When a standard alarm goes off in the morning, for some reason it turns me thrashy and frantic to get rid of that horrible sound... I have completely wiped lamp, stack of books, cat, and everything else off my nightstand in a confused effort to turn it off. It got to the point my body would wake me up EXACTLY one minute before the alarm went off so I could avoid it. My fiance's new alarm clock has an option where it slowly increases the sound volume, and you could change the duration of time it takes to ramp up to full. It *really* works well, without causing a frantic reaction to the normal godawful shrill beeping.
I tend to agree that a century in good health would be more than enough. I'm glad you found it very enlightening to be on the other side of 50. I'm kind of sickened to hear people talk like that. Espescially since it has a condescending edge towards people who are younger ("You'll understand when you're on the other side of 50"). I was diagnosed with a life-threatening chronic illness when I was 18, and my situation is not special, there are many others, including a few friends who have already died. Thanks to the $500+ I spend every month between health insurance (I also get told by the older crowd that I have no idea how hard life is/value of a dollar/etc), copays, monthly monitoring tests, and the plethora of medications I'm on, including chemotherapy meds, I'm able to hang in rather well. I can generally keep my joint pain under control enough that I can get through my days (I've also been told I don't know what *real* arthritis is like), hold a good job, and haven't given up my dreams yet. But at the same time I know that any day I may have a flare of disease activity and be dead by nightfall. I've learned a lot from what I've gone through, I have a lot of respect and empathy for other people, I appreciate the beautiful things in life and take the icky parts in stride. But the one thing that pisses me off are the people who after 9/11 and when they hit 50 then realize how precious life is and how it should be appreciated. If you need to watch two buildings collapse and half your life pass by to realize that you should be appreciating it more, congratulations, you've been wasting your life. If given the chance, I would not want immortality. I spend every day making the most of my life, and trying to do the most I can for others. And when it is my time, whether it be tomorrow or if by some miracle I live to the ripe old age of 50, I will accept that and go without regrets and not be clamouring for an extension.
People also get their lives torn apart when they lose their jobs, and a plethora of other things which are rather mundane in the grand scheme of things. Getting distraught over something does not alone prove that love was involved. There are *many* people out there who manipulate and enslave their "beloved" family members with emotional baggage. People are so quick to accuse others of being selfish without looking in the mirror first and analyzing the roots of their own actions. If someone really loved their family member, they would not allow them to suffer and be pushed to the point where they would seriously entertain killing themselves. I applaud you for your optimistic and idealistic view of familial relationships, and if your family has fit that mold, consider yourself a fortunate person. But the majority of people out there do NOT have it that way. The most selfish people are usually the ones screaming out the loudest about their "loss" when their gravy train of emotional abuse against a person is finally put to an end.
I agree entirely. The fact that people in our society, including (and espescially) our "family" and "friends", make people often feel more *used* than loved probably contributes to people wanting to just say "fuck it all." Yup, been there, done that.
I use Thottbot (the website), but I don't use the Cosmos UI (my fiance does, however). Oftentimes while playing on my gaming rig, I'll have my laptop open to the site for reference. So, anyone (in its present non-subscription state) can use Thottbot information, and I don't consider that an unfair advantage. I don't have to use it often, but there are those rare times that a quest description is kinda vague (or even kinda wrong), and no one in the general channel knows the answer to my question (oftentimes people's advice is "Check Thottbot!").
I would never buy game items out of game in real money. But I don't consider looking stuff up to be cheating (some people use GameFAQs, others strategy guidebooks, etc), especially since the internet is a resource available to anyone, and if you're playing WoW, you probably have an internet connection. It augments my gaming experience. I know I'm not going to get to lvl 60 as fast as someone who plays all day, buys accounts/game items, but the reason I play is because it is fun and relaxing. And the Thottbot site aids in that goal by preventing me from spending 4 hours of fruitless searching if a quest description says "go west from here" and actually meant east (or "It's just north of here" and actually means "It's just north of here... over the river, through the woods, and on the other side of that mountain range"). And I frequently will pass on that advice to fellow gamers in my area who are stumped by the same things I was.
I have never in my life wanted children, and finding out I couldn't have any was the largest relief and blessing I could have ever received. I do a lot more than my career, thank you for making assumptions about me. But then again, my career is societallly valuable and helps to improve the world around me, so that is one of the reasons I adore my work, because it aids in my goal in life. I contribute a lot to my community and my society. I lovedoing that, I have made a lot of difference in many people's lives and I COULDN'T make as much a difference with a handful of my own genetic progeny keeping me housebound.
