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1. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting May 22nd 10am – 12pm
2. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting April 17 2-4 p.m.
3. Houston Deaf Awareness Week A Success!

Billy Koch – DAW 2010 Chairperson

Related posts:

1. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting April 17 2-4 p.m.
2. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting May 22nd 10am – 12pm
3. Houston Deaf Awareness Week A Success!

If you are interested in volunteering and assisting please feel free to show up the meeting, or email us at daw@deafhouston.org.  We’re looking forward to making 2010 a successful DAW event!  And we can’t do it WITHOUT you!

Houston Community College
San Jacinto Building
2nd floor Suite L321
1300 Holman
Houston, Texas 77004
June 26th, 2010
10 am – 12pm

Please email brad.porche@ghdc.us for parking decal before Tuesday 6/22/10.

See you folks there!

Related posts:

1. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting May 22nd 10am – 12pm
2. Next Protest Meeting – Monday at 7 p.m.
3. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting April 17 2-4 p.m.

If you are interested in volunteering and assisting please feel free to show up the meeting, or email us at daw@deafhouston.org.  We’re looking forward to making 2010 a successful DAW event!  And we can’t do it WITHOUT you!

Metropolitian Multi-Services Center
1475 West Gray
Houston, Texas 77019
Start at 10 am in Classroom #2

See you folks there!

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1. Deaf Awareness Week 2010 – Meeting April 17 2-4 p.m.
2. Deaf Awareness Week Meeting – July 17, 2010
3. Houston Deaf Awareness Week A Success!

The IRS allows ordinary and necessary travel expenses related to business. This means your business expenses should take a direct route to the primary purpose of your business trip. Overnight accommodations should be at a comfortable place such as a hotel or conference retreat. Accommodations shouldn’t be extravagant in luxury. Under the accountable plan, there is no tax reporting on actual receipts. The non-accountable plan, however, is reportable on Form W-2 for employees getting travel reimbursement in excess of actual receipts such as per diem or advance payments without using all of the funds.

If a traveling software salesman flies on a commercial jet to Los Angeles, stays at OMNI hotel, rents a Lincoln Town Car and drives around with his customers, then this may be an appropriate business tax deduction. Likewise using a limousine in Manhattan where transportation fares are reasonable and appropriate in this area may be acceptable. However, it’s not tax deductible for a local small business owner to fly on a private jet, rent a limousine and a book a large beach house for himself for a brief business lunch in Miami, Florida. So, some judgment is required in determining which business expenses appear reasonable and necessary.

If you are planning to mix your travel plans as business and pleasure, you will need to separate your personal expenses. Suppose Bob bring his family from Houston, Texas to Orlando, Florida for his jewelry tradeshow all day Thursday and Friday. Bob’s wife, Bonny, and their two children stay at his double bed hotel and they go to Disneyworld over the next three days while Bob works. They return home on Sunday night by commercial flight. Table 1 allocates Bob’s business and personal expenses.

Expenses
Allowable Business Expense | Non-deductible Personal Expense

Four roundtrip airfares at $1,200
300.00 | 900.00

Double-bed hotel room at $150 a night
300.00 | 300.00

Car rental $500
300.00 | 200.00

Two luggage check-ins at the airport
25.00 | 25.00

Disneyworld
600.00

Meals & incidental expenses (M&IE)* assume $49 per person each day
98.00 | 686.00

Total expenses:
1,023.00 | 2,711.00

*incidental expenses are taxis, shuttles, tips, fees, etc

Because Bonny and children are traveling for vacation, that is a personal expense. There are a few exceptions here. If a spouse has a bona fide business purpose such as coordinating the inventory logistics, booth setup, greeting customers, negotiating and handling the point of sales (POS), then this would be an acceptable business expense. But it is not tax deductible if Bonny stopped by her husband’s jewelry booth to help briefly with the credit card transactions during a busy lunch hour.

Now if you decide to be a road warrior from Anchorage, Alaska to Key West, Florida, then it may be as simple as hopping in the car and being on the road collecting your gasoline and motel receipts. When driving from home to a temporary place of work or a business conference, you have two methods to calculate your auto expense.

1. Mileage x IRS standard mileage rate (.50 as of January 1, 2010), or
2. Actual expense such as depreciation, lease payments, insurance, gasoline, oil change, auto license, inspection fees, repairs, tire replacement, etc

You will want to use the method that gives you the maximum tax deduction. But if you choose the mileage method, you must use this method in the first year of your auto for business. Then you may change this to actual expense in the second year and after.

