I've come to realize that I make massive edits to my posts after I've posted them... I don't know why I do that. I'll post it and read it and then think "oh, I should probably change that". I guess I need to start treating this as slightly more professional. Decide a topic I want to write on and then give myself at least a day to write it, read it and tweak it before posting it. It's interesting how my blog filled with simple posts about random things (that nobody cares about) has evolved into a site of mostly political commentary (that nobody cares about) mixed in with the simple posts about random things (that nobody cares about). Perhaps I should split my site into two sections...

Speaking of commentary, I was debating with myself a few days ago. It's fun! You should try it. It helps exercise the mind. But, there I was, listening to sports radio after The Peter Heck Show, and I thought to myself: You know, Mister Conservative, for all your complaining about bias in reporting the news, you sure don't seem to mind sports reporters injecting their opinions in their articles. And that got me thinking... There are people who report politics. There are people who commentate on politics. There are people who report sports. There are people who commentate on sports. Reporters should only be there to observe and report what happens and relay to the people without tampering or injecting opinions. Investigative reporting would be a little different in the sense that a reporter might notice something wrong with what someone's saying and then they'll go and dig up previous reports (that should have been reports written without tampering or injecting opinions) and compare them to what the person is saying now. That's not injecting opinion. That's you, as an objective reporter, being interested only in the truth and when someone appear to be lying, you go and find proof and show everyone. That's reporting as it should be...

Commentating is the specific process of taking articles (or maybe making your own) and intentionally injecting your opinions. In commentating, people expect you to show your views! You're making comments about it! I have no problem with commentating. I listen to Rush Limbaugh and Peter Heck and I, obviously, commentate on politics based on my own views. I make no bones about it being how I see politics... I don't pawn it off as being objective reporting because it clearly isn't objective. I'm conservative. I'll look at something and go "that's right" or "that's wrong" and then tell you why I think that. That's not the place of a reporter. All they're supposed to do is sit there and ask questions to get the true picture. Sadly, reporters don't do this... They'll ask questions to get the picture they want and leave out information that they think will hurt the image they're trying to paint and then try to tell you "that's right" or "that's wrong". It shouldn't be that way. They should report it exactly as it is so that YOU, the reader, can say for yourself "that's right" or "that's wrong" without any of the reporter's ideologies clouding your judgment.

But there you go... An argument with myself. I commentate, I don't report. They're two entirely separate things, so I am clearly not being hypocritical in expecting reporters not to commentate, because they are, in fact, NOT commentators. When they manipulate stories, like everyone knows they all do now that it's obvious to even the Democrats that they pick favorites (Obama over Clinton... ouch, poor Hillary), they lose all credibility as an objective reporter and nothing they say can be taken at face value ever again.

You know, it's not that we're against moving away from using oil and gasoline to power the vast majority of the United States... We're only against liberals trying to move us away without giving us any viable alternatives RIGHT NOW. They tell us to stop using oil NOW and develop alternatives. The key here is "develop". They don't have usable alternatives right now. We're supposed to take care of that. All they care about is stopping oil, and then they give sketchy theories on how to compensate for the loss of a major source of energy and when the government tries to encourage drilling again, the liberals start pooping all over the place and try to tell us all that "it's only symbolic" and that it'll take 10 years before we start seeing more supply and that we shouldn't bother. What happened to the whole "think of the future" mentality these liberals keep professing? On the one hand, they want us all to think of the far future and stop this whole "global warming" thing, but on the other, they want to drag their feet and tell us that approving off-shore drilling is stupid because nothing will come of it for 10 years. Am I the only one who sees the blatant hypocrisy here? You can't have it both ways. You can't argue to think of the future for your own goals, and then argue the opposite for someone else's goals. That's just deceitful.

What we, the citizens and voters of the United States, want is to have normal energy sources until the time comes when it's actually worth it to switch. We understand that alternative renewable energy sources is a GOOD thing. We just realize that cutting oil out of the picture BEFORE we have alternative renewable energy sources is a BAD thing. If they want us to accept a different energy source, then come up with one that actually and practically works... Don't give us a bunch of theoretical methods that simply aren't viable and leave it up to us to make it work. Wind power? Solar power? We're not stupid. We know that these things are vast untapped sources, but we also know that the methods for collecting these sources are severely limited at the moment. If we want to tap into these sources, fine! Let's do it! But, in the meantime, while we research how to harness these sources in a way that will actually work for the future, we need to keep using oil. A major source of energy we're willing to go for is nuclear energy, but, of course, the liberals and environmentalists (if there's a difference) are all afraid of the radioactive waste that results from it, even though we could probably bury a lifetime's worth of waste in the space of a coffin. If it really bothers you that much to have the waste sitting in a concrete underground bunker in the middle of an inhospitable desert, then maybe we could aim the stuff at the moon. As far as I know, there's no atmosphere to contaminate up there. (Wait, we can't do that... We're planning on colonizing the moon, riiiiight. Well, we have a star nearby. Let's shoot it at that... It gives off plenty of radioactivity already and any spacecraft we send up there will vaporize long before it actually hits the Sun. Problem solved.)

