caeron

If you have feedback, give it. If you don't, shut up. Long winded whines about how some nebulous unindentified great wisdom is being ignored is just stupid.

I remember seeing the AIDS quilt on the Washington DC mall one of the last times I think the whole thing was displayed before it got too large. The quilt itself made me sad, but the thing that mad me weep uncontrollably was the reading of the names. They just went on and on and on. A whole generation of us wiped out.

A bit of synchronicity. I was cleaning out my computer files and found this which I wrote a few years after 9/11. My younger brother worked in the towers at the time and was late to work that day. My older brother worked at the pentagon, but fortunately was elsewhere that day. I'm sure others here were even closer to the tragedy. ************ Today, I made the pilgrimage to ground zero. I really should have been doing other things, but I had to go. I can’t say exactly why. So I blew off some work I ought to have been doing, and boarded a downtown train. The train and the station were remarkably clean. The conductor’s announcements, however, were as incomprehensible as ever, sounding like a voice run through a chainsaw. The man next to me met my eyes and laughed. “These are the new trains, too,” he said. This didn’t feel like the city I remembered. I don’t know lower Manhattan particularly well, though you couldn’t get lost walking from the station. There was steady stream of people heading south, following a few signs. The site itself is deceptive. Like nothing more than a construction zone. Even a crane sat there idle. I wept. I didn’t feel American so much as I felt human. Touched by the abiding loss that each of us must face in our own lives. The air around me felt thick. Thick with the choked sobs of grief, and the unheard whispers of ghosts. I wanted to tell the ghosts, “I know. I know,” but I didn’t really. The best I could do was to stand there with them for a moment, companionship separated by an infinite void. It reminded me of Dachau. Years ago, driving across Germany we saw the exit sign for Dachau, one of the first of the concentration camps. My parents did not want to stop, but I insisted. Like Ground Zero, what you saw was unimpressive. Grey buildings against a grey sky. But you could feel the ground groan and weep under the burden of the blood and tears that had been spilled upon it. A wrongness seeped from the stones of the place making you want to scream and tear your hair. Anything to somehow break the relentless pressure of it. But you know nothing can change what was, so you let your tears mix with all the others that have come before, and hope that your grief and tears might wear away a small piece of the cruelty that was done there. It was like that as I walked around St. Paul’s looking at all the offerings to the dead that had been left. The kindergarten class letters. The note from a mother to her son. A daughter to her father. A wife to her husband. A picture with no words. And I thought of Anne Frank who said, “..because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.” I think so too, Anne. I think so, too.

Haha! That was brilliant! Thanks for sharing it.

Yes it does. And while it has a stylus, I haven't used it. I just type or use my fingers.

The phone I had before this was the iphone, which I loved.. until the upgraded the OS, then it always just seemed to be flakey. The Galaxy note syncs with my MS office calendar features, so I'm good there. I'm still exploring the software options for it, but so far I'm very happy, and the screen is Sooo much bigger than the iphone. I can read things on it so much easier. But I have big hands and so the size of it is fine for me. Some reviewers complained that they couldn't use it one handed. Poor dears.

I got a galaxy note a few weeks ago, and so far I'm loving it. screen is huge, and yet small enough that I can put it in my pocket.

He has money, they have looks. It's an ages old transaction.

I'm with Expat. They're on a tear, but it never lasts, certainly not in tech.

I think she's trying to one-up her son by being a transexual, transracial black man. Michael Jackson with a runaway fro!

I would be happy to bring those country boys back home, and teach them the ways of the city mouse!

I worked for Carly at Lucent. She is an extremely talented woman. But she was a great sales person and a great marketer, which wasn't what HP needed. HP's problems were more about execution and getting the ducks in a row. Carly was the wrong person for the problems that HP had.

I don't really care, though they should have known that in this prudish nation that others would and this wasn't going to stay a secret forever.

I have positional sleep apnea. If I don't sleep on my side, I have issues. I tried a CPAP and just couldn't do it. It was far too disturbing, though for those who can, I'm told it's really effective. If you have sleep apnea and it isn't positional, you really need to use one. Sleep apnea can cause some serious health problems.

Why is it either/or? Why can't he wear the shirt AND study?

Apparently kids in the same school were allowed to wear tshirts with bible verses on them. Pretty clear case of double standards.

I stopped posting at the other place years ago because of the nastiness of its forums. It has gotten better... but it still isn't good. I certainly wouldn't think much of what opinion those there have of me, since there are a lot of bitterness there.

You say that like being part of the eastern establishment is some kind of mark of shame. So he isn't from Tennessee. Are the rest of us really so bad that you need to paint with that brush?

I want the older Mark, in the younger body. He's mellowed with age, and doesn't say homophobic shit anymore, but man was he hot in the day. Still pretty hot...

Mostly not a lot of gay stuff in the seasons I watched, though there was an orgy scene that panned over two guys fucking as if it were nothing special.

I enjoyed the show a lot. I found the violence very comic book, and therefore not very disturbing. and HOT HOT guys.

I view lottery tickets as a license to dream with a relative short expiration date. I think it's worth it to me!

The bar scene is for the young and the beautiful. I'm neither. I don't mind having a drink with friends, or maybe going to a go-go bar once in a while, but otherwise, what's the point for someone like me? I had enough trouble picking guys up when I was young and cute, it surely hasn't gotten any better!

2 years ago, my wife woke up with a bloody lip, and reddish spots on her body. She wanted to blow it off, but I'm a doctor's kid, and I thought it wasn't right, so went to the hospital much to her annoyance. She did blood work and what not, they said it was probably nothing, and we left. A couple of hours later we got a call to come back to the hospital. They admitted her immediately, with a platlet count of 1. Normal is in the range of 150 to 400. Anything below 20 is life threatening. You can spontaneously bleed to death. She spent several days in the ICU, and the first 24 hours it dropped from 1 to 0. I listened in horror as the doctors discussed the risks of her bleeding out, and how to handle it. The first 48 hours were touch and go. Then she started to get better. The doctors told us repeatedly that this form of blood problem, once it started, was typically chronic, and would likely require removal of her spleen, and there is a chance even that wouldn't cure it. But she just got better, and that was the end of it. Inexplicable. Terrifying. Then gone. I listened to the Carmina Burana a lot after that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Fortuna for those who don't know the translation of the original latin... It has made life all the sweeter to have come so incredibly close to death and walked away. I hope your experience is the same, and that it just goes away...

Sparkling wine. Even a cheap Cava can make me feel happy.