I believe in G-d too, so don't think that you hold the moral authority on that either. Be fruitful and multiply is a mitzvah incumbent only on the man... "Women are not required to give birth. The pain and risk disallow this as a requirement. The commandment only applies to men." I am an extremely religious person. Please don't enforce YOUR religious view on me, thank you very much. I know why I'm here on earth, and not having children helps me to carry that out. However, have not discounted foster parenting *if* I so feel the need to do so later in life. But I feel like I lead a very fruitful and fulfilling life as it is. covers my view on the matter very clearly. Not like you'd care because you think you're so vastly superior to me.
And I'm not a liberal. Once again, thank you very much for your assumptions. I'm fundamentally a conservative because I think people (and the government) should stay the hell out of people's personal lives and decisions. And that includes criticising peoples' choices to not have children. My future spouse is also a fairly religious individual, and a conservative... and also very much enjoys the prospect of not having kids. Not ALL men want to have kids, just like how not EVERY woman wants them. So, no, I'm not bitter because I'm a single, unloved, and unfulfilled woman. I'm bitter because I'm happy with my life as it is, and I wish people would just fucking let me live it and stop imposing their views on me. No one is telling you NOT to go out and multiply as much as you want, so don't criticize those who don't want to (or assume they aren't "facing their real feelings").
Wow... are you telling me all those millions of elderly in nursing homes are there because they didn't have children? Or are they there because their beloved children didn't want to take care of them and waste their time visiting? Why don't you go to visit a nursing home and hear some of those people crying that their sons and daughters never write, call or visit anymore? I do volunteer with the aged, and I have heard it many times. I have also volunteered over the years working with children whose parents got their genetic immortality, and then dumped their "precious miracles" on the state or beat the shit out of them and had them taken away by child services. I have very many things in my life to live for other than children. And frankly, having children to ensure your immortality is a pretty piss-poor and selfish reason to have them.
Yes, most men may not want a woman who doesn't want to breed like a rabbit for them... but I wouldn't want a man like that in my life either who only sees me as a walking uterus. Thankfully, my fiance doesn't want children either and is accepting of the fact I can't have them even if I did want them. I guess you're saying all infertile women should be kicked to the trash heap too.
I've just noticed in my personal experience that women tend to get the criticism so much harder than everyone else. Due to medical problems, I can't actually have children without killing myself, but my desire not to have children predates that. I now spend much of my time trying to fix the mistaken products of other people's "image of the perfect future"... I do a lot of volunteer work with children who although being "society's future" and somebody's "best decision you'll ever make" are strangely without loving/caring parental units or any positive degree of adult support. There was a book/essay I read a while ago suggesting that couples without children are actually a boon to a community, as they have more expendable income, more free time, and are available to do all sorts of things that working parents can't do. Kudos to you and your wife for knowing what you want and sticking to it. It's better to (supposedly) regret not having had kids than regret having them.
I hope you don't seriously believe that about ALL women. We are not all solely personally satisfied by breeding... not everyone wants children, among both populations of men and women. Having children, or not having children are both personal choices, and both legitimate choices. There are a lot of parents out there who aren't happy with being parents. Or would you consider the 15% of children being raised by their grandparents, the high number of children abused, and the occasional cases of children killed by their own parents anomalies? It's just that when a man chooses to not have kids, society doesn't label him as selfish and a waste of breath, but "Wow, look at the sacrifices he's made for his career!" A woman tries to make the same decision and she's branded as a selfish bitch and told she'll regret it, or as you say, "she gave up the chance to be the one thing that would have made her happy."
I am very happy with my decision to not have children, I'm very happy to be pursing a career and an advanced degree in engineering, and I'm sick and tired of being disparged by everyone about it. I am happy that women in previous generations fought for my right to be given the chance to attend university if I am deemed a worthy candidate on my own merit. I truly hope that your post is meant tongue-in-cheek and sarcastically, but unfortunately I've heard those exactly words spoken to me in complete seriousness far too many times to be able to tell anymore.
That's interesting... because I was criticized once while working in a prestigious science internship for a government agency by an older woman for "trying to be like a man." I do it anyways, and I've never had problems with my male colleagues. Only female.
I'm about to become a gamer widow. If the son of a bitch kills me one more time during co-op Halo 2, I'm gonna fucking kill him (having a warthog dropped on me was funny the first time... maybe).:p
That being said, my significant other and I actually share most hobbies and interests with each other... geek stuff, gaming, etc. But we also have individual interests too and respect them. I'm very much floored when I see people who are demanding and expect a person to completely modify themselves to be with them. Or issue ultimatums or threats to effect such change, rather than loving the person and accepting them for who they are.
