My Views on the INTERNET

Time for me to tell everyone exactly what I think of the Internet. But first, some recent odd events that spawned from it.

Firstly, a friend of mine (online friend, meaning I don't actually know the person except online) apparently had some nude pictures of her posted on a website. The site URL was apparently spammed all over the Channel we hang out in. I wasn't there at the time, so I haven't seen the pictures or the site. I don't intend to look, either. Don't ask me to find it for you, because I'll hunt you down and yell at your about morals and family values. GRR.
Next, a long-time friend of mine (also online), who's had a lot of problems IRL (In Real Life) has had more problems... She had a wonderful boyfriend disappear without a trace... she thinks he comitted suicide, but he may be alive. Anyway, she and I developed a relationship. I didn't mean for it to happen, but we're both sort of in love... and I've never even seen her. She and I agree that it means we must like each others' personalities and stuff like that... but anyway. A while ago, her boyfriend came back... WOO, Magic, right? Everything was wonderful, they were happy together, yay team. Not so. She admited a few days ago to making it up. I guess she wanted me to be happy for her and leave.... cause... well. Almost every time we talk, we get into rather... suicidal discussions, often with fighting and tears and stuff. I dunno why, we still love each other after every 'fight,' and yet we still do it. Anyway, she sees herself as a bother to me, I see myself as useless to her, so it sort of goes in a circle.
Third. In case you didn't know.. Daisy, my sort of ex-girlfriend person, although we never dated... I dunno. In any case, I met her online quite a while ago, and now she's gonna go off to college. I'm very happy for her. All the best, girl.

Anyway, after all that... I'll explain what I do online.

Usually, I get online, check for updates to my anti-virus and anti-spyware, check my email, usually consisting of some junk and maybe an email from Morgan about VB (btw, thanks for showing me the API List thing, it's awesome!) , and check Megatokyo for a new strip. (YAY RSS feeds!) Then it varies. Sometimes I get on Trillian and chat with people. Sometimes I get on Diablo 1 or StarCraft to chat with people. Sometimes I get on StarCraft or Diablo 2 and play. In any case, the Internet is basically my only social life. My excuse is that I live in a canyon with nothing but oak trees around me. I guess I could talk to the trees, but a response may come slow, if at all. Anyway, people on Battle.Net, particularly those who hang in channel Diablo USA-1 and Diablo USA-2, know my Internet philosophy. Here it is:

The whole thing is one big joke.

If you think about it, everything on here is just a compilation of random crap that random people all over the planet decide needs to be said. Chat rooms are filled with bots and spammers, and the actual people in chat rooms or channels or whatever are mostly just jerks or idiots anyway. There are a few kind or nice people: sometimes they're easy to spot, more often they're hard to find. I had a friend, who recently got married and is already pregnant (yay Kit!), who wrote a great poem. It was called The Wire, and it was very good. It was about how the creators of the Internet designed it for the use of information sharing. To make the world better. Instead, they created a seperate world. And we, the Children of the Wire, we live in this world. Everything we do is connected to the Wire. Of course, there's wireless, but there's always a wire attached to it somewhere, right? Open up your case and look. Unless you have a prebuilt POS and are, to use my state's governor's term, too much of "A Girly-Man" to void your warranty... I can't believe he's our governor.... How did that happen...?
Anyway, if she sends me the poem, like I asked her to, I'll see if I can post it on here. It was really quite good. So that's my views on that subject. It's sad that such a great invention has been overturned and is now dictated by young teenagers with too many hormones. Go into any chat room and you'll see what I mean. And all the porn sites that say you have to be 18 or older to enter? Pfft, they have no safeguard to provent minors from seeing it. Just a checkbox or a different label or dropdown box or something. And even if you don't click a link, you'll see advertisements with nudity in them. It's disgraceful. But that's today's Internet. Spam, bots, Identity Theft, Porn, Illegal downloading of music, movies, and programs, et al. It's all just one big joke.

