But when I started walking last year, I decided I needed something to listen to and gave in and bought a cheap iPod shuffle.  It worked well enough, though at only 2GB, I had to get creative with what music I put on there, so I started playing with Smart Playlists in iTunes.  I have several, some are based upon star ratings, others on a combination of those ratings and play counts, and lastly others on a combination of ratings and last played date so I would cycle through music I hadn't heard in a while.  This was all well and good until I picked up a LG Tone Pro a few months ago.  I fell in love with it, but the iPod Shuffle doesn't do Bluetooth, so I quit using it and started using my phone.  The issue I had is that depending upon where I walk in our neighborhood my cell signal can cut out at times, so I listened to a lot of downloaded pod casts at first.  But I really missed my music and decided to see what my options were for my iTunes library.

I considered simply buying a Bluetooth adapter for the Shuffle, but the ones I saw were as big (if not bigger) than the Shuffle itself.  I then looked at getting a more expensive iPod that would use Bluetooth, but for the little I use it for that seemed overkill.  I then looked into my options for my phone - currently a Samsung Galaxy S4 since I gave my Note 4 to J shortly after getting it.  I'm sure there are other options out there, but the three main ones I saw were:

1. Manual sync.
   
2. Google Music.
   
3. doubleTwist.  

Manual sync wasn't really an option as for what I was doing - just walking really - it wasn't going to be worth the effort to update songs often.  Google Music sounded good at first, but then I realized I'd likely run into the same issue as using any other streaming service such as Milk Music (which I really do love - thanks Samsung), so that got shelved too.  That left me with doubleTwist, and with the balance of this review.

The doubleTwist software can be downloaded freely from their website (the Windows portion) and from the Google Play store (the Android portion), though the latter does have some in-app purchases available which I'll get to in a bit.  Installation of each is straight forward enough, though for the Android piece, I did need to go alter my music location to point to my SD card and not my phone's internal memory.  I won't delve into all of the details of setting the sync up and such as the documentation and other reviews do a far better job than I could; but let me instead touch on my experiences with the sync and the program(s) themselves.

The Windows piece is fairly straight forward.  In my case it located my iTunes library just fine, which was nice since it sits on a NAS device on my desk so that everyone can access one set of files.  However, this led to my first issue.  When the doubleTwist client first starts it brings up a sync window for each removable device it finds, which in my case was my phone, my iPod, and a SD card for a mobile hots pot that I had plugged in.  It would be nice if there was some way to configure what did/didn't pop up as each comes up in it's own window like this one:

The box you see at the bottom is my device name which I blanked out, but otherwise this is the default screen when the app starts.  The problem I ran into was when I went to sync the music from the music screen:

As you see in this screen it allows me to select music via playlists, albums, artists, or genre's all of which would be fine.  What my issue was is that apparently because of the size of my library - around 32k songs at about 205GB - which is by no means tiny, but frankly not all that big compared to many people's - it took a good 25+ minutes for the library to load.  In fact it took so long I kept killing the application thinking it was hung up.  It got to the point that I felt perhaps the issue was the USB sync since the doubleTwist help pages mention that some phones don't play nicely and my S4 appeared to be potentially one of those.  So I decided to go with one of the in-app purchases which is AirSync.  This allows for syncing over the local wi-fi, which I really thought would be more of a pain than the USB sync, but at this point I figured it was worth a try since I really did want this to work.  Rather than spending $5 of so for that, I went ahead and spent something like $9 to simply go with the "Pro" version which included AirSync as well as a few other features that I'm not really sure I cared about.  In hindsight the AirSync itself would have been sufficient, but without jumping too far ahead I'm happy enough with the app I'm glad I went with the Pro version as I've gotten my money's worth.

Well, the AirSync takes an additional bit of setup to sync the Windows piece with the Android piece, but that was fairly painless - sort of like some Bluetooth devices with a "code" work.  However, the library was still not coming up so I finally left it sit and went and washed the dinner dishes and cleaned up the rest of the kitchen and lo and behold when I got back a little later it was on the music screen I showed above.  I picked two of the smallest playlists I had and hit sync, and it quickly did it's thing.