I do admit I think women are worse than men about this. Granted, I do spend all my time with my significant other... we have other friends too, but we are best friends, we have many compatible interests... and we were together getting Halo 2 midnight when it was released. We even have most of the same friends, so really we are together almost all the time. Some people might think it's excessive. But then again, many of those people are the ones who don't have much in common with their own SO's and criticize each others hobbies. Then again, what works for one relationship doesn't work for another. Everyone's different... but I think not laying a foundation for your SO to resent you should be a universal thread of all successful relationships.
I did. I used different programs at all parts of the process, I spent several hours troubleshooting and playing around with it. I'm not a windows guru by any stretch, but I'm not stupid with it either, and I generally enjoy a challenge.
I'd believe that except for the fact that I haven't changed the *hardware* on this box in a long time now (same hardware/configuration as the last time I did this, only difference is I bothered to install all the windows service packs/patches this time). I did, however, do a windows reinstall last spring on this box when I was moving stuff between hard drives.
I also did a google search last night while trying to troubleshoot it, and a lot of people seemed to have the same type of problems and attributed it to DRM issues.
I could in fact capture the image, bring it into Adobe or any other program of choice, MODIFY it, change the colors, etc etc. But I could not save anything I had done that was derived from video media, it would save it as a black box. If I had added text/captions in Adobe et al, it would be a black box with text on it when saved. I did not jump immediately to the DRM conclusion, but after careful testing, checking hardware settings, using various capture programs, searching for answers, it being a DRM-related issue was the only theory that held weight. Plus, some righteous anger does a person some good every now and then (just not the blood pressure though).
Last night I was up late putzing on my windoze box and trying to take still shots from mpegs for friends/family that I had recorded with my digital camera. It turns out, I could not do it, even though I KNOW I have in the past successfully used the methods I was using last night under windows... whenever I tried to save a still image it would save it as a black box. I used many different programs, video players, etc etc. I'm not much of a windows person, so I didn't know what other workarounds to consider, and I was only doing this in windows because I wanted to eventually edit those stills using Adobe. I normally don't keep my windows box updated at all because of such things (my home network is firewalled)... in the past I know I've successfully done the things I wanted to do last night, but the difference then was I had none of the service packs installed. Anyways, this is what I sent, I know it does NO good whatsoever, but in my furious anger last night, well, it helped me sleep at least. Because of your contributions to Digital Rights Management, you have deprived me of the ability to edit my own home videos. Thanks to your lobbying and cooperation with Microsoft, I am not able to take still screen captures from mpeg videos from family gatherings which I took
with my own digital camera, due to the constraints that have been added to software at your behest. Thank you very much for protecting me from being able to preserve my own family history and memories. I so very much needed to be protected from myself.
In reality, by the end of the hour, because I am very technically adept, I will have accomplished what I wanted to do tonight using
video editing software on one of my home linux machines. I feel absolutely sickened for the people who are not as computer savvy as myself who have effectively had their rights taken away because of you since they do not know how to perform work-arounds or use open source
software that is not cripped by "digital rights management".
I will be spreading the word to my family, friends, and coworkers. By the end of the hour as well, I will be ebaying all of my movie DVDs,
except those which are independent foreign films and anime series not produced or distirbuted in the U.S. I will no longer be supporting your films, whether in movie theatres or through DVD purchases, and I will encourage everyone I know to do the same.
You think you can push the average person around with your influence and money. And you are indeed correct to a certain degree. Where you are
wrong is in forgetting that the source of your money ultimately comes from us, the consumer. There comes a breaking point where people will realize that their rights are being treaded on, and they will take action. This person has already arrived at that point, and I will be
taking others with me. And once you have killed the roots (the consumer), the tree will die too (you).
Since this has been a tight year for me due to medical bills, I was considering letting my membership in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lapse, but after this incident tonight, I certainly will not be doing that now. The money I would have spent on movies and DVDs will be spent on renewing my EFF membership and my Free
Software Foundation (FSF) memberships to prevent you from deciding what I can and cannot do on my own computer and with my own data."
I will be all too happy that my passwords will die with me. And that may well be before my parents since I have a life-threatening chronic illness. The people who need, or who I want, to know specific not-typical information about me already know that. I would not want an audience not intended for that information to all of a sudden become privy to it upon my death. I may be dead, but they do not have a right to that.