Regardless, depriving us of oil without giving us alternatives that will completely and totally replace it is like going to a coastal region and declaring that fishing is illegal and that they need to find another way to generate revenue. It would economically cripple the region until they establish a new trade... It's not wise. In fact, it's ludicrous and insane. They're not going to be interested in changing on their own, so what you'd need to do is approach them, point out that fishing is bad and then provide them with a WORKING plan to wean them from the fishing market. You would not say "okay, no more fishing, find something else, you could try raising elephants" and then walk away. I hope you realize that's what happened during the Civil War... While I completely agree that racial-discrimination slavery is about as morally low as you can get, I also understand that the Union was almost as wrong to come through, rip out the single method of generating revenue and a stable economy that the South had, and then walk away, leaving the South to scramble around in a severely impoverished state in an effort to radically restructure the way they worked. If you ripped oil out of the picture without giving a working alternative plan, the country is going to HURT and hurt badly. What the liberals need to do is keep up the pressure and maybe pull their weight and use their own money to research alternative fuels, if it worries them that much. They need to slowly, and I stress the word SLOWLY, replace oil with an alternative that can, I must also stress the word CAN, work just as well as oil, if not better. An alternative that doesn't perform as well as oil will be unacceptable. It will take time, but time is something they like to tell us. "We need to go green today to save the planet tomorrow." In one breath, they seem smart, as liberals first seem to be... But in the other, they go off the deep end, as liberals usually turn out to do, and want to crush this country's economy by ripping out the primary source of energy overnight and leave us all to scramble for alternatives while everything in this country comes to a screeching halt. It may be inadvertant, due to their low comprehension of economies, and not due to their raging hatred of the United States. Although some people clearly hate (hello, Michelle Obama), I wouldn't say it's the goal of all liberals to kill the country, but I will say that they don't seem to know enough to realize that's what would happen.

I just think it's amazing that the liberals are all the time harping about preserving the future of mankind and that we need to make changes NOW in an effort to help the FUTURE, but when conservatives do something like pass a law to increase our native supply of oil in an effort to make it cheaper in the FUTURE, the liberals complain that it's not going to change anything NOW. Yes, well, just think of this: President Clinton, 10 years ago, vetoed a bill to allow drilling in Alaska? His reasons were the exact same thing. "It won't help anything now." (This is common knowledge, but I'm sure that if I don't provide a source to support something scathing about a Democrat, I'm going to get raked over the coals, so here's a Google Search link to as many articles about the ANWR drilling veto as you could hope for.) Well, guess what? It's 10 years in the future and we could all really be using that extra oil, wouldn't you agree? But, no! The liberals haven't changed their tune one bit. What's the definition of insanity? Repeating the same action over and over in an attempt to get a different result? I make it my hobby to follow politics and get in the mind of liberals so I can understand where they're coming from, but it's impossible to understand the mind of a party that's simply gone insane. They understand nothing and, as a result, there is nothing for me to understand.

Once again, I missed the boat on Gen Con Indy. One of the the largest gaming conventions in the country and it's only 60 miles away. I don't need a hotel... I could just drive back home every night, it's that close. Four days of gaming bliss and I keep forgetting until the last minute. I need something to remind me of it far in advance so I can put it on the calendar to say "Okay! This is Gen Con... Nobody else plan stuff!"

I remembered that Video Games Live made a press release about their publishing music from the concert and I was checking up to see when they said it'd hit the shelves. (July 22, for the record, according to Amazon.com.) I then remembered that VGL makes a regular appearance in Indianapolis, so I decided to check their tour dates. Sure enough, they had two events for August 15 and 16. To humor myself, I decided to check to see if there were any seats available... THERE WERE. I was torn. I don't like large crowds of people, and I especially don't like sitting next to someone I don't know. Call it the wolf in me. Crowds are bad. (In fact, to side step a bit, we went to my grandparents' 50th wedding anniversary and their tiny house was so cram packed full of people that I panicked and hid in one of the bedrooms until some peopel left! Okay... Maybe not panicked, but it was close.) Would I ignore my dislike for crowds to go see Video Games Live? There are an incredible amount of videos on YouTube, one of which is one I added to my favorites list... VGL did the music from the Myst series and it was phenomenal. As much as I dislike the Uru community of elitist hypocrites and the whole influx of people who think Exile is the best game in the series, I'll still always have a place in my heart for Myst. (In fact, to side step yet again, I went out and bought work shoes today and my eyes immediately went to the shoes that looked almost exactly like the hiking shoes you could pick for shoes in Uru. See? I don't dislike Uru or Cyan... I simply dislike the people who each think they're the single most important person in the universe and that nobody else's opinions could possibly be valid.)

Needless to say, it didn't take much to convince me to go. There's a bunch of other stuff before and after the music, so it would probably be a whole day adventure... That, and Nomad was pretty much "duh, there's absolutely no reason for you not to go", and I happened to agree. So I started researching the theater to find out which seats were the best... I think I settled on some seats near the middle aisle on the right side of the theater when facing the stage. Ground floor, near the center of the room. Pretty much as middle as you could get when sitting on the right side. Tickets were kind of expensive, but I thought it was worth it. Of course, I wouldn't go alone, so I needed to ask my brother if he would go with me and do the whole "presenting the idea to the parents" deal... Then I decided to check the calendar for if anything was planned that weekend, which I really should have done first because:

Mom signed us up for a Vision Forum convention in Anderson those very same two days. There goes the whole VGL thing... I didn't want to go before, so I'm sure you can imagine how much I want to go after tonight, eh? There's no word if VGL will be at Gen Con next year. They've been there off and on in the past. I guess I'll keep looking at the itinerary and see what happens. I could always go to the Chicago event, but... Chicago is a mess to drive through. I know how to get around Indianapolis! Bah, I say. At least I can use this as leverage in the future? "You made me go to a convention the same week as a video game music concert in our own state. Do you realize how much I gave up for that? You owe me one!"

So last Sunday, I was attempting to take a look at what our internet access throughput was actually supposed to be and I noticed that AT&T, since the merger, had managed to completely rework the way we check the account information on our services. Of course, the combination of accounts was done in a less than graceful manner and I had to spend hours playing with the system and a plethora of passwords I thought I might have used to make security questions so I could email myself the passwords and generally get things squared away. During this process, I decided to check up on the latest DSL plans... It turns out that our plan, which was actually a custom plan when we first got it, had managed to relegate itself to the lowest plan and two far faster plans had popped up.