I then went into the Android app to see how if it would actually worked.  Below are some screen shots - the first is my default view which I have set to "Songs", though that is configurable.  The second is a menu, and the third is of it playing a song - in this case "Blow Me (One Last Kiss)" from Pink which is currently a favorite of mine - no judging - LOL:

The player itself is nothing overly special, but it does work for what I need and I am happy with it.  I believe the Album art is part of the aforementioned "Pro" upgrade and truthfully isn't really a think I care about as when I'm listening it's via Bluetooth and the LG Tone Pro can control the player so my phone is either lying on my desk, the kitchen island, or in my pocket/on my belt.  

That being said I do have some thoughts/issues with the player that I want to touch on.  Now none of these are "deal breakers", but they are annoying to varying degrees.

1. I normally chose to start with a song I'm in the mood for, which is fine, but the player then plays in alphabetic order which I don't like.  There is a shuffle all button that you can see in the top screen shot and that works; but it immediately shuffles to the next song and does not complete the current song which agitates me.  This can be worked around by hitting the shuffle icon on the playing screen (third screen shot above), but I'd personally prefer to have the "shuffle all" option simply shuffle *after* the current song has finished.  And regardless of my personal feelings on that, I think it's less than optimal UI design to have the shuffle work differently between the two ways of initiating it.
   
2. Play counts and last played date/times do sync back to iTunes which is important to me because of my Smart Playlists.  However, iTunes and my iPod only update these counts and date/times upon completion of a song - at least from what I can tell.  doubleTwist will update if a song was played at all, even for a brief moment which is agitating since I do skip songs.  Additionally, the date/time is 6 hours behind - I'm assuming that's because of my offset from UTC (6 hours) and I have broached this with their support and "it's an open issue" at the moment.
   
3. The sync process itself is fairly quick for updating my music, as each sync the Smart Playlists that I have set to sync will change based upon music plays, but updating play counts and last played information in iTunes does seem to take longer than I'd expect.  Perhaps this is an iTunes issue, but one I felt I should mention.
   
4. On my phone at least the equalizer, which I believe is also part of the "Pro" upgrade will not initialize.  Again, really just a small agitation, but considering it was a part of the price difference from just enabling AirSync and getting the "Pro", it really should work - I didn't see any references to it being an issue with my phone model.

And to summarize my issues/thoughts on the Windows piece:

1. The sync client on my Windows machine crashes every couple of days.  This in and of itself wouldn't be a big deal if it didn't take 25+ minutes each time it was restarted to load my library.  It would be nice if it could use a "cached" copy right away while it was loading the actual library.  Perhaps that's not feasible, but it would make me far happier with the product.
   
2. The documentation for the Windows piece is a bit dated, the screen shots are of an older version and the current version has had some media functionality removed.  I don't really care about the functionality changes as I do use iTunes on the PC for playing music, but it was agitating when I was looking at the documentation over my slow library load times.

All in all I am happy with doubleTwist.  I do think the AirSync is worth the price, though I'm not sure the "Pro" was.  Overall though, despite the fact that I do like the software and have used it quite a bit I'm hard pressed to give it more than 3 1/2 stars out of 5 due to the various "issues/annoyances" above.  I will say I did post something about the UTC time issue mentioned in #2 in the player list above and got a response from doubleTwist fairly quickly.  Granted the response was that it was "an open issue" as I mentioned above, but the fact that they responded as quickly as they did made points with me.

Overall, I'd probably be happier with an iPod that had Bluetooth than trying to make iTunes and Android play as nicely as I want, but since I'd rather just carry my phone and I'm not interested in moving to an iPhone, I believe doubleTwist does enough to make me happy.

- M

The Statistics Of Transition...

This post is one of the several that have been "simmering" for days/weeks.  When I initially started writing it I *thought* I had quite a bit to say on the subject.  However, as time has passed, I've become less enamored with the topic.  However, I had enough written that I thought I'd at least tie those thoughts together and post it anyway.  So....

There was a post recently in one of the Transgender Google+ groups I'm a part of that caught my eye.  It was a link to a video, but what drew my attention was actually some of the comments on it.  Specifically a discussion of what percent of marriages survive transition.  Unfortunately for me, I was busy at the time and never got to take part in the discussion.  However, it did get me to thinking and as such I'm going to share some thoughts here.