That being said, this reminds me of a book I read in a Jewish studies class. I forgot the name of it, but it was the published diary of a woman who died during the Holocaust. It was a PRIVATE diary. She never intended anyone to read it. There were writings in it about sexual relationships with a teacher, things that we know happen. She died in the concentration camps, the diary was found... and I'm sure she did NOT want the world to know about her sexual exploits and desires. I'm mature enough to handle reading these things, but I felt like I was staring into someone's bedroom without their permission, and it felt WRONG. That's how people SHOULD feel if they snoop into people's private correspondences after they die without that person wanting them to read such things. It is a violation of sorts. It's not family history, it's not necessarily even interesting, rare or whatever.
You have to keep fighting them. You know there is something wrong, and you have to be persistant. I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythamatosis ("Available now with kidney involvement!") at age 18, rheumatoid arthritis at 20, and polycystic ovary syndrome at 21. I'm 23 now, on 9 prescription medications including chemotherapy drugs and strong immunosuppressants, and have learned from all of this that only you can be your own best advocate.
The lupus, they screwed around with and just "observed," and kept doing redundant tests, looking at abnormal results, and watching me waste away until I was sleeping 18 hours a day, couldn't bend my joints, and was covered with bizarre rashes. FINALLY, I found a rheumatologist who was sickened by my previous treatment, and was able to work with me and get me onto the meds I needed. With the PCOS, I gained 30 pounds in 10 days, and then another 30 pounds in the subsequent three months. I kept going to different doctors and insisting this was not a medical problem, "but we can send you to a nutritionist." Bullshit. It took me about nine doctors before I found one who looked at me and said, "I believe you, this is a medical problem, and we WILL get to the bottom of it." And sure enough she did, she got me on as a patient under a very well known endocrinologist, and in a few months after that, my weight is back to how it was in high school. If I had given up and believed one, I'd still be miserable with myself and constantly in pain (because the added weight was REALLY messing with my joints and energy).
So, as I said, you need to keep fighting. You are the only one who can fight for you. I will be keeping you in my thoughts. Please get well, don't give up, and good luck finding a doctor who can help you. Keep us updated, there are a lot of us who care.
Very loyal slackware user,
lazypenguingirl
Um, please tell me you know you are generalizing, right? That not all of us with XX chromsomal makeup are like that?
Granted, I *despise* women who do what you are describing to the men in their life. I think no HUMAN should be doing that to any other (regardless of sex). I encourage my significant other in his hobbies, and only expect in exchange that he does the same. There are just as many controlling men out there as controlling women. People seem to lack respect in general for each other.
That being said, my S.O. and I have played many hours of Halo (1/2) and other games together. And if he is doing something he wants to do that I'm not as interested in, I always have my own hobbies (although we have like a 95% overlap) and computer room to withdraw to. Yeah, I understand your frustration, but please don't paint us all with the same brush.
Another variation is just a glass with a piece of printer paper in it rolled into a cone/funnel. Apple works too.
I was called out of town to a funeral unexpectedly last summer and left a whole bunch of fruit out (it was the last thing that crossed my mind). When I returned home, I literally had CLOUDS of fruit flies in my apartment. I put a few of those scattered around, and within a few days they were all gone. I had to take the glass outside to release them, but at least they weren't in my house anymore.
I have an eluminX which I absolutely adore. My guy friends hate my keyboard because it seems smaller than normal ones, but for my small hands it's perfect. It's a very lightweight keyboard which is very comfortable for me to perch on my knees with my feet kicked up on my desk. (yah, great keyboarding habits, i know). Bright lights really hurt my eyes, so although I don't work at the computer in the dark, my light conditions are generally dim. Dim lighting is good for gaming too (reduces glare off the screen for me), and my hand-position when gaming isn't normal typing position, so being able to periodically glance at the keyboard really helps.
About the cleaning.... I am bad about eating at the computer. I've gotten much much crud in my keyboard. For the most part, I just pull out my can of compressed air and that takes care off most of the crumbs. As far as visible spills (dripped ice cream), I can see them and spot clean with a q-tip, and in general I can still just give it a good wipe-down. There was one time I had a crumb under a key that got wedged, and prying the key off and reseating it wasn't a really big deal at all. I've never put a keyboard in the sink, if that's what you're getting at, but these keyboards work just fine with my normal cleaning protocols.:/
Slashdot Mirror
Don't feel bad. Thanks to me and my 2 minutes writing this post, the environment is doomed.
Yup... it's all under the hood. Which is conveniently welded shut For Your Computing Pleasure...
