Avarice and the Disabled Man’s Desire for Significance

I find myself buying electronic devices to feel included in the tablet boom, and the smartphone revolution. I strongly desire these devices, especially the new devices, to prove, somehow, that I am still relevant in society, now that my 2 disabilities conspire to prevent me from seeing the blue skies and the white clouds from anything more than the living room window.

 

I am glad today for a little perspective. That I can spend an hour or so getting the kinks out of my back with some Ibuprofen and Excedrin, and a lot of stretching and popping, thus enabling me to venture outside. This is opposed to the depression which tells me I am confined to my apartment regardless of what I try. Not every day is like this, it is all incumbent on my sleep from the night before, and any extra physical work I may have done the day before. The trick is to convince myself every day to get out and smell the roses, and ignore the desire to curl into a ball and whimper.

 

After moving into this apartment, I found that excessive lifting and walking up and down steps could cause the most egregious of back pain, and also induce a state where sickness could creep in: 1 1/2 weeks of bronchial distress was enough for me by miles. At the end of the ordeal I have made sure to convince myself not to move anytime soon, regardless of the state of affairs with whomever is living with me.

Which brings me to another point: I must learn to be pleasant to all persons I encounter during the day’s journey, unless I end up trapped here with the outside world wishing for nothing but me to remain here in obscurity without recourse. Selfishness doesn’t benefit much, and neither does sharing pain from a wound that cannot be seen outwardly.

 

I must completely relearn perspective, having taken the Amtrak trip of selfishness round trip. I am finding it to be less than helpful in my daily life.

Ruminations on Building a New Rig, or: Laptop or Bust.

I have been building desktop computers for over 10 years, however I suspect I have come to a crossroads in terms of needs for portability and general processing power. I fear that this desktop may well be the last one I self-assemble, or purchase, for that matter. In fact, I have been in this new apartment for 1 day shy of 2 weeks, and it is still not necessary to plug the 1100T system in. This, despite the desk being set up, and the power all sorted out. If I set it up, it may be simply because this blog post goads me into doing it.

My desktop is not truly portable in most senses and my laptop, tablet, and smartphone have seen much more use than the desktop, despite its considerable horsepower and stability. This combined with my lack of desire to Game anymore has left the desktop unplugged and forgotten… destitute and forlorn.

I had planned on building an A10 system as a backup desktop, but this move to the upstairs apartment and the general lack of need for the desktop, and more importantly, the lack of desire for the back pain that comes with a desk and chair, has resulted in my decision to end my adventures in desktop computer building. I never did LAN parties, I was never that good at the MMOs I played for 9 years, and I started to develop back pain from all the time spent at the computer, not to mention a necessary move from mouse to trackball thanks to repetitive strain injury. Also, a $1200 laptop could easily pump out enough pixels to do the game playing should I ever desire to return to Azeroth or Telara.

My desktop building days started when  needed to upgrade my $2000 HP Pavilion that I had when I started at the local Technical College… purchased by my Father who felt I needed a good system to last for a few years. At that time it had come with a 14.4 kbps telephone modem, and I eventually wanted to upgrade to a 33.6k modem. The modem cost $210 dollars, the process was difficult, and I was sweating bullets. Once everything worked though, I was as hooked as an automotive student who had just installed a new engine.

Many self-made desktops later, I think I will look back on this experience with both pride and shame. Pride because I usually had the best rig of anyone I knew (for a few months at least), and shame because I rarely had a truly stable rig… there was always something amiss with my rigs, from something as simple as a device driver, all the way to blue screens that caused me to fly into a rage after working on those problems for days. I think a BSOD is a good psychological stress test, and I am afraid I failed most of them. Somehow the loss of the girl in high school shone through greatest when the computer refused to work.

Oddly enough, now that I am finally letting go of all that pain, I am also no longer going to build desktops… perhaps there is a correlation…

Freedom of Religion

How many times do the laws need to be changed to benefit sexual orientation, race and class before the religious establishment demands equal representation under the law?

Every time a homosexual is beaten for choosing to follow his passions, it is considered a hate crime. Every time a man or woman of color are called the N word, those actions are considered a hate crime. But if you are assaulted someone because of religious doctrine, it is simply a crime. Granted none of these other crimes should be treated any differently because of the circumstances, religion nevertheless must learn some tricks that the liberal establishment has given to their cherished causes, and I see no reason why we cannot use the system to shore up our own agenda.

Much like the humanist agenda has subverted race relations, from church to state, the religious establishment can take control of the situation legally. Thus adherents lives ,when tested , become part of a specially protected class of persons who, if harmed or discriminated against during the practice of religion or speaking about their faith, have strong redress in the modern courts, if we pursue this idea.

This would upend 60 years of the denigration of religion and religious persons in the west and ensure a safer work environment for all types of religious careers and persons. This would honestly be very difficult to do, since the hate crime legislation was set up in supposed opposition to churches, however, with such protections we would enable our fellow brothers to feel somewhat protected by secular government, which we can truthfully no longer consider our own.

It is time government and religion found a common ground once again in the West, and making Religious Freedom a reality could be the foundation.