BlindOnlineSuccessSystem.com

Archive for May, 2008

This video shows more video of the blind boxer in Uganda so that visitors to this blog can see blind people achieving success. For those that are blind or visually impaired, this has no substantive audio so we did not include an autoplay link.

The East African country of Uganda has produced world-class fighters. The sport was encouraged in Uganda by former colonial power Britain thinking it would make its forces more fearsome. But many of the nation’s fighters, despite being tremendous fighters, aren’t prepared to step into the ring with Bashir Ramathan.

Despite going blind, Bashir continues to train and fight. A damaged vein behind his eye killed the nerves and lead to his blindness about eight years ago. His blindness was not related to his boxing.

Bashir says "I don’t consider it a big problem,"

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/ugandas-blind-boxer/2498127658

Check out the full story of the blind boxer, and discover the sad statistics on blindness in Uganda by reading the entire story at:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/11/07/2084210.htm

"When the doctor said I was going blind, I thought: I will have to stop boxing," Ramathan said. "Then I thought: why not carry on? It was tough at first, but then it got easier."

"My message is: keep trying, things can work," he said.

Who says you need eyes to bowl a perfect game?  78 year-old Dale Davis of Alta, Iowa bowled a perfect game on May 3rd of 2008 at the Century Lanes Bowling alley.  A matter of fact, in the entire existance of the business, there never had been a perfect game bowled there before Dale Davis.

People in the Bowling alley weren’t paying much attention until Dale was about to bowl his final strike.  That’s when people left the bar, and stopped bowling and gathered round lanes 3 and four to see if he could do it.
When Dale threw the ball down the lane, everyone was silent, until you heard the all too familiar colonk colonk of the pins being knocked down.  Then somebody hollered, "brooklyn!"  In bowling terminology, a Brooklyn is when the strike that is made when the ball somehow crosses over the 1-3 pocket.

Now you may be asking yourself, if Dale can’t see, how on Earth does he make all those strikes, winding up with a perfect game of 300?  I don’t think that anybody really knows, accept for Dale himself, and according to him, he has a feel for it.  He knows how the ball is going to hit the pins when he throws it.  He knows what it is going to be by the sound of the ball going down the lane, and he also knows that he is going to strike because of his uncanny way of positioning himself right even with the big center dot on the lane.

Dale is known as the hammer because of the way that the ball goes down the lane.  He weighs every bit of 120 pounds, but he used to drive a truck for years before he lost his vision.

I guess you could say that because of Dale, Century :Lanes, and Alta Iowa were put on the map.  Alta Iowa is not your huge city.  A matter of fact, the population is about 1000.  However, it could have been a million when Dale made that final strike.  It just goes to show that not everything happens in the big cities.  Sometimes some of the greatest things happen in places that most of us have never heard of before.  Those places get put on the map because of some extrordinary event that has taken place that makes it noteworthy.

In Dale’s case, it was definitely noteworthy.  Some people have claimed that the bowling ball that he uses must have eyes of its own.  You can now say that Century Lanes in Alta Iowa has its first famous bowler who bowled the perfect game of 300.
   

Donald and Zoe did a great job representing the Blind Online Success System at the Disability Fair. The material about the program was warmly received by both blind and visually impaired persons and also by other organizations that serve the blind community.

If you would like to receive information about the program, please contact us via email at admin AT blindonlinesuccesssystem.com

Here’s Donald Brown, Jr. and Zoe Hinds at the Career Fair…

May 1st, 2008 is a pivital point in the BOSS program.  Zoe and I were able to attend the Southeast Texas Disability Career fair at the Beaumont Civic Center.  The event was a huge success for BOSS, and I am going to tell you the full story here in this post

To begin with, Zoe and I woke up at 4:30 in the morning and got ready to catch the bus at 6:30.  The bus came on time and we were on our way to the Beaumont Civic Center.  Now just to back up a bit, the reason why we had to get to the civic center so early was because everybody that had a booth at the career fair was able to attend a special breakfast.  At this breakfast, we had a few guest speakers, but the presentations were very short.

After we had the breakfast, we went into the main area of the civic center and began setting up our booth.  It was at that time that I had realized that we didn’t have an extension cord, and I had asked one of the civic center employees if we could have an extension cord to use.  They managed to go and get one for us.  So we proceeded to set up our booth.

We took out the 50 CD’s that we had with the presentation on them about our program, plus the business cards, flyers and index cards for the visitors to use to give us their contact info on.

The presentation Cd that we gave away was a complete information package about the Blind Online Success System.  It contained interviews, our registration form, free screen readers and even some accessible games.  However, the main focus was the information about the program that was on the discs.

That CD was a project that took me some time to put together, but it had to be done in order to properly represent our program.  I must say that the CD project went very well and I came out with a great information product for our program that I can use at any time.  The package wasn’t career fair speciffic.  That means that I can use the CD for any promotion for our program, and I think that it will go over quite well.

I have to say, it was a great turnout!  We couldn’t have done better than we already had.  There was definitely a good response to our program, and we even had the Beaumont Enterprize newspaper come over to our booth to ask us questions.  They took down some information,so now all we need to do, is to check tomorrow’s paper to see if they had printed something about our program there.  Yes, I can honestly and faithfully say that our program is growing by leaps and bounds and the word is definitely getting out about it.  I tell you, promoting the BOSS program is a lot of work, but it is also quite rewarding, especially when you start seeing the returns from your efforts.  That’s when it really gets exciting.

Zoe honestly didn’t think that we would even have any real results, and a matter of fact, she said that it will probably be just a dog and pony show.  Boy was she proven wrong!  She was totally amazed at how successful this promotion became, and she was actually doing some speaking about the program too.

Zoe and I work together as a team on these kinds of things, and it just goes to show that when you work together, you can definitely accomplish a great deal, and that’s what we did.  We promoted BOSS.

This is truly a great time for BOSS because we’re just upgrading to our new site, and our program is starting to grow.  It is truly amazing to see that there’s really a market for our program out there, but perhaps the most exciting thing  that Zoe and I had seen all day yesterday, was the reactions of people when we told them that our program was free.  They were truly amazed that it didn’t cost anything.  They couldn’t believe that we’re offering this at no cost to them.

Also, out of Thursday’s events, I actually got a speaking engagement out of the deal too.  I am supposed to speak at a support group called Rise, which mainly consists of people with different disabilities.  Some of these people are blind, while others may have other types of disabilities.  However, I don’t think that Rise has any blind people at the moment, but the speaking engagement will be a great start in the right direction because even though those folks may not be able to join BOSS, they can at least learn how other people with visual impairments are able to run and manage their own online businesses.

Speaking at rise will also give those folks hope, which is vitally important to their daily living as independant individuals.  I want to show them that no matter what comes their way, they can succeed at whatever it is that they want to succeed at. They just have to put their mind to it and make the decision to succeed and not to let frustrations, or other people get in their way of that.

It is events like the career fair that can really bring BOSS to the forefront.  You see, events like this allow for us to expand, and also get the word out about our program, and that’s what Zoe and I had done on May 1, 2008.