The Midnight Showing of Trisha

I almost lost a loved one - my computer!

When I was in college I had a roommate who claimed to, among other things, see ghosts and be slightly clarivoyant.  Not enough to blatantly be able to predict the future or anything, but enough that she'd had strange dreams or visions about things that ended up happening.  She claimed that whenever a loved one died, she had dreams about teeth before hand, like within the day before.  I don't know why I remember this, I just always have.

Last week, I had a dream that a dentist was pulling my teeth... like 5 or 6, all in the back, one by one.  I awoke remembering what that roommate claimed and it kinda creeped me out, but I ignored it.  Last night I had an even weirder dream, where I was working as like an assistant at some kind of low income/homeless dental clinic and a girl came in (don't ask me why, but it was totally that girl who played Zoey Bartlett on The West Wing) and she was getting a lot of her teeth pulled, but she also had some WEIRD fucking ailment where one of her arms and one of her legs was rotting... but, not rotting like flesh rots but a combination of that and almost wilting like a flower, so it was not as gorey as it sounds.  She didnt' think anything was wrong, didn't hurt, and could move them and use the fingers and toed, and while in the chair was talking about her father, and me and another girl helping out realized she didn't know her father was dead, and as we convinced her that her father had died, she stopped being able to use the fingers and move them and they wilted faster (like almost time-lapse camera shot sped to real time) and we realized they were her father's limbs that she'd sewn on to her own stubs (she'd had an accident and lost her arm & leg years before, or it was a birth defect or something, nothing crazy like she'd chopped hers off or anything) and that's why the limbs were bad.  But she'd been able to use them because she truly didn't believe her dad had died and truly believed they were her limbs.  Severe mind over matter.

I blame the Pink vodka I had at the club last night that was infused with caffeine and guarana for such a weird dream.  But, the limbs thing was weird but didn't really jostle me... it was that I had ANOTHER dream about teeth being pulled.  Now, at this point, all my grandparents are dead and Dominic's grandmothers aren't really that close, i.e. no real health problems other than your average "getting old" stuff.  So I remembered I have The Illustrated Dream Dictionary, and I looked up teeth.  No entry.  The closest thing I could find was that if you had a dream where your mouth was wide open, it might be a sign to shut it more often and listen to people.  And the limbs thing didn't help either; there was nothing about false limbs or limbs not working or rotting or anything.  I looked it up online and all I found was this: "Teeth: Normally an unfavorable sign in a dream.  It signifies displeasure and also shows that you are afraid of loosing someone dear to you."  Not quite the "someone will die" type of omen my former roommate seemed to believe it was, but still unsettling.

And then when I got up and went to start my computer... one of my worst nightmares happened. It froze at the motherboard screen and wasn't loading anything.  I tried resetting, restarting, getting into the BIOS, nothing worked.  It was working fine last night when I checked my email before going to bed after returning from the club.  I turned it off and proceeded to watch Damian play Zelda for awhile before trying again.  Nothing.  I finally had to ask Dominic for help.

He did the same things I did, then unhooked stuff, pulled the tower out and used a vacuum and canned air to dust out everything.  He checked the connections inside to make sure the motherboard was hooked up to everything right.  Nothing looked obviously jostled (no "A-ha!  There's the problem" type moment).  At that point I was practically praying to the God I don't believe in...convinced that I was thoroughly fucked, and that, not only would I have to be spending money I didn't have on a new computer, or new parts, but the fear that I may have lost thousands of pictures, all of my work files since my personal and professional computer is one in the same now, and hundreds of fonts, design files, etc.

Luckily, after the dusting out and checking connections, it started up fine.  Of course that's sent me into a massive fury of backing everything up - just in case.  Something that I REALLY ought to do more often.  Despite having a DVD burning drive, I didn't actually have any software that would allow me to burn a data DVD, taking advantage of those 4.7 gb of storage per disc instead of 712 mb on a CD.  So I found a freebie software called DeepBurner that's actually working really well.  There's a pro version too, but this free version has all the features I need for now, so needless to say the burning of 10 DVDs of data is on my agenda tonight.  They take about 20-30 minutes each to burn, which isn't terrible.  I've previously been keeping my backup CDs in my big general CD file cabinet that has my other software stuff, games, etc. but I think tomorrow I'm going to head to an office supply store or the dollar store and see what kind of small CD case I can get and just keep them all in a separate, secure location that's easy to find.  Maybe now I'll be a good girl about backing my shit up.  I'm also looking into online backup stuff.  I'm beta testing a product that allows me to securely back up my files to their servers (review will come soon at TrishaLyn.com once I've tested it more a bit) so I'm using that right now, and I'm also contemplating signing up for Jungle Disk.  It's $2/month fee plus 15 cents per GB that you store and 10 cents per GB you upload.  So, it would be about $27.25 for me to get started (this beta program says I'm backing up 101 GB of data since I set the backup really broad) and then about $17.15 per month to maintain it, maybe a bit more if I upload a substantial amount of information. 