Apparently there is a statistic floating around that says only 7% of marriages survive transition and the person that mentioned it maintained that the actual statistic was 45% of marriages survive.  Divorce rates in general are apparently a very inexact science - more so than I would have thought; but looking around I've seen divorce rates in general quoted at anywhere from around 35% to in excess of 50% for first marriages and often even higher for subsequent marriages.  Assuming those divorce rates are even at least semi-accurate, that would lead *me* to believe that marriages involving a transition probably survive less than the 45% number above; but I also firmly believe it's far higher than the 7% number above.  But what I believe isn't really the point here, but rather the statistics themselves.

When I seriously started contemplating transition a couple of years ago - I say "seriously" as I had thought about it for nearly three decades, but never really felt it was an option until a couple of years ago - I did a *lot* of research as I've mentioned before.  I looked into many things including the aforementioned divorce rates, not to mention suicide rates, the rates of regret for those that transitioned, and so on.  What I found was that the numbers were all over the place.  Now, that in and of itself didn't really surprise me as statistics seem to have a habit of doing that, but I really felt that the statistics surround transition were really extreme - I think the marriage numbers a couple of paragraphs up illustrates that.

So what's my point?  Well, I guess it's that I'm frustrated.  I really find it hard to not question the motives behind some of these stats.  I believe that in general, people do try and find the best statistic to support their own views, but in this case it really seems like the anti-transition crowd has taken things to the extreme.  As someone who has transitioned and has a wonderfully supportive spouse, maybe I'm naive, but I just have a hard time believing that only 1 in 14 - roughly the 7% figure from the video I mentioned above that caused me to start writing this - of marriages can survive a transition.  And it's not just the marriages - suicide rates are often quoted as being extremely high - I've seen numbers quoted as high as 9 times the national average.  I'm not saying that the numbers are not higher in the Transgender community - in fact I'm pretty certain they are.  But I also think that the number is at least somewhat disingenuous in that the numbers I've seen usually don't differentiate the rationale behind the rate.  By that I mean, how many of those who do try (or even worse succeed) in suicide do so because they can't get the treatment they need, or because they are discriminated against, and so on.  Again, those that are anti-transition seem to want to gloss over those facts.

Of course there are other factors involved here.  I believe accurate sampling is a problem for a couple of reasons.  I'll use myself as an example here on the marriage front.  I'm on my second marriage.  My first one to M has been documented off an on throughout this blog; and I think I've made it pretty clear that we were never right for each other.  We had sex, she got pregnant, we got married.  If you had asked me 10+ years ago why we were divorced, I could have listed any number of reasons and they would probably all have contributed to it:  she was too young, I was too naive, my family was a problem, her family was too - though to a lesser extent, and so on.  If you had asked me even 2+ years ago when I chose to transition, my answers would have been the same.  But now, while I still stand by all of those reasons, I do think that the fact that I am a Trans-woman did play a part in things.  She honestly could not (and still could not) deal with the social stigma of being looked at as a "Lesbian".  She wanted some "big strong man" and even if I had never chosen to transition, that person was not me.  But even though now I feel it probably did factor into things, I don't consider it "the reason" for our divorce.  However, depending upon how the question were to be posed to me, it would change my answer.  If I were being surveyed and the question was "did your transition cause your divorce?", my answer would be no.  But if the question were phrased just a touch differently such as "did your transition contribute to your divorce?", well then at this point I'd probably say yes as I feel it was a factor, just not the over-riding reason.

How many others can say the same kinds of things?  In plenty of cases perhaps a transitioning spouse does lead to a divorce; but in how many cases is it really just the match that lights a fuse of bigger issues?  For that reason alone, I question any divorce rate statistics when it comes to couples where there is a transition.  Further, sampling has to be an issue.  If there cannot be a consensus of what the overall divorce rates are, then how can there be one on a subset of that data?

I guess I should wrap this up, as like I said above the bulk of this was written weeks ago when I was a bit more fired up over things; but despite the fact that I've cooled off a bit over it, I am still frustrated over the fact that people seem to grab whatever statistic serves them best and tosses it out there often without any regards to whether or not it's truly accurate or not.  Is it asking too much for people to make sure they have accurate - or least as accurate as can be - statistics before they start spreading them as fact?

As always thanks for reading my ramblings. :)  Now I just need to get around to finishing the other half dozen or so posts that are currently in limbo.

- M