Friday, December 30, 2005

Happy New Year!

As tonight marks the end of this year, I'd like to
take the time to wish everyone a Happy New Year and my
wishes for a prosperous year ahead.

Tomorrow, I shall probably write in my journal and
look back on a year that has been hellacious for me as
the last one has been. I lost my house and was
hospitalized. I'm still not back in an apartment of
my own and begin to fear that I never will be. At
least I maintain a sense of humor and find someone
posting as Joseph Smith Jr, inviting me to a site
about what Mormonism is highly amusing. I know it's
just a text exchange, but I already know more about
Mormonism than I care to and found out many disturbing
things about the religion by looking at sites set up
to defend the faith. It's not the most mismatched ad
to this site, though. As tempting as it would be to
mock him further, it is time to move on to other
things.

I've already stated that it's not been a happy
year for me. I've suffered too much from my own
mistakes which I have resolved never to make again.
My goals for this year are greater independence and to
pay able to pay at least some of my debts off.



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Thursday, December 29, 2005

Men and Women use the Internet differently

Sometimes what people will research will surprise me, but even more, it surprises me that people will announce the results with a surprise. Well, see what you fit into here.

Although men and women use the Internet at roughly the same rate, men are more likely to use it to look up sports facts, weather, news and technical information while women are more likely to use it for shopping, religion, and chatting.

I fall somewhere in between these two, which is probably not surprising either.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

You have something you do not want to tell us...

While in the hospital in November, the doctor had this to say to me in one session. While it was true, I did have something I did not want to tell him, it wasn't that I was hearing voices like they thought I was. It was that I didn't like being male.

Well, obviously it was none of his business and if you've been reading you know that things did not necessarily turn out all that well. At the time I needed to get over the bout of depression I was suffering brought on by the stresses at the time. I'm still not completely through it, but I'll try to work something out. I wonder what would have happened if I did tell him. Not much probably, and I think it may have been misdiagnosed, but as it's been recommended I apply for disability, I will not fight it at the moment.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

Some Ranting Today

I hope you'll forgive a little ranting today, but I find it annoying when I get some traffic from what I consider to be inappropriate site. I was checking the hits today, which I can do through one of the counters and found a link to what might have been leading to an inappropriate site. It seems it was just text on top of it, possibly to boost someones keywords search in Google.

I understand that the nature of this site may attract such people, but there really is nothing for them here.

Saturday, December 24, 2005

A brief post today I hope while we all get ready for the Christmas season. I've been busy with several other projects lately, unrelated to this blog, but strangely enough related to blogging. Well, if you want to know what they are you'll figure them out how to get to them eventually. I'm not being evasive, I just figure it doesn't matter as their geared towards different audiences than this.

Friday, December 23, 2005

Merry Christmas!

I'm trying to update this by e-mail, which I hope
will be a convenient way to update the blog in the
future. It's been a while since I did a real post so
I thought I'd make it today.

I hope since I've started this site it's at least
been useful to someone. I'm still sidetracked by
things going on in my own life and I'm afraid I will
be for a while until I can find a house of my own
again. The search continues, but the frustrations
have been extreme. Let's hope the interview I had
Thursday pans out to a new job.

In any case, I don't mean to bore you with the
details of a life that's insignificant to anyone but
me. It's two days before Christmas and I'd like to
wish everyone a happy holiday or a Merry Christmas if
the statement doesn't offend you. I try not to
advocate any religion here, although it sometimes
seems like I'm arguing against a specific religion.

I hope the spirit of the holiday is with us all as
our thought turn towards other. May there be peace on
Earth, but I'd rather see justice served first.

And it looks like here in Pennsylvania, I'll get
to enjoy a white Christmas for the first time in
years.


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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Moderating Comments

I've turned this feature off because I found it too much of a pain to work with. It may cause some unwanted comment spam, but I'm prepared to deal with it.

I really don't have that much else to say yet. Little has changed and my efforts to get back on my feet are not going as quickly as I'd like them to. I hope something changes soon.

Monday, December 19, 2005

Updating

Sorry folks, things are still up in the air for me so blog updates will be erratic although I'll try to do it at least once a week.

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

As I'm in a somewhat whimsical mood today, I thought I'd do a short post reflecting it. It's obvious that things still aren't going all that well for me and I'm not sure when they're going to look up, but on the bright side, I can be sure that they will look up eventually. I'm just not sure how much worse they will get first.