Here's what I don't get about Jungle Disk.  It's "brought to you" by Amazon and Rackspace.  There are different options for cloud backup.  If I choose Amazon S3 US, then the prices I just mention apply.  But if I choose Rackspace Cloud Files, there's no transfer fees, so it would just be the $17.15/month period.  So, I'm hoping that someone out there that reads this has some experience with Jungle Disk and can explain to me which is a better option.  In terms of security they look the same, just different pricing.  And I know that, generally speaking, both Amazon and Rackspace are trusted names and brands so that doesn't really factor in.  I'm just glad I didn't lose my computer to the gods and, now that I'm using Toodledo to keep my to-dos and stuff straight, I'm definitely adding a reminder to back everything up once per quarter!

Loading mentions Retweet

Why Girl Scouts Still Shouldn't Allow Internet Sales

This is really irritating me... I caught wind of this story the other day and wrote about my take over at GirlScoutGuide.com: a young girl in North Carolina, obviously with the help of her father, created a video promoting her sales of Girl Scout Cookies and put together an online ordering system for the purchase of the cookies.  Since this does not follow the policies of the Girl Scouts, they were asked to remove the website and video from YouTube.  For some reason a lot of online marketers and tech chic people are painting the Girl Scouts in a bad light because they're not embracing social media and technology and allowing girls to sell cookies online. 

This has been covered on the Wall Street Journal's website, which was of course picked up by the tech-set crowd at Silicon Alley Insider, and there was coverage on the story on the Today show.  All these outlets seem to be preying on the "but she's just a little girl!" emotion card and making it out to be that the Girl Scouts are luddite monsters who are just too afraid to embrace new technology and social media and modern marketing.  Anyone actually familiar with the girl scouts knows that's not the case - I earned several badges related to technology and the internet myself as a scout in the mid to late 90's.  The reason is fairness and safety - they want to make the selling environment that these 5-18 year old girls engage in as safe and as fair as possible.  Since when are the basic principals of safety and fairness something you'd rather toss out the window to teach you daughter about breaking rules?

I want to shake the hand of a commenter at the WSJ's article going by "Mom & Leader" for her clear defence of the Girl Scouts.  Here are some highlights of what she says:

"I personally believe Girl Scouts officials made the rules they do first and foremost for the SAFETY of EVERY GIRL. This seems obvious to me, doesn’t seem like it should require defending."

Some would say that the instances of internet predators have calmed down since the mainstream adoption of the internet, others would say they've gone up.  This girl's dad was obviously monitoring what was going on, but that wouldn't be the case generally speaking if the GSUSA opened up the rules to internet selling.  There's a substantial potential, unfortunately, for unsupervised girls to make arrangements with suspicious characters to buy cookies and fall prey to pedophiles, kidnappers, you name it.  Putting that aside, since the girl is only eight it's obvious that while she may have been able to post a video to YouTube (should she know is a different arguement), I can guarantee her dad set up the online ordering process, so really that's unfair in that it's him selling the cookies, not her doing her best to do it.

"Secondly, the rules are in place to ensure fairness to ALL girls.  This was violated from what I understood - and I could have misinterpreted the article - by the intended “pre-orders” the video was soliciting. There are set timeframes so that cookies are sold by everyone at the same time and therefore the playing field is level. If they were taking orders before the start date then that calls into question the fairness issue. As the rules are currently you are welcome to send e-mails letting those out-of-town relatives know that its time to place those all important orders. Nobody said Grandma has to order from the neighbor girl."

Allowing girls to sell on the internet  gives them a broader reach over the girls in other areas.  And believe it or not techy douchebags, there are still families who don't have internet.  So allowing some girls who have the advantage of an internet connection to out-sell girls without an internet connection in a different region or neighborhood isn't fair.  And I agree with Mom&Leader - I read it to think they were selling outside the designated time for orders as well.