Our plan was 1500kbps/384kbps... Or supposed to be. In practice, of course, those numbers were far smaller in the literal sense when you download and upload. Then there was a mid-grade plan, 3000kbps/512kbps and then a whopper of a plan, 6000kbps/768kbps. Of course, my eyes went to the biggest and baddest... The 6mbps. Then the price. Merely 10 more dollars for that plan than the plan we had. I almost died right then and there our of pure joy. 10 dollars to quadruple download and double upload? There was no doubt about it... I was going to check it out. So I did! I subscribed to it and AT&T said they'd adjust the service for me in 2-3 days and to leave the modem on so they could communicate with it. (I wish they didn't use such novice terminology... Would like to know what they're actually doing to the modem, if they only mean leave it on to learn, because my modem does that at boot anyway.)

Then I started reading up on DSL... Advanced stuff like Signal-to-Noise Ratios and Line Attentuation. The stuff that makes or breaks a DSL connection. Honestly, if you can read these two readouts on your DSL connection, you'll learn everything you need to learn about the quality. It turns out that my Line Attenuation was telling me that my strip of telephone cable from house to DSLAM (the device that generates DSL connections) was at the absolute maximum length. At least that's what it said. Attenuation was at 57.5dB, which is what you roughly get with around 4100 meters of cable... 2.5 miles. That's the outer fringes of DSL access. It might be more and it might be less, but I think that as long as your SNR and Attenuation are within acceptable parameters, you could be at any distance. Anyway... My SNR was 16.5dB, which is pretty good. Not outstanding, not bad... Just good. 16.5dB and 57.5dB at just 1.5mbps? The numbers were turning out to be not so kind to increasing speeds. I figured I'd shoot a question off to tech support and see if they could run a line-level sync rate test to see how much signal my lines could support! Enter AT&T chat technician.

I told him that I was planning on upgrading from the lowest DSL plan and that I was wanting to know how much maximum bandwidth my telephone line was capable of carrying. After a lengthy pause, he proceeded to link me to a bandwidth monitor. You know, the kind that only work once you have an internet connection? The kind that only monitors what you're using at the moment? Yeah. One of those. To humor him, I used the thing and ran the numbers and then read underneath that if I wanted to know the maximum possible sync rate between DSLAM and modem that a technician would have to do it with special hardware. So I asked him about it! I used the proper terms and everything... I wanted to know the maximum possible sync rate for my lines. He replied in such an amazingly powerful way that I'm still reeling from the sheer awe of the revelation. He said, and I quote to the exact letter: "Yes." I asked for the maximum possible sync rate and he said "Yes" like he was trying to impress me with a Kosh imitation or something. As I told TW, that's when I very slowly backed away, thanked him for his time, and closed the window... Kind of creepy.

Anyway, so I keep reading about numbers and distance and read charts and examples and I came to the conclusion that I might be able to support around 4000kbps/768kbps based on numbers alone, and that I had to make a decision on to keep paying 10 extra dollars for the 6000/768 plan when it was only going to be 4000/768. The next plan down is 3000/512, so I had to know if losing 1000/256 was going to be acceptable to save 5 dollars. I decided to let things play out... I could, after all, call them up and tell them to lower my plan again if nothing worked.

Fast forward to today: I wake up and notice that the modem had reset during the night. (I keep IMs open all night now, with proper idle time reporting and away message usage, I might add, and noticed that AIM had popped up a window declaring that I was connected from two locations... Just means my IP changes.) I access the modem's configuration pages and VOILA! 4800/768 was what it reported... Up from 1538/384 or something like that. Not 6000, as I predicted, but considerably higher than the 4000 that I did. SNR was 6dB and Line Attenuation remained the same, as I thought it would. SNR of 6? Eh... Acceptable. I read that once you're at 6, there's no point in going higher since the noise is too great. Guess that's accurate after all. I did some funky testing and moved the DSL modem outside to the demarc (the gray telephone box on the side of your house) to see how fast DSL connected there... Cut out all in-house wiring and extra noise generated by it. It connected at somewhere around 5200/768. Wow... I think I need to run a dedicated DSL line, don't you think?

So I do more reading and research and it appears that I need to buy some bulk Category 5E shielded cabling and string it from a DSL splitter in the demarc to either the modem directly, or a wall jack. This will be the heavy duty stuff, too... Someone who knows their stuff, but not quite, will probably come by like they do at forums discussing this option and be quick to point out that Cat5 has more pairs than RJ11 jacks can handle and that you should use Cat3 and blah blah blah. Go away. I'm going to have to crimp my own pinout, I know that... But nothing quite says shielded like Category 5 cables. Only going to use 2 wires, of course, but it's entirely possible. I'm going to have to read up more on DSL splitters and how to install them yourself... That's entirely possible, too, and I would much rather do it myself.

But there you go... I upgraded my DSL connection from 1500/384 to 6000/768 and the condition of my line said I would receive maybe 4000/768 but I managed to get 4800/768 on filters and over 5000 downstream when emulating a DSL splitter. I am very, very happy... I've only had the modem reset once on me so far. I'll have to do some extensive testing to make sure everything is working properly. When DSL connections get too noisy, they like to disconnect and reset. It's annoying and the only thing to do is slow down the connection speed, but I've always had random resets... I'm used to it and accept it as a quirk from being so far away from the DSLAM, but I'll have to see if the instances increase with faster speeds.