For the mileage method, you can keep a log of your date of travel, purpose, beginning and ending miles or miles driven on a notebook, daily planner, calendar, Excel spreadsheet, or similar method. Choose a tracking method that is comfortable for you so you won’t get frustrated or overwhelmed with complexity and then procrastinate.

For meals and incidental expenses (M&IE), the self-employed can use the IRS standard meal allowance instead of calculating the actual receipts. For employees, we recommend using the actual receipt under the accountable plan. IRS Publication 1452 has a list of city per diem rates for a given time frame. Meals and entertainment are subject to a 50 percent limit. The daily rate may also be prorated to ½ or ¾ day rate for traveling days.

Even if you use the standard mileage and standard meal allowance deduction method, you will still need to collect receipts or card statements as proof of business travel. If you don’t have anything to prove your time, place, and business purpose of your travel, then the IRS will disallow your tax deduction.

To make all this easier during your business travel, have a designated envelope to store your receipts. Make a note on the purpose of your receipt. The travel envelope also comes in handy to note the amount and time when a receipt is not available such as tipping the bellman or when your taxi driver ran out of receipts.

When you get home, you can slip the travel envelope in your tax reporting box and catch up on work. Then designate a time to enter your travel expenses in the accounting books or give it to your CPA for your year-end financial and tax reports.

Howard Knight, CPA, is the owner of Howard Knight CPA firm. To comment on this article, he can be reached at hknight@biz-cpa.com.

CIRCULAR 230 DISCLOSURE: Any federal tax advice contained in this communication, including attachments and/or links, is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone for the purpose of avoiding federal tax penalties that may be imposed by Internal Revenue Code or applicable state or local tax law provisions or for promoting, marketing or recommending to another party any tax-related matters addressed herein.

Howard Knight
Certified Public Accountant
12 Greenway Plaza, Suite 1100, Houston, TX 77046 | www.biz-cpa.com
713.425.4922 | 713.568.3380 vp | 713.583.0280 fax | 713.387.9908 text message

Source

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Now with due respect, with the current economy, with the government cutting their spending, organizations are donating less and less to the non-profit organizations.   Agencies/Non-Profit organizations are closing all over the U.S. we feel that it would not be feasible to try to establish a center at this time.   Even though it is still a goal and a common ground we would like to achieve but the opportunity would be very limited.   So with this in mind – we are looking to suspend the Houston Deaf Forum but what we will continue to work on is trying to bring the community together to work together. 

We will continue to post on the Houston Deaf Network and will try to become more proactive by posting more information for the community at HDN.  So our first step would be to utilize Houston Deaf Network (HDN) as our resources to find ways to improve the services to the deaf and hard of hearing community.

The idea/concept is NOT dead , but just merely on hold until the economy gets better and the government and more increase their spending rather than cut their spending.

We “Thank” you for your support and look forward to the day we can bring a center here in Houston.

Sincerely Yours,

Houston Deaf Forum

The February 27^th meeting will be cancelled.

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2. UPDATE: 2nd Houston Deaf Forum Meeting – CANCELLED
3. CANCELLED – 2nd Houston Deaf Forum Meeting – Feb 27th

The agenda will involve establishing an organization that will become a better voice, unity and advocacy for the deaf and hard of hearing citizen of Houston and areas. Use the power of networking tools and spread the word so we can establish Deaf Resource Center. For detailed information on the agenda…

Meeting will start from 2:30 pm till 6 pm.

Located at:
Freed-Montrose Neighborhood Library
(Conference room – upstairs)
4100 Montrose
Houston, TX 77006

• Opening statement by Billy Koch and Bradley Porche.
• Result of the first meeting, show visual grid map of the response by the attendees.
• Explain the concept of a Mission Statement and Constitution.

Open to the floor

• Name of the Resource center.
• Feedback from the audience.
• Vote on name.

Close the floor

Explain what a Transition Director is and what are the roles and responsibilities.

Responsibilities include:

• Create and refine the Mission Statement through feedback with members.
• Create and refine the Constitution through feedback.
• Apply for 501 (c) 3 non-profit.
• Delegate task and responsibility of members in creating the so named Resource Center.
• Term is from 6 month to 12 month.
• Will cooperate with consultants (Bradley Porche and Billy Koch).
• Will assume the administration role of the new Facebook Fan Page once a Resource Center is named and the website (will be created).
• Maintain contact with the greater Houston community and have constant feedback.

Open to the floor

• Members will name individuals whom would be a good Transition Director.
• Several names will be called and will explain their reason of why they would be a good Transition Director. (Parliamentary Procedure will be applied)
• Vote.
• Billy Koch will oversee the proposal and vote.

