Apparently, something went wrong with some Windows/Windows Live component the other day. I assume it happened when my display adapter last crashed because Windows Live Messenger also crashed. Unfortunately, nothing appeared too wrong on my end. MSN would open and I’d click to sign in and it would simply tell me it was unavailable. Super helpful, right?
The specific error message was 80040154 and a quick search brought up all sorts of pages that told me to register a specific DLL. However, the instructions didn’t work. Luckily, I’m a smart cookie so I went straight to fixing Windows Live Essentials from the Control Panel. This isn’t rocket science but, considering that almost 100,000 people found the recommended solution not helpful, I figured it wouldn’t hurt to write up a quick post about it.
When asked what I was passionate about, I found it hard to answer and what I did come up with didn’t seem significant enough. The truth is, however, I am passionate about people and things that affect them: freedom and opportunity, tragedies–both natural and man-made, the every day things and the once in a lifetime chances. I think it would be appropriate to be compassionate and I could not tell you that I try because, the truth is, I try not to be sometimes. It’s all to easy for me to get swept up in despair because I cannot possibly help everyone or even know where to start.
To help alleviate this despair, I decided that I would stick to what I’m good at. Every day, I would make my loved ones smile and laugh and feel good about themselves and, in my head, these ripples of goodness slowly spread outward and perhaps, just maybe, touch every corner of the world. Nevermind that it’s a sphere.
And maybe along the way I will discover some way that I can contribute in more “significant” ways because I know that saying “I make people laugh” doesn’t exactly sound like ground breaking life’s worth. But don’t let me undercut what I do because I am damned good at it and if I died today, the people I loved would be sad because there life was better for having me in it, for having me to make them laugh.
And that is awesome.
Yet, sometimes, the reality for those who I can’t make laugh hits me like a ton of bricks. And I get angry. Or sad. Or a hysterical combination of both. Because I care. Because I am passionate about people in general, despite my sarcastic and biting sense of humor that may indicate otherwise. That is how I felt when I stumbled across the following:
There is a country where the leading cause of death of pregnant women is murder by a partner. In this same country, more than a million women were raped in 2008 and women are much more likely to live in poverty than men. Local laws don’t protect their right to bodily freedom and integrity; some rape laws even state that once a woman initially consents to sex, she doesn’t have the right to change her mind.
You may have caught on by now — yes, I’m talking about the United States.
average life span of a transgendered person is twenty-three years. The statistic is shocking, until it begins to make sense. Gender non-conformists face routine exclusion and violence. Transgendered people are disproportionately poor, homeless, and incarcerated. Many of the systems and facilities intended to help low-income people are sex-segregated and thereby alienate those who don’t comply with state-imposed categories. A trans woman may not be able to secure a bed in a homeless shelter, for example. Spade writes that just as the feminist movement tended to “focus on gender-universalized white women’s experience as ‘women’s experience,’” the lesbian- and gay-rights movement has focused primarily on a white, middle-class politic, centered on marriage and mainstream social mores.
Google has stepped up and created a Person Finder page for those who may be missing in Japan. I personally clicked over and stumbled across an entry for someone looking for information about someone in Misawa. I left a little blurb to inform the poster than Misawa AB has reported no deaths or serious injuries. It’s really hard for me to read about what is going on over there right now. It just hits.. a little too close to home but I hope that I have helped.
And despite the political turn that has occurred, people like you and me are stepping up to help others. Like this Tumblr user who want to give rides to women in Virginia who require an abortion but must now travel out of state for the service. Or this user who says (and I paraphrase) “You know what? Abortion isn’t for me but I respect the life of the living as well as the yet-to-live.”
Pro-choice is not pro-abortion. Pro-choice is often far more pro-life than “pro-life” is. I can’t say I’ve ever met anyone who thinks abortion is just fantastic or the new perfect birth control, that’s not how it goes. If you really want a lower abortion rate, put your time and effort into education and health care (you know, programs like Planned Parenthood). No one has any right to tell a woman what to do with her body or anything that’s growing inside of it. No one has any right to put women in danger for a group of cells, especially a group of cells they will later ignore and expect to fend for itself.