Renaissance Fair (and other things)

Well, I just spent 2 days outside of the canyon where I live, dressed as a squire or something, walking around in Ugg boots. And I paid money to do it. Ahh, but what fun it was. And seeing as this is my blog, and I'm particularly bored this evening, I shall write everything I want to about it. Then, it's on to other matters.

Okay, first day. I wake up at 6 am and get dressed. I play with my puppies for about an hour (they were so happy), and then get them back in their cage so I can go eat. I get dressed for the Fair, weapons, staff, and all. My sister, mother, and I all get in the truck and go. We pick up my sister's new boyfriend-ish-friend, who has cat-eye contacts, and drive to the Fair. Well, we get in and stuff, and I end up spending most of the time walking around with my sister and her friends (not sure how that happened, exactly...). I see friends from school around. Dom, Collon (Collin? I don't remember), Noel, Trey, etc... Finally I run into Sam, and he and I wander around together for a while. By the end of the day, we're at a weapons demonstration, and he's up there fighting with a girl in a weapons guild. Quite interesting. He may be signing up for it.

Then I went home, my sister spent the night at a friend's house, and all was calm.

Next day. Similar thing, except no staff and an added water bottle thing. Also, no sister. We get there, and I see my friend Preston, even before we get inside. Anyway, we talk and stuff, he and his friend go off, and I wait for my friend Morgan (the cool freshman, since he was the only freshman at our school who really knew much, and he does know much, indeed.) right inside the entrance. He eventually gets there, with no special clothing, same as most of my friends... Anyway, we wander for a while, and then something funny happened. A girl I had met at Live Oak, one of my sister's friends, named Alice, was walking right in front of me. She had been there the day before as well, but I didn't expect her to come back. Anyway, she turns around and says something about me stalking her, you know, that kind of joking thing. I'm completely startled because I didn't see her at all. Not hard to do since she's 4 foot 11. Anyway, we stand around talking, and then we go sit in the shade and talk. She, Morgan, and I spend most of the day together, talking about nerdy things, which is really cool, since it's hard to find a female nerd, geek, whatever. We also meet up with some other friends from school, all nerds as well..
---Geeks... nerds.... Not sure which to use....---
Anyway, so it's cool, we're all having fun in our nerdy way, calling people GM's and Hax0rs, etc... Before I go further, I should mention that there were people with signs reading "Ask Me," whom could be asked about whatever you wanted. We asked most of them the age-old question, "Pirates or Ninjas?" Two of them the first day said Pirates, because pirates always travel in large groups and have guns, and one said they both had their own place on earth and could not be pitted against each other. The second day, Alice got up and asked one: Morgan and I followed to hear what his decision was. He said "I have thought this over for a long time. My answer is:"

"NINJAS"

I was very happy indeed, as I am a Ninja fan myself, as is Morgan. Alice is still deciding. Anyway, the Ask Me man also gave us his reason.
(This was all in Old English talk, with the 'ye's and the 'thine's and all that.)
"Studies show that it takes at least three seconds for a pirate to pull his gun from a belt or holster. It takes 2 seconds for an Italian to draw a sword, and a Ninja less than one second. Therefore, a single Ninja could take out at least 3 pirates before one had his weapon out."
Of course, he added, "Which would I rather be? A Pirate of course!" They do drink, pillage, rape plunder, etc... So he has a point. Ninjas must live in secrecy and seclusion. But at least they have honor.

Anyway, that right there made my day. Ninjas are better. The Ask Me man said so. The other ones were answering which they would want to be, or which would win in a fight (usually there'd be about thirty pirates together, a whole crew, against one Ninja, who of course has enough honor to call them all out to fight, instead of stabbing them all in their backs before any of them is aware of what is happening). So anyway, that happened. If you need more proof, please visit Real Ultimate Power, and GET PUMPED... Yah it's stupid, but it's really funny. And Ninjas really are better.