But I went from 150KB/s sustained (160KB/s peak burst) to 480KB/s sustained (500KB/s peak burst). That's a speed increase of around 320 percent for 10 more dollars a month. Not bad, eh? AT&T might not be so bad if they don't manage to abuse their monopoly again and decide to keep these nice low-priced broadband solutions. I'm officially impressed with DSL technology.

Well, it's that time again. The time where I finally amass 2,500 points on my Amazon.com Visa card and I get a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate! This time, I have a few things to pick from, but I don't know which ones to pick, meh... Five things come to mind:

1. Deep Space Nine Companion - $18.99
   Capella told me that this was a really amazing book with a ton of behind-the-scenes information. I've been watching Deep Space Nine a lot lately and I'm currently on a Star Trek high. I love these kind of books and I love Deep Space Nine... Can't go wrong with this one.
2. Super Mario Galaxy - $49.99
   Of course, what list wouldn't be complete without a Nintendo game on it? Been wanting to play this, sort of, but I haven't gotten around to it. I keep hearing amazing things about it, so I just need to go out and buy it... Could this be the perfect time to get it?
3. Contact Harvest - $10.17
   A while ago, I heard that a new Halo novel was being written... And that reminded me that I haven't purchased the current latest one: Contact Harvest. I don't care if you don't like first person shooters, the story in Halo is amazing and I've been collecting the novels and they're REALLY GOOD.
4. Ratatouille - $19.99
   I also collect Pixar movies. It doesn't matter what it is... If it's Pixar, I buy it. I haven't bought Ratatouille (that's two for two on correct spelling on the first attempt) yet, so this is a serious contender, but it's one of those "I haven't got around to it yet" things.
5. Gilligan's Island - $73.99
   This is a childhood TV show of mine and I just discovered tonight that they've bundled everything into a single series package... Really difficult for me not to buy it right now and completely forget about everything else. I would watch this over and over and over and over and...

As you can see, some of these aren't all $25... I'll probably team a couple of things up if I get something below $25. DS9 Companion and Contact Harvest, probably... Books, ahoy! Or, uhm... Maybe DS9 and Ratatouille? Ratatouille and Contact Harvest? Ugh. More decisions. Or I can get a game I've been hearing really good things about, but, to be honest, I've really not been interested in playing it, mostly because from what I've seen, it's just another Mario 64 or Mario Sunshine and I don't want to play another "let's do the same level 8 different times" Mario game. Or I can get Gilligan's Island! Oh... Man... Gilligan's Island. I'm telling you... That's a major upset in the list right there. None of those can hold a candle to Gilligan's Island... Not even Pixar. Maybe WALL-E can.. Hmm.

Anyone have any ideas? I'd like to order in the next week.

Got four things to mention today! One is from The Peter Heck Show (well, technically three, but I saw two of them myself earlier today) and one is from Tay, who has given me the heads up on things like this before! First up, Tay's thing:

Basically, it's more about how blacks are severely overcompensating for racism... Down in Texas, there was a county meeting and people were discussing how to better handle traffic tickets. (Google News link: HERE.) It seems that bureaucracy is at its finest in Dallas and paperwork would get misplaced and completely lost in the offices through which traffic ticket payments would travel through... A white commissioner said the office was a black hole. You know, those astronomical anomalies where stars are theorized to collapse in on themselves and create a gravity well so powerful that not even light can escape it? A term that a lot of people use to describe something that seems to drain resources. But, I mind you that I said this guy was a white commissioner. Okay? White. There were other commissioners in this meeting, of course, and one happened to be black, and now you can see how this exploded into a racial controversy:

Commissioner Kenneth Mayfield, who is white, said it seemed that central collections "has become a black hole" because paperwork reportedly has become lost in the office.

Commissioner John Wiley Price, who is black, interrupted him with a loud "Excuse me!" He then corrected his colleague, saying the office has become a "white hole."

Wow. Talk about a stretch. See what I mean about blacks LOOKING for ways to cry racism? Now, I'm going to be perfectly blunt here. He was either joking, which he was clearly not, seeing as how the judge in charge of the meeting ordered Mayfield to apologize, or he has absolutely no idea what a black hole really is. If he doesn't, then, I'm sorry... But he need to go back to school and learn what black holes really are. Also, there are theorized "white holes". It is what it sounds like... the polar opposite of a black hole. These are things that spew matter from their event horizon instead of sucking matter in. Clearly, a while hole does not describe the condition of the office losing money... In fact, government, as a whole, could never be described as a white hole. Money would never spontaneously appear in a government office, now would it? The whole story? Absolutely amazing... Thanks, Tay!

Next up on the agenda is a shocker of an article that Peter Heck showed us. It has to do with the effect of global warming. Remember my post a while ago about NASA using satellites to monitor the biosphere? And how they noticed that greenery has been on the rise? And that more plants means more animal life and that means, in general, that the planet is doing just dandy? Well, in case you don't want to believe NASA scientists, there's a story from Germany that has corroborating evidence! Scientists have, in fact, learned something incredibly shocking... Something nobody has understood for millennia: Plants... Like... Carbon Dioxide. (Google News like: HERE.) I know! It's unbelievable! According to their findings, increasing carbon dioxide to farm crops increased their yield by 10%. Of course, he tells everyone it's not an argument to curb the tide of rising CO2, and while I agree to an extent, I think it shows that reports of catastrophic global warming are greatly exaggerated. Actually, in the spirit of my never-ending search for taglines, I have created a great line for a bumper sticker:

PREVENT WORLD HUNGER: INCREASE YOUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