When a standard alarm goes off in the morning, for some reason it turns me thrashy and frantic to get rid of that horrible sound... I have completely wiped lamp, stack of books, cat, and everything else off my nightstand in a confused effort to turn it off. It got to the point my body would wake me up EXACTLY one minute before the alarm went off so I could avoid it. My fiance's new alarm clock has an option where it slowly increases the sound volume, and you could change the duration of time it takes to ramp up to full. It *really* works well, without causing a frantic reaction to the normal godawful shrill beeping.
I tend to agree that a century in good health would be more than enough. I'm glad you found it very enlightening to be on the other side of 50. I'm kind of sickened to hear people talk like that. Espescially since it has a condescending edge towards people who are younger ("You'll understand when you're on the other side of 50"). I was diagnosed with a life-threatening chronic illness when I was 18, and my situation is not special, there are many others, including a few friends who have already died. Thanks to the $500+ I spend every month between health insurance (I also get told by the older crowd that I have no idea how hard life is/value of a dollar/etc), copays, monthly monitoring tests, and the plethora of medications I'm on, including chemotherapy meds, I'm able to hang in rather well. I can generally keep my joint pain under control enough that I can get through my days (I've also been told I don't know what *real* arthritis is like), hold a good job, and haven't given up my dreams yet. But at the same time I know that any day I may have a flare of disease activity and be dead by nightfall. I've learned a lot from what I've gone through, I have a lot of respect and empathy for other people, I appreciate the beautiful things in life and take the icky parts in stride. But the one thing that pisses me off are the people who after 9/11 and when they hit 50 then realize how precious life is and how it should be appreciated. If you need to watch two buildings collapse and half your life pass by to realize that you should be appreciating it more, congratulations, you've been wasting your life. If given the chance, I would not want immortality. I spend every day making the most of my life, and trying to do the most I can for others. And when it is my time, whether it be tomorrow or if by some miracle I live to the ripe old age of 50, I will accept that and go without regrets and not be clamouring for an extension.
People also get their lives torn apart when they lose their jobs, and a plethora of other things which are rather mundane in the grand scheme of things. Getting distraught over something does not alone prove that love was involved. There are *many* people out there who manipulate and enslave their "beloved" family members with emotional baggage. People are so quick to accuse others of being selfish without looking in the mirror first and analyzing the roots of their own actions. If someone really loved their family member, they would not allow them to suffer and be pushed to the point where they would seriously entertain killing themselves. I applaud you for your optimistic and idealistic view of familial relationships, and if your family has fit that mold, consider yourself a fortunate person. But the majority of people out there do NOT have it that way. The most selfish people are usually the ones screaming out the loudest about their "loss" when their gravy train of emotional abuse against a person is finally put to an end.
I agree entirely. The fact that people in our society, including (and espescially) our "family" and "friends", make people often feel more *used* than loved probably contributes to people wanting to just say "fuck it all." Yup, been there, done that.
I use Thottbot (the website), but I don't use the Cosmos UI (my fiance does, however). Oftentimes while playing on my gaming rig, I'll have my laptop open to the site for reference. So, anyone (in its present non-subscription state) can use Thottbot information, and I don't consider that an unfair advantage. I don't have to use it often, but there are those rare times that a quest description is kinda vague (or even kinda wrong), and no one in the general channel knows the answer to my question (oftentimes people's advice is "Check Thottbot!").
I would never buy game items out of game in real money. But I don't consider looking stuff up to be cheating (some people use GameFAQs, others strategy guidebooks, etc), especially since the internet is a resource available to anyone, and if you're playing WoW, you probably have an internet connection. It augments my gaming experience. I know I'm not going to get to lvl 60 as fast as someone who plays all day, buys accounts/game items, but the reason I play is because it is fun and relaxing. And the Thottbot site aids in that goal by preventing me from spending 4 hours of fruitless searching if a quest description says "go west from here" and actually meant east (or "It's just north of here" and actually means "It's just north of here... over the river, through the woods, and on the other side of that mountain range"). And I frequently will pass on that advice to fellow gamers in my area who are stumped by the same things I was.
I've been carded more frequently for video game purchases in my life than I have for alcohol. It's kind of disconcerting.
That was an excellent and beautiful post. Thank you for writing that.
I have never in my life wanted children, and finding out I couldn't have any was the largest relief and blessing I could have ever received. I do a lot more than my career, thank you for making assumptions about me. But then again, my career is societallly valuable and helps to improve the world around me, so that is one of the reasons I adore my work, because it aids in my goal in life. I contribute a lot to my community and my society. I lovedoing that, I have made a lot of difference in many people's lives and I COULDN'T make as much a difference with a handful of my own genetic progeny keeping me housebound.