Speaking of which... My computer teacher, Mrs. Fetcho, had this great idea that Vikings are better than both Ninjas and pirates. Which is probably true. But I learned something at the weapon demonstration on the first day of the Fair. Vikings used magic mushrooms before a battle so they'd be beyond fear and trippin hard. So they were hallucinating and drunk and all kinds of stuff. Then they charged at all the people and probably looked like giant evil monsters from hell or something. That's why they conquered so many races. Anyway... Back to whatever I was talking about.

Oh yes... Anyway... We were watching a show at the Fair, sorta. Mostly we were all talking (being nerdy/geeky/whatever). Another sort of funny thing happened. I saw a girl I know from school pass by. I see her most every year at the fair, and usually say hi. Anyway, I shouted out her name (which, by the way, is Sophie) and it confused her, because she didn't see who was talking. I'm sure it happens to everyone very often, so you know what it's like. It's still sort of funny though. Anyway, she comes over and says hi and stuff (after realizing who had shouted her name), and somehow I'm declared popular... Ech... Popular is something I hope never to come near to being, but anyway. It was funny in it's own way, especially since it was all nerds who I was talking to. I found it funny, anyway.

So Sophie and her friend continue on down the path, and we all hang around for a while, and then my mom comes and tells me it's time to go. I walk to the entrance and sit down. My sister and her sort-of-boyfriend-person, Beau, arrive and sit down. The peasant's guild passes by singing "na na na na, hey hey, goodbye". It was very humorous, but completely inaccurate... Most of the Fair isn't true to the time. Eventually, we get home and I go to bed pretty quickly because I'm really tired.

So that's what happened then. I'm going to write a second entry after this for other stuff, because this one is long enough as it is. That'll be up tomorrow night.

Love & Peace

RealityRipple

After note: I decided not to write any more, since there's not much more to say. I'm sort of in a bad mood for a reason I'll explain later.

Random thoughts at 11:30, Sunday night.

Well, lots has happend, and by lots I mean absolutely nothing. I'm sitting here, again, as always, typing away at my computer. Lately I've been working on my Media Player, Lime Light, and have redone lots on it. I've seperated the Skin and Non-Skin versions, so there's 2 different programs. The Skinned one is a mess, and I've been working on it for a while, but it's making me sick. The Non-Skinned one is all nice and working perfectly, I just don't want to release it until the Skinned one works too. But does it really matter, since I'm the only one that ever uses it? Oh well.

I've also been playing a lot of Starcraft, something I probably shouldn't be doing. I have work to do and dogs to play with... but it's rather addicting. I almost hear sounds from it in my sleep... Not a good thing.

Tomorrow I'm going in for a doctor's appointment or something, and also I'm going to finally get my driver's permit. I don't really want to, but it's the only way to get to school next year. Plus I have a nice 1947 Chevy Pickup to drive around for next year. Hopefully the test is mostly things that are common sense, so I can pass it easily. I'll look over the book tonight after I get off of here.

I've been thinking about lots of things lately, since I really don't do anything else, and I've come to the conclusion that I really do need to do something else with my life besides computers. Not to say I'm giving up at all, no sir. I'm just gonna start riding my bike more, or hiking... something like that. I've also been reading a lot of Stephen King stuff, and he still amazes me... He deserves everything good he gets in life. But I'm still convinced he works at OSH.

Hmm....

Well, when I started this blog ~thingi~ (I like that word), I had lots of things I thought I might want to talk about... But most of them were government issues, which I don't want to discuss anymore (there was an incident on a school online forum thing 2 years ago, World History). Maybe I'll bring it up sometime or other. I also remember I was going to describe my home, because I love to think of where I live... I think I'll do that next time, since it'd take a while, and I don't want to stay up tonight. I'm also drawn to speak of my views on the human race, genders, and some psychology things. Maybe in a few weeks I'll talk about that.

There were other things I wanted to talk about on here, but too many people I know in person read it, and I don't want to discuss things, I just want to type them up. So if you know me in person, and you're reading this, please reply to it and promise you won't bring it up anytime in the near future (like... 1 year). Thanks.


RealityRipple, Signing out.

Heh... signing out. Funny phrase.