"The “Official” rules don’t address the other issue I found with this fathers decision(s), but the GS Promise and Law do. Namely “Respect authority” In this case the GSUSA is that authority in that they have made a rule in an arena which you have chosen to participate in. I feel as a parent setting an example is a major key in teaching our children - even when by doing the right thing it could mean not reaching a much-desired goal. (12,000 boxes? whoa!) Admittedly he chose to ignore a rule he was aware of."

I added the emphasis on that last line.  Back to my previous point about teaching girls to break rules ahead of teaching them about fairness and safety.  The world isn't perfect, to be sure, but the Girl Scouts are doing nothing but attempting to instill good code prinicipals and beliefes in it's members.  Knowingly breaking a rule is a terrible example to show your child; explaining to them why it's fairer and safer to not sell online is a much better lesson for a child, regardless of gender.  I'm all for the technological upbringing of children, but think about the core principals in what you're doing because that will ultimately stick with the child longer than being able to make a YouTube video to sell cookies.

My main issue, personally, is the issue of fairness.  Inherently, some troops already have a huge advantage over other troops in cookie sales based on their location.  A troop in an affluent suburb is likely to make more sales than a troop in a economically depressed inner city.  That's just the reality of business in general, whether you're discussing fundraising like this or opening up a retail store - that much is common sense.  The Girl Scouts are just trying to keep the field as level as possible knowing that things like region, economic conditions, availability of parents to volunteer, etc. is out of their control.  But allowing sales on the internet IS under their control, so they're doing what they can to give every girl the opportunity to do their best and reach their cookie goals.

Another commenter there, GS Leader, said it best: "When you have internet sales by one troop, you are actually “stealing” sales that may have supported another troop. I know it is not like that in the real world, where everyone is out for themselves, but while selling Girl Scout cookies teaches entrepreneurial skills it also teaches morals of honesty and fairness."

So I'm sorry but all the people who are giving the Girl Scouts attitude for standing strong on their policy of not allowing use of the Internet to sell should chill out and realize WHY the rule is there in the first place.

Loading mentions Retweet

Eff That Crazy Octo Mom

I really hate that any idiot who can make the poorest judgment call ever to have eight kids gets a cushy life just THROWN at her.  What has she done to deserve this kind of generosity from people other than be batshit crazy and make a terrible decision to have 8 more kids with 6 at home, half of which are special needs, with zero job and some half assed claim to not be on public assistance?  People should not be rewarded for making such bad choices.  This isn't a matter of a woman wanting a lot of kids.. if you want them and HAVE the means to support them, knock yourself out.  Several relatives of my husband have large familes (6-12 children) but they can support them.  He's the oldest of 12 himself, and while their lives growing up may not have been the lap of luxury, the kids never realized just how broke the family was because they never wanted for anything (wanting a new toy and not getting it doesn't count).  Frequently he'll start telling me some story from his childhood about model railroads with his dad or camping trips they went on or something and add that he had NO clue how they could have afforded all the things they did for the kids.  The fact that the media panders to this kind of attention whoring behavior is just sad as well. 

I'm glad her house got TP'd.  She doesn't deserve that house and got lucky something more serious didn't happen to it.  I'm not saying she should be penalized and her situation made worse for being an idiot, but she certainly shouldn't be rewarded with a nice house in a nice Orange County neighborhood either.  I hate Dr. Phil, but I actually watched an episode a few weeks ago when he was criticizing her hardcore for being so stupid.  I guess I shouldn't have been  surprised to see her go Oprah charity case on her.  Are your surprised with a nut bar like this that two PR people have already quit on her?  The last one even called her nuts!

It irritates me to no end when idiots like her get rewarded for being f'ing stupid.  Apparently the people who support this kind of attention whoring unhealthy behavior, like Dr. Phil and anyone who donated money to her to help buy a house, are stupid too.  Don't get me wrong, I feel for the kids and they shouldn't have to suffer from their mom being a whack job, but she hardly seems entirely fit to be a mother.  If the foster/adoption system weren't so flawed... anyway, I'm rambling.  But there are just so many good, deserving, hard working people that don't get what's coming to them, don't see the benefits from their hard work that they should, whether that's in the form of some windfalls or raises at work or what have you.  Too many people are legitimately deserving of this kind of attention and generosity that don't get it that it makes my blood boil to see this nut get it.

Loading mentions Retweet