Old @ MindSay

Growing Up Old...

Does that mean anything anymore? When our grandmothers and great great fathers were getting married in their time age was irrelevant to thier situations. At that time you had to grow up immediatly to survive. Ethics, hard work and responsibility were given to the very young, therefore they were able to be a responsible married adult at 18 ... 16.... whatever!

Today life for many is much different. Crime is ravaging our home towns, drugs are infecting the minds of our future. How did the values of our ancestors get so lost so fast? More and more our society is becomhing home to children raising children. When you become a parent, your children are first in everything you do, their safety and happiness is on the fore front. However when you are just a child yourself, riasing one can be a daunting task. Now, I am not saying that all teenage parents and parents in their early 20's are terrible parents, but if you look at the statitics of our growing population and the stats of young parents then talk to a teacher you start to see a pattern.

I grew up in a small but quickly booming town. By the time I was a Junior in high school there were over 900 incoming freshmen. I think, for what ever reason, my classmates and I grew up a little too quickly. Some of us are mature enough to handle the effects of our changing lives, but others I fear will fall into the cracks of this age's stereo-typical society.

Granted I got married at 18 ( a month after high school) I am ticked, utterly peeved at the fact that everyone around me will soon be married parents at 21!!! My husband and I got to know eachother as friends for three years in high school, then as lovers for a year until we got married. Now we have been happily together ( and unhappily) for three years. We are childless and plan to stay that way for quite some time. Although we want nothing more than to hold our future children in our arms at this very moment. We have higher priorities so that we can provide for the family we are meant to have together with out fear.

I have counted over 20 women I graduated with just three short years ago that are on their way or are already mothers and wives. Most of whome are not with the father of their children, or were only married for less than six months, or even less than a week in one case, and most only knew their husband for a year, a year, before they got married. Is one year actually long enough to get to understand what someone is capable of?

Many of these past and present friends like to comment on the similarities between their marriage and mine.... News Flash.... THERE ARE NONE!!! I'm the smart one and ya

ll have ruined what is to be a very long, hard and tiring life.

Is it wrong to feel this way.

This is not to say that I do not think these beautiful women will not be good mothers, I am convinced they will be fabulous!!! However, what kind of life are they going to lead from now on? Their dreams are dead( I dont care how many times you say you are going to go back to school.... you aren't), their marriages are practically in shambles and their children are not going to be able to have all that they want to give them. 

Back to a comment I mentioned earlier.... Your child comes before anything else in this world.... right?

So why is it that we consider this only once we have children... and not before?

If you know that one day you WILL be a parent no matter what, then why only put your child first after they are born?

If it is really all about the children, please, think of them before conception. There are too many unplanned pregnancies happening in the world today. Just wait.... You have all of your life, what difference does it make?

Please leave me some comments on your thoughts.... and give me some ideas for more topics!!!! (Can Be anything)

10 **Better** cheap and easy upgrades for your old PC

In response to a submission on digg.com entitled “10 cheap and easy upgrades for your old PC”, user gaqua posted a “better” list in the comments that I found funny enough to want to give it its own post on my meaningless blog.

Here’s a better list.

1 - Clean up your shit, dad. I’m tired of coming over and finding a new toolbar on IE or Firefox every time. I’m tired of thirty icons in the systray, half of which have some bizarre relevance to programs that are no longer installed. Go to add/remove programs, and remove anything you don’t use in your Apple Powerbook G4 battery.

2 - Defrag that shit. 74% fragmented. SERIOUSLY? How is that even possible? I’m scheduling this for every Wednesday night at 10pm dad. I know it’s going to freak you out when it starts doing this all on its own but just leave it alone and let it do its magic.

3 - 512MB of RAM? Do you know how cheap RAM of VGP-BPS2C is? PC2700 DDR1? Oh my God…I think I might throw up. For $50 I can get you to 2GB of RAM. $50.

4 - I’m installing Ad-Aware and Spybot Search & Destroy - your system has over 200 known spyware problems. I’m fixing them. I’m making this Inspiron 6000 Battery bulletproof. Don’t fuck with it anymore. I’m installing AVG anti-virus. It’s going to ask you to update it - UPDATE IT WHEN IT ASKS.

5 - Holy shit I can’t believe this - you’re running XP without even SP1 installed. I’m installing SP3 for D5318 Sony NP-BG1, Dad. It’s a lot more secure. Jesus christ this is like the dark ages of computing.

6 - Oh fucking shit - 3 hours to download? What the fuck - you’re still on that 512k DSL? Mom is paying for Cable! She’s paying for Cable internet, Dad. I’m going to unplug this wire from the DSL modem and plug it into the cable modem of A1175 A1079. Yeah. No it’s very easy. And I’m calling AT&T and canceling DSL. There, I just saved you $50 a month. And yeah, the internet is faster.

7 - Oh look 360tyj.com, you have a cutesy animated desktop background. Yeah, your celeron 1.6 GHz probably doesn’t like that, especially with the 16MB integrated graphics. I’m going to turn that off. I know, I know. But it’s best for everyone.

HOLY SHIT YOUR COMPUTER IS FASTER NOW DAD. Please, tell everyone in the family that you “don’t know what he did but the computer is so much better, you should call him and have him come take a look, I’m sure he’d be happy to Latitude D600 battery!”

There’s nothing I love more than that, dad. I love fixing Uncle Butch’s disgusting laptop with the inexplicably stained keys and I love playing around with the disgusting beige eMachine that Aunt Patsy uses to send all those cool inspirational email forwards with pictures of kittens or penguins or koalas or pandas.

No, I understand. As the oldest and most computer knowledgeable of Latitude D620 battery , it’s my responsibility. Just like Uncle Mason would help us all out if we got into legal trouble right? Well, if he weren’t disbarred for fraud, I mean.