There. I have now pulled a common liberal tactic and turned my stance of "the planet is not getting catastrophically hotter" into an emotional position of "you're depriving the hungry children in war-torn countries the food they need by decreasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere." Not a bad position to take, if I do say so myself, eh? Now... Please understand that I agree that pollution is bad. I have no bones about cutting back on pollution. I hate it when I talk to people about not believing in catastophic global warming and they show my pictures of China pumping great billowing clouds of soot into the air. That's not proof of catastrophic global warming... That's proof of pollution. I know there's a pollution problem in some places and I'm all for it. Catastrophic global warming? The kind where the entire planet is doomed? Nah! In fact, that leads me into the third article:

Here's another article about global warming. It's from NewsBusters, but here's the Google News link if you're really dead set against treading on those dastardly conservative sources. I'm going to show you a headline used to describe an article supporting global warming and I want you to exercise your logical mind and see if there's anything wrong with it, okay? Right! Ready? Here it is:

Global warming causing California glacier to grow, scientists say

Read it very slowly so you can get the whole idea. Scientists are telling us that ice is getting colder... Because the planet is getting HOTTER. They go into a whole thing about how the ocean is getting hotter and making more moisture that moves inland and then falls as snow. (Actually, you really oughta read the NewsBusters article, because they grace you with an article where NASA says the oceans are, in fact, getting COLDER.) They say 90% of Earth's mountain glaciers are getting smaller in an attempt to make everyone scared to death about melting ice. (Pardon my novice skills in geology, but aren't there glaciers that AREN'T on mountains? How are they doing?) 90% of mountain glaciers are melting but one in California is getting bigger because the whole planet is getting hotter? Yeah, maybe not the whole planet, eh? It really doesn't get any better than this when it comes to showing proof AGAINST catastrophic global warming. Yes, pollution is a problem... Yes, the planet's climate is changing. But I'm 100% against the theory that the ENTIRE planet is getting hotter all at the same time and that we're all going to die unless we stop pumping oil and burning coal and testing weapons and whatever else they say causes global warming. And speaking of "whatever else" causes global warming... I saved the best for last:

This article is also from NewsBusters, because I like the way they lay out the article. They do, of course, share many links to different sources, and, as always, here's the Google News link if you want to check out as many sources as you want. People who make fun of the idea of man-made global warming would sometimes casually ask "well, what about cow farts?" That question is now in the process of being answered as a group of scientists in Argentina are drilling hoses into cow stomachs that lead into a big pink bag strapped to their bags in an effort to find out just how much gas a cow produces. It is absolutely HILARIOUS. They talk about emissions like they would talk about car fumes... In fact, the scientists were so shocked at the amount of gas produced and preliminary numbers say that 30% of Argentina's "carbon footprint" is caused by cows because methane is apparently more "destructive" than plain carbon dioxide.

Well, folks... I have a news flash for you. Living things pass gas. They breathe, they eat, they burp, they fart, they poop... They contaminate the biosphere every second, every day, every year for the entire lives and then they die and leave their rotting corpses all over the place. Even if we just limit the theorizing to just burps alone, I wonder how much carbon is actually the natural consequences of eating and NOT businesses pumping fumes all over the place.

So let's recap, shall we?

Black commissioner doesn't know what a "black hole" is and is immediately offended when the term is used in a proper context... It turns out plants actually like carbon dioxide (no kidding?) and that increasing carbon dioxide makes them grow more (I would grow more, too, if I ate more)... It turns out that the a California glacier is getting bigger BECAUSE the planet is getting warming, and that it's getting warmer because cows all over the world are burping and farting all of us into total annihilation.

This... All in just a single week. What a world we live in.

INTRODUCTION

This is a post a long time coming... I feel I've thought about it long enough to attempt a writing. Don't think I can get any further just by thinking. Now, to explain what this is going to be about: A lot of times, I'll tell people about friends I've met on the Internet and I'll get a weird look. I think my parents have outgrown this stage, but extended family and random people I meet will still give me the eyebrows when I talk about "a friend on the Internet." A few times, I'll be involved in a discussion with someone and Myst comes up and I'll just casually toss out there "yeah, I'm a Myst fan... I was part of the community, but I'm not anymore" and people will naturally ask why and I have to disappoint them with a pause and an "it's complicated." This is even to people who know me and know that I was big into Myst and ask me if I'm going to the "Myst convention" this year and I'm left explaining to them why... For all these people, and others who might be confused as to my status toward certain people, this post is for you. Now, before I begin, I want to say in advance that I currently intend no ill will toward anyone in particular. I may give examples of things that have happened to me, and the people I'm writing the examples from may read this and get angry. I say right now that I will give no names and all examples will be purely anonymous... If you get upset and leave a comment, then it will be your own doing that people begin to associate the examples toward you. That being said, let us begin!

FORMING RELATIONSHIPS

And by "relationship", I mean it in its broadest sense. Think "Sims relationship". Your Sim meets a new person and TADA! New relationship icon appears. One of the most common things people bring up when the subject of Internet friends appears is "how do you know they are who they say they are?" The simple fact of the matter is: You don't. People think that makes chat rooms and forums and Internet friendships based on nothing, and while that could be entirely accurate, and has been shown to be accurate before with all the news articles about stalkers and kidnappers, I tend to say that ALL friendships could be based on nothing.

Think about it... You meet a friend's friend. You've never seen them before, but you manage to strike up a conversation and learn some things about them. While your friend could be there to referee, so to speak, you're still taking this person's information at face value. None of it could be true, and, in fact, your own friend might be duped into believing false information, too. A lot of information can be corroborated with evidence and sometimes you can immediately see that some things are true and that some aren't.