I believe in G-d too, so don't think that you hold the moral authority on that either. Be fruitful and multiply is a mitzvah incumbent only on the man... "Women are not required to give birth. The pain and risk disallow this as a requirement. The commandment only applies to men." I am an extremely religious person. Please don't enforce YOUR religious view on me, thank you very much. I know why I'm here on earth, and not having children helps me to carry that out. However, have not discounted foster parenting *if* I so feel the need to do so later in life. But I feel like I lead a very fruitful and fulfilling life as it is. covers my view on the matter very clearly. Not like you'd care because you think you're so vastly superior to me.
And I'm not a liberal. Once again, thank you very much for your assumptions. I'm fundamentally a conservative because I think people (and the government) should stay the hell out of people's personal lives and decisions. And that includes criticising peoples' choices to not have children. My future spouse is also a fairly religious individual, and a conservative... and also very much enjoys the prospect of not having kids. Not ALL men want to have kids, just like how not EVERY woman wants them. So, no, I'm not bitter because I'm a single, unloved, and unfulfilled woman. I'm bitter because I'm happy with my life as it is, and I wish people would just fucking let me live it and stop imposing their views on me. No one is telling you NOT to go out and multiply as much as you want, so don't criticize those who don't want to (or assume they aren't "facing their real feelings").
Wow... are you telling me all those millions of elderly in nursing homes are there because they didn't have children? Or are they there because their beloved children didn't want to take care of them and waste their time visiting? Why don't you go to visit a nursing home and hear some of those people crying that their sons and daughters never write, call or visit anymore? I do volunteer with the aged, and I have heard it many times. I have also volunteered over the years working with children whose parents got their genetic immortality, and then dumped their "precious miracles" on the state or beat the shit out of them and had them taken away by child services. I have very many things in my life to live for other than children. And frankly, having children to ensure your immortality is a pretty piss-poor and selfish reason to have them.
Yes, most men may not want a woman who doesn't want to breed like a rabbit for them... but I wouldn't want a man like that in my life either who only sees me as a walking uterus. Thankfully, my fiance doesn't want children either and is accepting of the fact I can't have them even if I did want them. I guess you're saying all infertile women should be kicked to the trash heap too.
I've just noticed in my personal experience that women tend to get the criticism so much harder than everyone else. Due to medical problems, I can't actually have children without killing myself, but my desire not to have children predates that. I now spend much of my time trying to fix the mistaken products of other people's "image of the perfect future"... I do a lot of volunteer work with children who although being "society's future" and somebody's "best decision you'll ever make" are strangely without loving/caring parental units or any positive degree of adult support. There was a book/essay I read a while ago suggesting that couples without children are actually a boon to a community, as they have more expendable income, more free time, and are available to do all sorts of things that working parents can't do. Kudos to you and your wife for knowing what you want and sticking to it. It's better to (supposedly) regret not having had kids than regret having them.
I hope you don't seriously believe that about ALL women. We are not all solely personally satisfied by breeding... not everyone wants children, among both populations of men and women. Having children, or not having children are both personal choices, and both legitimate choices. There are a lot of parents out there who aren't happy with being parents. Or would you consider the 15% of children being raised by their grandparents, the high number of children abused, and the occasional cases of children killed by their own parents anomalies? It's just that when a man chooses to not have kids, society doesn't label him as selfish and a waste of breath, but "Wow, look at the sacrifices he's made for his career!" A woman tries to make the same decision and she's branded as a selfish bitch and told she'll regret it, or as you say, "she gave up the chance to be the one thing that would have made her happy."
I am very happy with my decision to not have children, I'm very happy to be pursing a career and an advanced degree in engineering, and I'm sick and tired of being disparged by everyone about it. I am happy that women in previous generations fought for my right to be given the chance to attend university if I am deemed a worthy candidate on my own merit. I truly hope that your post is meant tongue-in-cheek and sarcastically, but unfortunately I've heard those exactly words spoken to me in complete seriousness far too many times to be able to tell anymore.
That's interesting... because I was criticized once while working in a prestigious science internship for a government agency by an older woman for "trying to be like a man." I do it anyways, and I've never had problems with my male colleagues. Only female.