This week’s theme for WeBlogIt on Daydreamz is habits.. and it’s one that I didn’t want to write about in an obvious way and I thought of a really good topic and proceeded to forget about it. And that is my bad habit and because of it, I am writing an obvious post.
You see, I frequently think of things I want to write about. Things that are interesting or humourous or through provoking. I frequently think of these things at a time when I am unable to write them down, such as before bed or while I am working on something else (like my articles). I do it for blog posts, forums posts and emails. In fact, as I am typing this, I am reminded of a layout idea that I had–quite a detailed one at that!
So i’m drawing that on paper as I write this here blog.
The problem is, I don’t have a memo system. Sometimes I think I need a voice recorder, like Cruella DeVille in the 101 Dalmations cartoon that Toon Disney used to air. Something simple and quick because sometimes it just doesn’t pay to turn on a light, turn on a computer, search for a pen and paper and write it all down.
Those are flimsy excuses, I know. Still, I make no memo and sometimes these awesome ideas slip into the abyss–lost forever. Usually, I remember them. Not usually in a timely manner. This is what happened during the pets week theme of WeBlogIt. I love my pets and you know how important that are to me, yet I didn’t write about them. And I kind of lost the drive to do so after I forgot, then remembered again, and the week passed by. I get kind of bummed when I forget stuff and even if I remember again, it’s not the same.
So, this shall suffice as my habits post. Forgetting is a bad habit but so, too, is being lame when I remember. I should just post anyway, right?
Actually, I did not make a friend. But I did move a friendship to a new level and that’s kind of exciting. You see, I met this awesome lady and we started chatting in the same room and then we moved out friendship to AIM and, just this last week, it progressed to the phone.
I feel a bit like a school girl again! In fact, I feel a lot like a school girl again and I certainly felt that way when I was a wee bit nervous before the first time she called. It reminds me of how I made friends online when I was a teenager. We’d talk in a public place, we’d move to IM and eventually, if we became close enough, we’d talk on the phone. That was the natural progression of the Internet friendship when I was younger.
And it was fun. I could talk on the phone a lot. I still can. Im a talker. After 2 hours on the phone with my friend last night, my throat was begging for me to STFU. I have a lot of friends and not all of them are so awesome on the phone. I hadn’t realized how much I miss it.
Nor did I give much thought to why I pretty much stopped moving to the phone with my Internet friends. There is no single reason but many factors. The places where I chatted shut down. I became busier in high school, a trend that continued after I graduated and I began working. I began dating and married Ryan so much of my time was dedicated to him. I moved to Japan and I rarely called my mom, let alone new friends. I struggled with depression and other issues and, in general, I kind of stopped making new friends via the Internet for a while.
But this ain’t no pity party. It’s actually the exact opposite because now I remember how awesome friends are and I’ve made a great new friend. That isn’t to say I didn’t have any good friends. Some of my best friends now, both locally and internationally, are Internet friends. We just don’t talk on the phone much.
Whether or not our friendships rely on the phone, I’ve made some really awesome friends online. Somehow, I have connected with people across time zones, state lines and cultural divides. I’ve found wonderful people who listen to me when I need a friend and amazing people who make me laugh like crazy. And crazy people who are a match for my own insanity. And, hopefully, I’ve been able to provide the same for them.
So for those critics who say you can’t forge real relationships online, maybe you just fail at making friends while we do not. The Internet has changed my life with these amazing friendships.e
I’ve stumbled across a few links lately that make me happy–not in a “This is so cute way” but in the “hey, maybe the world isn’t so shitty after all” way.
In this post, Michael Ian Black discusses a picture he ran across online in which two hefty girls are having a blast in their bras. Kudos to him for being a sincere human being. Kudos to them for being awesome.
-Your writing is clunky and you confuse wordy sentences with sounding smart
-You capitalized about seven things that didn’t need to be
-You misspelled “liberal” and “Rachel” (that’s how she spells it) in the last bullet -You think the kids these days have “top friends” on Facebook.
A post on sluthaditcoming shows why the Old Spice guy advertising scheme is completely misogynistic as a humorous conversation between the Old Spice guy, feminist Hulk and Judith Butler.