Actually, a more appropriate example would be someone you've met at a bar. Now, for sake of those with overactive imaginations (like myself), I'm not referring to downtown strip clubs or places where people enjoy going to get drunk. I'm talking good old fashioned taverns and inns and places that people like to gather at the end of the day to wind down with a pint of ale and a good bit of gossip. Think hobbits! Anyway, back to the point: When you meet someone at a bar, there is absolutely no way you can be sure that what they're saying is true. They may say they're 18 or 28 or 38, or that they're visiting from Alabama, or that they are, in fact, not married... You can't be sure. Now, most of the time, people in bars come and go and you never see the same person twice... But sometimes there's a group of people who keep coming back to the same bar at the same time and you start getting acquainted. It's just a natural tendency. Two people see each other for the fifth time and greet each other with a nod or a wave and things just progress from there. You may have spoken once before and you may have even got along very well with them! I'm not going to get into how friendships are formed... But you get the idea. You meet people in a public area and sometimes you'll make friends if you happen to talk to them a lot.

Now, some people I realize are going to read this and point at me and accuse me of arguing on their behalf when I say the Internet is like a bar. Yes... I think that's the best analogy. Why? Because you have to treat the Internet as a public area where absolutely anybody could be lurking. It's just wise not to take someone at their word when you have no idea who they are. It's just common sense not to disclose contact information to someone you just met... The fact that the Internet is accessable from your living room is not something to be terrified of. You just need to realize that it's a wild place and you need to use caution. As with meeting someone in real life, they may not be who they say they are. They might be older, they might live somewhere else, in fact, these days, they might not even be the same gender they claim they are... And this is in real life as well as the Internet!

I hope this section, at least, helps disperse some of the fears of "Internet friends" not being who they say they are. That's a given... There's nobody who should argue otherwise. But I disagree that the Internet is a new frontier... Sure, it's opened up a plethora of new methods to communicate, but there's nothing different about the core issues with meeting new friends: They could be lying through their teeth and you would have no way of knowing.

HOW I, PERSONALLY, FORM FRIENDSHIPS

Now this is some background on how I form friends so I can explain what happened between me and some good friends I had in the Myst community. It might even go to help dispell some confusing between the friends themselves. For example, I had a friend who knew something was wrong between us, but would never have a mind open enough to consider that they were just as much the cause of the problem as they thought I was. I eventually just gave up explaining what was happening and they, in frustration, blocked all communication with me and I've never heard from them since. We'll call this person EXAMPLE ONE. I will later attempt to explain how I don't at all feel bad about our falling out... The way I see it, we stopped being friends long before the actual disagreement and subsequent turn of the back.

I will be using CyanChat as an example of my forming friendships online because, to be honest, I don't have many friends online who I DIDN'T meet at CyanChat. I would log in and I would see new people... I would say "hi", but not much else. At this point, I watch them carefully. I just act like myself and see what they do in response. Sometimes we hit it off really well, sometimes we don't and it's a disaster. Two people, who I will from now on affectionately refer to as EXAMPLE TWO and EXAMPLE THREE, come to mind. I met these people and we sort of got off on the right foot, but there was an awkward tense feeling when we would talk. Just the way I would say something and they would respond. There was a mutual feeling of pressing buttons to see what would ignite the other into anger. These two people have always been a bothersome thorn in my side, though I've grown to ignore their trivial pursuits for my blowing my top, but even after I left the community, they seem to find it far more interesting to pester me on my blog. I'm sure there's a quote somewhere about how your enemies last longer than your friends, but, eh! Them's the breaks, and there's no way to get around people not liking each other sometimes. But let's get back on track: At this point (when I've just met someone), anything they say I treat very skeptically. It could be the absolute truth, but I'm not going to treat it as the truth for a while. If they can keep their stories straight for more than a week, it's usually a pretty good indication that they're either telling you the truth, or they're so good at creating a personality that they've planned their false lives entirely in advance. (In a place as obscure as CyanChat, the last bit is very unlikely.)

As a rule, though, I will never disclose real world contact information such as landline telephone numbers or street addresses unless there's a serious need for it. (Such as when I bought that Myst baseball cap from my good buddy lonelyto25 Richard.) Gender is usually something I'll formulate an opinion on as soon as I see the name, but it's not always verified until we elevate the friendship to voice-chat levels and I can hear their voice for myself. But, in short, when I first meet someone, I don't believe a word they say. I process it, sure, and I make notes so I can corroborate it with what they say later... If there are any inconsistencies, it's a good bet that they're lying to you about something. Sometimes you just never get into enough "serious" discussions to become more than an acquaintence with a name in a chat room, but sometimes you get into deep discussions about life, religion, politics or the universe in general and you really start to see exactly who someone is like even without knowing anything about their own personal lives or appearance. Personally, I think this is a brilliant way to become friends with someone, because appearance is so immaterial on the Internet that nobody cares how someone LOOKS, only what they THINK and SAY. You only care about their personality and their beliefs... The things that really matter.

MAINTAINING AN ONLINE FRIENDSHIP

You may think that a friendship is a friendship and that's that... Eh, I vehemently disagree. I think maintaining an online friendship for an extended period of time is a very difficult thing to do. Online friendships are very fragile, very accelerated relationships... By accelerated I mean that it takes far less to make or break a friendship. Let's say that you've met a friend in the real world and that you've been friends for a year or two. It could even be a college roommate... You see each other every day, you know exactly how to read the expressions of the other and everything's just fine. If you were to insult their beliefs on something, I've noticed that, while it does deeply hurt them at times, they are far less likely to bail on you and ignore you for the rest of time for that particular infraction. Partly because you HAVE to see each other every day, but also, I think, because physically meeting someone helps build more bonds of friendship than when you just meet someone's nickname online. The whole thing when I mentioned appearance not mattering is almost cancelled out completely because, without visualizing a living, breathing person behind that nickname, it's nothing more than a nickname to you... Sure, you KNOW there's a person behind that name, but there's no connecting that name to the person. The issue with anonymity on the Internet is partly what makes it so great, but is also equally responsible for making the Internet so BAD.