I'm about to become a gamer widow. If the son of a bitch kills me one more time during co-op Halo 2, I'm gonna fucking kill him (having a warthog dropped on me was funny the first time... maybe). :p
That being said, my significant other and I actually share most hobbies and interests with each other... geek stuff, gaming, etc. But we also have individual interests too and respect them. I'm very much floored when I see people who are demanding and expect a person to completely modify themselves to be with them. Or issue ultimatums or threats to effect such change, rather than loving the person and accepting them for who they are.
I do admit I think women are worse than men about this. Granted, I do spend all my time with my significant other... we have other friends too, but we are best friends, we have many compatible interests... and we were together getting Halo 2 midnight when it was released. We even have most of the same friends, so really we are together almost all the time. Some people might think it's excessive. But then again, many of those people are the ones who don't have much in common with their own SO's and criticize each others hobbies. Then again, what works for one relationship doesn't work for another. Everyone's different... but I think not laying a foundation for your SO to resent you should be a universal thread of all successful relationships.
Hmmm... one more reason?
:p
And I thought just not wanting them should be sufficient reason enough.
I did. I used different programs at all parts of the process, I spent several hours troubleshooting and playing around with it. I'm not a windows guru by any stretch, but I'm not stupid with it either, and I generally enjoy a challenge.
I'd believe that except for the fact that I haven't changed the *hardware* on this box in a long time now (same hardware/configuration as the last time I did this, only difference is I bothered to install all the windows service packs/patches this time). I did, however, do a windows reinstall last spring on this box when I was moving stuff between hard drives.
I also did a google search last night while trying to troubleshoot it, and a lot of people seemed to have the same type of problems and attributed it to DRM issues.
I could in fact capture the image, bring it into Adobe or any other program of choice, MODIFY it, change the colors, etc etc. But I could not save anything I had done that was derived from video media, it would save it as a black box. If I had added text/captions in Adobe et al, it would be a black box with text on it when saved. I did not jump immediately to the DRM conclusion, but after careful testing, checking hardware settings, using various capture programs, searching for answers, it being a DRM-related issue was the only theory that held weight. Plus, some righteous anger does a person some good every now and then (just not the blood pressure though).
Last night I was up late putzing on my windoze box and trying to take still shots from mpegs for friends/family that I had recorded with my digital camera. It turns out, I could not do it, even though I KNOW I have in the past successfully used the methods I was using last night under windows... whenever I tried to save a still image it would save it as a black box. I used many different programs, video players, etc etc. I'm not much of a windows person, so I didn't know what other workarounds to consider, and I was only doing this in windows because I wanted to eventually edit those stills using Adobe. I normally don't keep my windows box updated at all because of such things (my home network is firewalled)... in the past I know I've successfully done the things I wanted to do last night, but the difference then was I had none of the service packs installed. Anyways, this is what I sent, I know it does NO good whatsoever, but in my furious anger last night, well, it helped me sleep at least.
Because of your contributions to Digital Rights Management, you have deprived me of the ability to edit my own home videos. Thanks to your lobbying and cooperation with Microsoft, I am not able to take still screen captures from mpeg videos from family gatherings which I took with my own digital camera, due to the constraints that have been added to software at your behest. Thank you very much for protecting me from being able to preserve my own family history and memories. I so very much needed to be protected from myself.
In reality, by the end of the hour, because I am very technically adept, I will have accomplished what I wanted to do tonight using video editing software on one of my home linux machines. I feel absolutely sickened for the people who are not as computer savvy as myself who have effectively had their rights taken away because of you since they do not know how to perform work-arounds or use open source software that is not cripped by "digital rights management".
I will be spreading the word to my family, friends, and coworkers. By the end of the hour as well, I will be ebaying all of my movie DVDs, except those which are independent foreign films and anime series not produced or distirbuted in the U.S. I will no longer be supporting your films, whether in movie theatres or through DVD purchases, and I will encourage everyone I know to do the same.
You think you can push the average person around with your influence and money. And you are indeed correct to a certain degree. Where you are wrong is in forgetting that the source of your money ultimately comes from us, the consumer. There comes a breaking point where people will realize that their rights are being treaded on, and they will take action. This person has already arrived at that point, and I will be taking others with me. And once you have killed the roots (the consumer), the tree will die too (you).
Since this has been a tight year for me due to medical bills, I was considering letting my membership in the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) lapse, but after this incident tonight, I certainly will not be doing that now. The money I would have spent on movies and DVDs will be spent on renewing my EFF membership and my Free Software Foundation (FSF) memberships to prevent you from deciding what I can and cannot do on my own computer and with my own data."