Close the Floor

Once the vote is completed, the Transition Director assumes the role and takes over the meeting.

Opens the floor

Comments of the visual grid, mission statement, and constitution. (During that time ideas on Mission Statement and Constitution will be written and documented)

Close the floor

• Billy Koch and Bradley Porche will make their last statement.
• Transition Director will make the last statement

Meeting Adjourned

Hope to see you there!

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Judgment and reputation are two words that constantly revolve around us. There’s no way to avoid it unless you isolate yourself from the world. First, let’s clarify the definition of judgment. Judgment is the process of forming an opinion or evaluation by discerning and comparing. There’s a saying that we shouldn’t judge people. What they mostly mean is we don’t have the right to say someone is right or wrong in a subjective situation. This includes nice or rude, smart or stupid, humble or egotistic, pretty or ugly, awesome or suck, and so on. Ultimately, the sentimental value should hold true, but realistically, has anyone ever kept their end of the bargain? Think for a moment: your subconscious is the one and only thing that determines judgment and that is based on your own personal experience. In that area, there is an insurmountable number of opinions formed in every second, intentionally or unintentionally. Simply put, it is human nature. We judge.

Next, we have reputation which is the opinion of the public toward a person, a group of people or an organization. Reputation is an important factor that let people define who we are, but it is also entirely up to us how we reflect ourselves. Here’s an example, there is a video game called Mass Effect (a role playing game). It allows you to build and control your main character as well as the outcome of the game. There are groups of non playable characters (NPC) which you can converse with. In each dialog, three major choices are given in order to respond – positive, neutral, or negative. Every response you choose, NPC react accordingly. What’s revealing is how NPC behave differently towards a character depending on its reputation. The more positive you respond, the more helpful they are and vice versa if there is a negative response. The kind of reputation varies depending on the action we all make. Now imagine us in the real world, we all have our own characteristics and decide how we carry out our lives. The characteristics and the type of judgment we exhibit determine our own reputation.

The combination of judgment and reputation go hand in hand. People judge on the result of what you do, what you say, and what other people say about you. It’s not the question of who you are, but a question of how you conduct yourself towards others. The nature of those two aspects has a mysterious way that affects people. They can break or make you. When a topic gets mentioned about deaf community, there’s something that needs to be said as a group regarding reputation. There are certain things that rub people the wrong way and others who enjoy our culture. Granted, it’s not just only deaf, but hearing as well. However, we are the minority and we get a lot more attention than others. Therefore, we are scrutinized much more than hearing. Here are a couple of links that came to my attention from twitter related to deafness. What caught my eyes wasn’t so much about the news, but what was said in the comment section. Some of them were harsh, but certainly understandable.

brazilliandanny
Ive Bartended about a dozen ASL parties. I am a tolerant person and have no beef with any religion, race, group, ect. But in 10 years behind the wood deaf people were by far the most rude and ungrateful patrons I have served.

phughes
I was working an event for HLAA (Hearing Loss Association of America) in Nashville, TN recently. Their Gala Ball started with a tribute to the founder of the HLAA (formerly SHHH) who had recently passed away. His widow was there. There were people who had been with the organization for 20 years giving eulogies. Except, nobody would stop talking!

These people knew that the event had started, they just didn’t care. You have to understand that they have a myriad of hearing assistive technologies at these events: open captioning, sign language interpreters (on huge screens so everyone can see,) IR systems to plug directly into hearing aids and cochlear implants – hooked directly up to the sound system. These people were asked to stop talking 5 times before the program started, and it still took 5 minutes into the presentation before people quieted down……….I don’t hate deaf people, but I do lack sympathy. If you want to be treated well by the world I have some advice: stop acting like an asshole.

momoichigo
What I noticed from experience is they seem to think society has wronged them. I’m sure society has wronged them, but it also wronged many other people. Furthermore, they make it confusing and virtually impossible to not offend them. Half of them think it’s offensive to be called hearing impaired. Half of them think it’s offensive to be called deaf. Then, they retaliate by calling people who aren’t deaf, “hearing people”. It just all seem very childish to me. You don’t see blind people being offended for being said to be blind. It is what it is. If you can’t hear, you’re deaf. I eventually settled and decided I am going to call them deaf, whether they like it or not. If they don’t they can just suck it up, because that is who they are.

winterface
I used to volunteer at a place on the weekends that had several deaf people, and its always weird, One minute they will just be a little standoffish and the next complete jerks. I’ve only met one nice deaf person. The rest for whatever reason have been really rude.