I have a friend in the real world who I only see for, eh... Maybe two days, once or twice a year. We've been friends for as long as I can remember and we never see each other. Sometimes I think I know that friend better than anyone I've met online. We've gone through some pretty sticky situations when we were young... I remember fighting over sandbox toys, forming temporary alliances with each other to specifically make someone feel left out, and getting so very angry over the good ol' Nintendo Entertainment System. I think that if I had as many problems with someone online as I've had with that friend, I would never have remained a friend. There's just something about having a friend in real life that makes the friendship more solid. We barely see each other, but we KNOW we're friends because of what we put ourselves through and lived to tell about it. It's an awesome thing of the past, now... "Remember that time when we didn't know how to divide the sandbox into thirds and fought over who would get the fourth?" We would fight so violently over stupid crap and yet we're still friends... I think that makes it all the better.

Online friends, on the other hand, from my experience, are an entirely other ball game. Without appearances, the power of words are magnified beyond comprehension. You can make or break an online friendship with a single sentence simply because there's nothing else to offset it. You can insult someone and walk off and literally never look back and go on with your life. Internet anonymity makes it THAT easy to break a relationship. Of course, there's also the chance that someone breaks a friendship and appears to never look back, but decides to change their identity and does, in fact, return. Internet anonymity makes it THAT easy to change your entire personal history for everyone. Now, that's not to say that online friends CAN'T break up over something like that... I've had my fair share of deadly scrapes and jabs and sometimes we managed to be mature enough to apologize and fix the problem. Sometimes, you just know something happened that shouldn't have and that all you need to do is admit that you were wrong and it will all go away. Sadly, the power of words to destroy a friendship does not work so well to repair one, but I'll get to that in a second. I want to give some examples of ways I think people can maintain an online friendship.

Talk... A lot. When you can't sit in the same room as the friend, you need to actually talk. Opening an instant messenger or chat room window and lurking there saying nothing just isn't going to cut it. Remember, words, even in real life, are incredibly powerful, but online, they're the life force of friendships. If you stop talking, then the friend might as well not be there at all, and, as all of us Sims players know, when a Sim hasn't seen friends in so long, they start getting lonely and they start losing relationships. In real world friendships, you can go to your friend's and "hang out". You can sit there and watch a movie or play a video game and not say a WORD but still feel like you've had decent social interaction with them. When you're online, sitting silent in the room is not going to work... However, DOING something WILL work. That's right... Play games. You don't have to talk, but there's social interaction going on. You know you're playing with your friend, so it's okay not to talk. In fact, you might not even want anyone to talk since you're concentrating so much on gathering those asteroid resources or pulling off that wicked sniper shot that makes everyone afraid to face you as an opponent. In my personal experience, there is not much else you can do to maintain an online friendship than by talking or playing an online game. If you're NOT talking or playing a game, then your friendship isn't being maintained in the least bit, even if you're both in the same chat room.

Now, there's another downside to all of this... Since interactions are so charged with a constant stream of words or gameplay, the time you spend apart is going to feel like ages, at least by personal experience. I think this is further affected by the fact that there's no person to associate the name with. I think meeting someone in the real world, even just once, will go a long way to sealing the deal on the friendship. That way, you can associate the name with something more solid than a bit of text that logs on and off. You'll talk and play a game and as with all things that are fun, you lose track of time and you have to stop... You naturally look forward to next time, but that can seem like a really like time, even if it's just a few days or weeks. In the real world, I can go months without seeing a friend of mine in the real world and still pick up where I left off once I see them again. Online, if someone goes without talking to me for months, then it's a safe bet that they've forgotten about me and moved on. Online friendships can deteriorate so quickly... Sometimes, very rarely, I'll not talk to someone for a very, very long time and then BAM! All of a sudden, they show up and we get back into things like it was no problem, but that doesn't happen very often.

DESTROYING AN ONLINE FRIENDSHIP

And that leads me right into what it takes for an online friendship to end. This will serve as an explanation for what happened between me and the Myst community as well as an example of how online friendships end badly... Everyone who regularly visits this site knows what lengths I can go to when I discuss the Myst community, and no doubt this section will be a post all to itself, but it has to be said.

I'm a very trusting person by nature... Very loyal, too. At first I'm not too trusting of people, but once I've decided to call someone a friend, I hold them to certain standards, as we all do. The single most important standard I have, which, consequently, is also not very difficult to break, is that they don't betray my trust. It's as simple as that. You want to be my friend? Sure! I'm all for it... Just don't make me regret it. If a friend, for any reason, decides to take advantage of me by lying to my face, then you can consider yourself on the black list for the rest of time. A friend who I will refer to as EXAMPLE FOUR fits into this perfectly... They, at one time, professed to be my friend. We talked it up and laughed and watched movies... We did everything we needed to keep the friendship going, but then, one day, out of the blue, this person accused me of something without even bothering to ask my side of the story. Just WHAM! "You should be ashamed of yourself." Things were said, things were straigtened out and EXAMPLE FOUR apologized for their rash behavior... I forgave them, but the damage was done. They clearly didn't think enough of me to ask why I did what I did, and they gave no assurance that it wouldn't happen again. My guard went up in a flash. Later, they blatantly insulted one of my prized projects without provocation or an apology, and, later still, when I was discussing philosophical topics with someone else entirely, proceeded to put things in my mouth when it was absolutely obvious (since there WAS, after all, a record of all my text) that I had never said such a thing. That's when I drew the line and no longer considered them a friend... They betrayed my trust, plain and simple.