I will be all too happy that my passwords will die with me. And that may well be before my parents since I have a life-threatening chronic illness. The people who need, or who I want, to know specific not-typical information about me already know that. I would not want an audience not intended for that information to all of a sudden become privy to it upon my death. I may be dead, but they do not have a right to that. That being said, this reminds me of a book I read in a Jewish studies class. I forgot the name of it, but it was the published diary of a woman who died during the Holocaust. It was a PRIVATE diary. She never intended anyone to read it. There were writings in it about sexual relationships with a teacher, things that we know happen. She died in the concentration camps, the diary was found... and I'm sure she did NOT want the world to know about her sexual exploits and desires. I'm mature enough to handle reading these things, but I felt like I was staring into someone's bedroom without their permission, and it felt WRONG. That's how people SHOULD feel if they snoop into people's private correspondences after they die without that person wanting them to read such things. It is a violation of sorts. It's not family history, it's not necessarily even interesting, rare or whatever.
You have to keep fighting them. You know there is something wrong, and you have to be persistant. I was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythamatosis ("Available now with kidney involvement!") at age 18, rheumatoid arthritis at 20, and polycystic ovary syndrome at 21. I'm 23 now, on 9 prescription medications including chemotherapy drugs and strong immunosuppressants, and have learned from all of this that only you can be your own best advocate. The lupus, they screwed around with and just "observed," and kept doing redundant tests, looking at abnormal results, and watching me waste away until I was sleeping 18 hours a day, couldn't bend my joints, and was covered with bizarre rashes. FINALLY, I found a rheumatologist who was sickened by my previous treatment, and was able to work with me and get me onto the meds I needed. With the PCOS, I gained 30 pounds in 10 days, and then another 30 pounds in the subsequent three months. I kept going to different doctors and insisting this was not a medical problem, "but we can send you to a nutritionist." Bullshit. It took me about nine doctors before I found one who looked at me and said, "I believe you, this is a medical problem, and we WILL get to the bottom of it." And sure enough she did, she got me on as a patient under a very well known endocrinologist, and in a few months after that, my weight is back to how it was in high school. If I had given up and believed one, I'd still be miserable with myself and constantly in pain (because the added weight was REALLY messing with my joints and energy). So, as I said, you need to keep fighting. You are the only one who can fight for you. I will be keeping you in my thoughts. Please get well, don't give up, and good luck finding a doctor who can help you. Keep us updated, there are a lot of us who care. Very loyal slackware user, lazypenguingirl
Um, please tell me you know you are generalizing, right? That not all of us with XX chromsomal makeup are like that?
Granted, I *despise* women who do what you are describing to the men in their life. I think no HUMAN should be doing that to any other (regardless of sex). I encourage my significant other in his hobbies, and only expect in exchange that he does the same. There are just as many controlling men out there as controlling women. People seem to lack respect in general for each other.
That being said, my S.O. and I have played many hours of Halo (1/2) and other games together. And if he is doing something he wants to do that I'm not as interested in, I always have my own hobbies (although we have like a 95% overlap) and computer room to withdraw to. Yeah, I understand your frustration, but please don't paint us all with the same brush.
Another variation is just a glass with a piece of printer paper in it rolled into a cone/funnel. Apple works too.
I was called out of town to a funeral unexpectedly last summer and left a whole bunch of fruit out (it was the last thing that crossed my mind). When I returned home, I literally had CLOUDS of fruit flies in my apartment. I put a few of those scattered around, and within a few days they were all gone. I had to take the glass outside to release them, but at least they weren't in my house anymore.
If ya weren't using a Mac, I woulda asked if you're available. :p
I have an eluminX which I absolutely adore. My guy friends hate my keyboard because it seems smaller than normal ones, but for my small hands it's perfect. It's a very lightweight keyboard which is very comfortable for me to perch on my knees with my feet kicked up on my desk. (yah, great keyboarding habits, i know). Bright lights really hurt my eyes, so although I don't work at the computer in the dark, my light conditions are generally dim. Dim lighting is good for gaming too (reduces glare off the screen for me), and my hand-position when gaming isn't normal typing position, so being able to periodically glance at the keyboard really helps. About the cleaning.... I am bad about eating at the computer. I've gotten much much crud in my keyboard. For the most part, I just pull out my can of compressed air and that takes care off most of the crumbs. As far as visible spills (dripped ice cream), I can see them and spot clean with a q-tip, and in general I can still just give it a good wipe-down. There was one time I had a crumb under a key that got wedged, and prying the key off and reseating it wasn't a really big deal at all. I've never put a keyboard in the sink, if that's what you're getting at, but these keyboards work just fine with my normal cleaning protocols. :/