You can read the rest here and here

One might ask, why should we bother to care what others think? That’s probably a typical response that most of you would answer. The attitude of “I’ll do what pleases me and if you don’t like it, then you can shove it” is common with the kind of people that like to believe that they live in their own world and nothing they do affects anyone. There is more concern about self and less concern about others. In retrospect, why should hearing people even care about us in the first place? Imagine ourselves asking these people for help and they just don’t give a hoot about deaf community itself. We just may never have the luxury of technology, services or whatever it is we need to survive. The judgment we make and how we establish ourselves should be delicately handled.

This isn’t to say that we should conform to please others. It is more of an obligation to seize, correct and educate deaf and hearing. The last thing we need is to create more bitterness and stereotypes that could potentially taint the image of deaf community and/or possibly hinder any progress to better the community. There’s no real easy solution. But before we can solve the problem, we first must correct our line of thought and change our attitudes. Bottom line, quit being a jackass, build up patience, develop a method to communicate–not just for yourself but others as well. Respect one another, educate, and whatever it is that we can do to help each other. Whether you like it or not, we all need each other. Everyone is connected in one form or another. We may not see it, but it is there if we look beyond the superficial.

In the end, you have to ask yourself – define your own reputation or let others define it for you. The choice is up to you. If you choose to inject your negative attitude around you, then you can certainly expect the same treatment from others. Best practice is do onto others as you would want others to do to you. How you conduct yourself and the values you live by are what define you and our culture. YOU are the most important influence in today’s world.

Related posts:

1. Defining professionalism…
2. Deaf Protest – One Guy’s Opinion…

Since the original launch of captions in our products, we’ve been happy to see growth in the number of captioned videos on our services, which now number in the hundreds of thousands. This suggests that more and more people are becoming aware of how useful captions can be. As we’ve explained in the past, captions not only help the deaf and hearing impaired, but with machine translation, they also enable people around the world to access video content in any of 51 languages. Captions can also improve search and even enable users to jump to the exact parts of the videos they’re looking for.

However, like everything YouTube does, captions face a tremendous challenge of scale. Every minute, 20 hours of video are uploaded. How can we expect every video owner to spend the time and effort necessary to add captions to their videos? Even with all of the captioning support already available on YouTube, the majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me.

To help address this challenge, we’ve combined Google’s automatic speech recognition (ASR) technology with the YouTube caption system to offer automatic captions, or auto-caps for short. Auto-caps use the same voice recognition algorithms in Google Voice to automatically generate captions for video. The captions will not always be perfect (check out the video below for an amusing example), but even when they’re off, they can still be helpful—and the technology will continue to improve with time.

In addition to automatic captions, we’re also launching automatic caption timing, or auto-timing, to make it significantly easier to create captions manually. With auto-timing, you no longer need to have special expertise to create your own captions in YouTube. All you need to do is create a simple text file with all the words in the video and we’ll use Google’s ASR technology to figure out when the words are spoken and create captions for your video. This should significantly lower the barriers for video owners who want to add captions, but who don’t have the time or resources to create professional caption tracks.

To learn more about how to use auto-caps and auto-timing, check out this short video and our help center article:

You should see both features available in English by the end of the week. For our initial launch, auto-caps are only visible on a handful of partner channels (list below*). Because auto-caps are not perfect, we want to make sure we get feedback from both viewers and video owners before we roll them out more broadly. Auto-timing, on the other hand, is rolling out globally for all English-language videos on YouTube. We hope to expand these features for other channels and languages in the future. Please send us your feedback to help make that happen.

Today I’m more hopeful than ever that we’ll achieve our long-term goal of making videos universally accessible. Even with its flaws, I see the addition of automatic captioning as a huge step forward.

* Partners for the initial launch of auto-caps: UC Berkeley, Stanford, MIT, Yale, UCLA, Duke, UCTV, Columbia, PBS, National Geographic, Demand Media, UNSW and most Google & YouTube channels.

Posted by Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer

Source – Official Google Blog

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Saturday, November 21, 2009 – 1:00 to 3:00pm
FREE EVENT for People who are Deaf or Hard of Hearing (Others are invited, too! Family, friends, parents, professionals, etc.)

• Do it Yourself!
• Know your rights!
• How to get an interpreter

Freed-Montrose Neighborhood Library
(Conference room – upstairs)
4100 Montrose
Houston, TX 77006

Accommodations for participants such as real time captioning (C.A.R.T.) or sign to voice interpreter services must be requested by Wednesday, November 18, 2009 by noon.

Contact info:
Brian Determan
Brian.Determan@caag4.com
www.caag4.com
VP/Direct 832.431.3844

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