One of the things I dislike the most about humanity is how we so easily find comfort in the misfortune of others. Somehow, it's okay if someone else is having rough times simply because we can look at our own situation and say "at least it's not me."

It is comforting, but I often wonder why it should be. I don't really have a good answer to this one, except our own skewed perceptions. They always focus on our own situations first. It's not a good or bad thing, it simply is.

Sunday, December 11, 2005

Change

It is science that says that the speed of light only is the universal constant. Of course, I know I'm misapplying the theory, I just don't expect anyone to call me on it, simply because most people understand the theory of general relativity about as much as I do. So, in order to not be accused of philosophy, and keep this site under the heading of "personal writing," we'll just overlook this particular paragraph and get into what this post was supposed to be about anyway.

Things change in our lives. There is little we can do about it. There are thing that we want to change, and other changes that we fight with the core of our beings. Of the two types of struggles, it is the latter that is ultimately doomed to failure, we cannot stop change. The forces of entropy will amost always have their way. We are the ones who must learn to live with it.

Saturday, December 10, 2005

The Porpoise Song

I thought I'd help some poor confused surfer who came to my website looking for lyrics to the Porpoise Song. Incidentally, the song was originally by the Monkees, not the Beetles. (Although it does sound very much like a song that would have been done by the Beetles while they were on drugs.)

I guess that's the price I get for making references to obscure music in this blog. Sometimes I will get people coming here for lyrics, even though it is not a lyrics site. I'll help such people out if it's in my power. If you search through, you'll find the lyrics to The Minstrel Boy, and O Lord, It's Hard to be Humble.


My, my the clock in the sky is pounding away
There’s so much to say
A face, a voice, an overdub has no choice
And it cannot rejoice

Wanting to be, to hear and to see
Crying to the sky

But the porpoise is laughing good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye

Clicks, clacks
Riding the backs of giraffes for laughs is alright for a while
The ego sings of castles and kings and things
That go with a life of style

Wanting to feel, to know what is real
Living is a lie

But the porpoise is waiting good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye
Good-bye, good-bye, good-bye

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Still around

I'm not prepared to make an elaborate post today, but I thought I'd check in just to make sure what few readers I have know that I'm not dead.

Saturday, December 03, 2005

Taking a break today

Suffering from a small bit of writer's block write now and did not think to bring the blog articles I wrote while in the hospital with me today. I'll see you all again Monday folks and hopefully have something more interesting to write.

Friday, December 02, 2005

The Christmas Season

For many people the Christmas season begins the day after Thanksgiving, and while that's when I may put my tree up, I prefer to let the Christmas season start on December 1st, thus giving me time to wind down from the last holiday. For retailers, it seems to start about October 14th right now, moving up a day earlier each year.

The Christmas shopping season is filled with joyful people who spread their cheer and angry last minute shoppers who assume it's everyone else's fault that they put things off until the last minute. It is for these two reasons alone that I preferred to work on Christmas Even when I was stuck in retail. It amused me to see the apparent contradictions in people's behavior.

Regardless of how people act, there is something magical about the Christmas season. Perhaps it's just because those of us who are of European descent have celebrating the solstice at the time for thousands of years, but I discard such notions because racial memory is based on a rather shakey genetic principle. Does it even matter why we celebrate? The simple answer is no it doesn't. It's more important that the season does bring out humanity's best and of course, it's worst. Being able to see both is a unique blessing that we do not often appreciate, but should. Why not try going up to the grinch next time and see if you can brighten his or her day?

As a final note, whatever you're celebrating Yule, Christmas, Chanakah (spelling?), the solstice, December 25th, or even some more obscure holiday like the Roman
Saturnalia. I wish you a happy Holiday season.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The paths we take

I don't really like using the term path for ones religion, but I wish to talk about something a little bit different that may or may not include our spiritual path. I'm talking about the roads we take in life. As we head down one road, other roads become inaccessible or too far off to seriously reconsider.

Often we mourn this loss, wondering what would happen if we had taken a different road. Such a thing is common, but not useful. We must understand that others probably envy the paths we took as well, although this is not always the case. The road we take in life is simply our road. It is what it is and as we get older we may regret the paths not taken, but hopefully we made the right decisions or at least the interesting incorrect decisions for us to get where we are.