Betraying my trust is what I would file my entire leaving the community under. Everybody knows my feelings about Uru... It's not my favorite game and I wouldn't hesitate to point out problems or give opinions that went against what the most influential community members believed. It wasn't as if I was a newcomer... I'd been in the community for almost 8 years and people knew the name "GermanShepherd". They KNEW who I was and that I had just as much of a right to give my opinions about Uru as they did, but in the spirit of what they called "tolerance", they very nearly unanimously declared that I and everyone who thought there was something wrong with Uru should leave the community because we were what was making it fail. All those friends I'd made in my 8 years suddenly turned their back on me... Those that didn't actually shun me outright simply didn't make any attempt to talk to me or acknowledge my presense. Those who agreed with me were very few... I still have them as friends, I might add, and only one of them is still involved in the community, if by very little. Sometimes, people would remember me and try to talk to me, but it all seemed to be a very thinly disguised way to get me to do something for them, and that would only make matters worse. I will also always remember that I used to pretend and play like I was a dog in CyanChat... I would tackle people and play fetch and such. (I mean, hey... You had to have fun somehow, right? We CyanChatters were a crazy awesome bunch.) But, for some reason, those same people called me a creep for pretending to be a dog... Things like that. Where something happens to cause people to change so much that they are no longer who I thought they were and then openly attack me for being who I always was. (This would be EXAMPLE TWO, to be exact... While we did scrape a few times, we did used to be friends a long time ago.)

Another specific way of ending an online friendship is the usual way of letting friendships die out... Stop interacting. For example (EXAMPLE ONE, to be exact... Remember them from the beginning?), I had an online friend who I was very close to. We would do almost literally everything together... We would watch shows and play games and chat it up all day long and we even shared the experience of being ignored by all our other friends, so we became friends not only because there was nobody else, but because we sympathized with each other and out of that first contact, we discovered we had so many of the same interests. We were so perfect that people would joke at us by saying we should just marry each other because we wouldn't find a more suitable partner. We were that close... But... My friend slowly started to show less and less of an interest in doing things with me. Games were all the same... Movies were all boring... There was nothing I could say to get them interested in doing things with me anymore and they would just totter off and do something on their own. Eventually, even just plain talking started to feel like pulling teeth until finally, we seemed to stop talking altogether. Then, in a final bout, I laid it all on their feet and told them if nothing was going to change, then it was going to be over with... We had the same argument that regurgitated the same excuses and reasons from both sides and it wound up with that friend blocking me. I honestly believe that I did all I could to keep things going, but my friend would actively resist all manner of things to have fun with, and would flat out not speak at all if I didn't go out of my way to speak to them.

CONSEQUENCES OF TERMINATED FRIENDSHIPS

Now, in either case, I'm not exactly upset that the friendships were terminated... The way I see it, the people who betrayed me were classic examples of what happens when you make friends with someone who lies to you. They painted a pretty picture and I made friends with the fake person, but as soon as I did something wrong in their eyes, the true person showed their ugly face... When that happens, I feel absolutely no regret knowing that our friendship died. As far as I'm concerned, I never knew you. I sincerely hope that the friends I have now are telling me the complete truths about themselves so I know who I'm being a friend with. I am perfectly honest with them and I expect them to be perfectly honest in return. There is no reason for me to distrust someone until they break it, so... Until they give me reason to doubt them, I will treat them as if what they say is true, and shame on them if they take advantage of that.

Now, when friendships die a slow death of neglect, that's what I have trouble with, as I have repeatedly told people, time and time again. I absolutely hate it when people stop talking to me... I try my hardest to keep friendships alive and unless someone betrays me, I consider friends of mine to be friends forever. As such, most of my friendships have simply been because my friend stopped talking to me... They changed their name and the contact information or don't pay attention to me anymore. These are the friendship failures that hurt... I regret whatever happened between us that made them stop talking to me. There were some who bit me when I tried to confront them about it, and for those, I feel less sorry about, but on the whole, I miss the friends who never gave me reason to doubt them, but decided to leave anyway. But for people who betray me, especially to such a magnitude as the Uru community, I wouldn't dignify you with a response if you begged me to return... You would have to somehow convince me that you wouldn't pull something like that on me again since you showed that you were perfectly capable of throwing someone under the truck to promote yourself.

CONCLUSION

So I hope this post will enlighten a few people into the intricacies of online friendships and maybe explain the way I feel about certain people and explain to some of them what happened between us. Some of them betrayed me and know they did, and thus won't care... Some of them betrayed me and don't know they did, but refuse to listen to me when I try to tell them, and thus don't care... Some of them betrayed me and know they did and have apologized and I've forgiven them, but there's still an air of caution when I interact with them. And, of course, the friends who've left me probably aren't reading this to begin with.

While I think online friendships are completely viable and no more or less safe than friendships formed under similar circumstances in the real world, I have no problem with admitting that there's a profound difference. I think it takes less to do more damage to an online friendship, but to have met an online friend in the real world will work wonders by letting you associate a person with the name, but it's also important, to me anyway, to realize that appearances don't matter, and that online friendships could potentially be far better due to the fact that you form friendships on personality only and not because someone looks pleasing to the eye.

If anyone has any doubts or questions or comments about anything, feel free to leave a comment. After all, this is a blog and the comments section IS open! That means, in no particular words: "POST A COMMENT, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL CREATION, LET ME KNOW YOU READ THIS PART OF THE INTERNET, PLEASE, I BEG OF YOU!" And with that, I conclude this post! (And I'm now very hungry...)