Full figured women (busty) and the men who dismiss them

This post is opened for my friend Dee. Have a blast hon.

Free Porn Update

This is an update to my “Free Porn” experiment discussing prostitution at Free Porn - Totally 100% Free.

I stated in that post that I would be taking a two week average view at the end of October 2007 to compare how my viewership changes from the presence of the post. I didn’t keep to my word and as of today, seven months have passed (incredibly fast I might add) and I am shocked to find that the following stats from this blog proved me to be wrong. My viewership did increase to an average of 472 views per day but not because of the “free Porn” post.

Top Posts

Soul Mate Scam, 4,063 views

Free Porn - Totally 100% Free, 2,777 views

The Big Picture on Gasoline Prices, 1,967 views

Top Searches

dragons tail, dragon tail, totally free porn

Other search terms used to find The Dragon Tail:
the dragon tail gone wrong
dragons tail
sex for cash free porn
calculate a love prediction
100% free porn
free world wide sex
totally free porn
dragon porn
dragon name on dragon tails
average us gas prices per gallon from 1960
the dragons tail
“evil to triumph” “good men to do nothing”
“gas prices in 1929″
i dont have wireless need my1purelove pi

Needless to say, I am pretty amazed. I have to thank all my visitors who came to view “real content” versus those that got hooked by my experiment. It tells me a lot about the kind of people that are truly interested in what I have to say. Thank you all for your patronage and viewership. Without you, The Dragon tail would be just another blog in the organized chaos we call the Internet.

By the way, although I have been in a state of “grunge” lately, I will be posting much more frequently and hopefully as often as was the norm for a long time

Political Humor

A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She decreased her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him

Excuse me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.   

 The man consulted his portable GPS and replied

You’re in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 4119 feet above sea level. You are at 35 degrees, .07 minutes north latitude and 83 degrees, 18 minutes west longitude.   

 She rolled her eyes and said

You must be a Republican.   

 The man replied

How did you know?   

 The balloonist answered

Everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I’m still lost. Frankly, you’ve not been much help to me.   

 The man smiled and responded

You must be a Democrat.  

I am, replied the balloonist. How did you know? 

 The man said

You don’t know where you are or where you’re going. You’ve risen to where you are due to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to  solve your problem. You’re in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but somehow now it’s my fault.  

Welfare Addiction

Many times I have talked with friends about the idea an anonymous man had for trimming the fat from our welfare system. All too often we have heard how much of our hard earned money from the “working Americans” is going into the welfare system, and how few people actually deserve the check.

I wont go into how many illegal immigrants are earning money in America and not paying a single penny into the federal system that pays for welfare and other community programs. I will save that for another post. Right now is as good a time as any to start trimming the fat from the welfare system.

One way we can do that is to change a small way the welfare system works, and that is to require each welfare applicant to take a drug test during the submission of their application and to take a drug test once a month, on a random date, while they are on the program. The first time someone fails the drug test, they lose their welfare and are banned from collecting welfare ever again, ever. The money that would be saved from paying drug addicts to be on welfare would more than pay for the new testing, and the rest could go to people who actually need the assistance or other programs.

Now as it would happen, I was talking to a friend of mine that I used to chat with in public chat rooms frequently, and we agreed we had both seen many conversations of people that are on welfare, in a chat room. These people were supporting , of course, how necessary the welfare system is and how it helps so many people. A great many of us did agree it is important to an extent, however, how is it possible that a welfare recipient can pay for an internet connection and a computer, if they are on welfare? Welfare is meant to give assistance to those who can not afford the basic necessities for survival.

Access to the Internet and purchasing a computer, is a luxury, not a necessity. So it would stand to reason that the welfare department should be doing random inspections of the homes of welfare recipients, and a review of their utility bills to verify that no luxuries are being purchased such as internet access and computers.

The whole idea is not to enable an addict, even someone addicted to welfare. If someone needs Internet access to find a job instead of using their feet, then it isn’t an unsurmountable task to walk up to the public library and use their computers, or even go to the employment office and use their computers.

It’s time to stop funneling money into the hands of addicts through government programs. How can you help? Elect an official to oversee where your hard earned money is going, and stop electing politicians who thrive on special interest groups and padding their own pockets.

The Dilemma

Why is the question of gay marriage such a dilemma? To the majority of the world (85% Christian), it’s not, it’s simply wrong. Two issues arise from this dilemma. 1) Who are the lawmakers, and 2) why is it being debated? I am not going to address the first one (who are the lawmakers) in this post, but instead address the question of why is it being debated or contemplated at all.

From a religious standpoint the origin of marriage can be identified with the first two human beings, Adam and Eve. The father and mother of life. A man and a woman created in order to procreate and populate the world. A physical manifestation of God’s love. God outlined Adam’s duties and responsibilities to his wife, Eve, and also outlined Eve’s responsibilities and duties to her husband, Adam.

There is probably good reason why God didn’t create two men first and tell them to love one another as I have loved you and to go forth and procreate as well as not creating two women first and telling them the same thing.

Now Adam and Eve would be the symbolic origin of marriage, however, the sacrament of Holy Matrimony didn’t come into play until some time later. In the Old Testament, marriage is most frequently treated as a patriarchal institution for the perpetuation of the tribe. However, late in the history of Israel, we can see signs of a growing sacramental awareness in the creation stories of Genesis and in the prophetic literature. In the New Testament, all three Synoptic Gospels record Jesus affirming the permanence of marriage. In both Mark and Matthew, Jesus makes reference to Gen. 2:24 which speaks of the union of man and woman as part of God’s divine plan. Similar references are outlined in the Qur’an (Homosexual acts are condemned as unnatural. 7:80-81, homosexual activities are condemned as unnatural. 26:165-6, homosexuals commit abominations and act senselessly. 27:54-55).
One significant development which occurred in the Middle Ages, was the rise of ecclesiastical marriage ceremonies and legislation. Prior to this period, it was left to civil authorities to legislate marriages. The Church concerned itself with only the moral dimension of the marriage relationship. In the Roman culture, a marriage was legal and binding on the basis of consent between the spouses and their guardians. In the Frankish and Germanic traditions, a marriage was not considered binding until consummated by sexual intercourse.

Throughout the Church’s history, theologians have been somewhat skittish about the religious significance of the marriage institution. The attacks of the Albigensians and Waldensians on the goodness of sexuality, much like the Gnostics and Manichaeans of an earlier time, led the Church to speak explicitly of the sacramentality of marriage. It was included as a sacrament in Pope Innocent III’s Profession of Faith in 1208 and was listed definitively by the Council of Trent in 1563.

Now, I don’t know a single religion that recognizes or condones gay relationships or marriages, but I only say that because I can’t name one that does. There might be one out there somewhere, but there is always an exception to every rule.

Now for the social and legal ramification and basis of the socially acceptable union of a man and a woman. It is generally accepted that our civil laws are based in whole or in part on religious laws (i.e. the ten commandments, the bible in general). However, I see two significant reasons for the civil marriage (outside of religious grounds) and that is the importance of identifying a person as a “naturally born citizen” of a particular country, born of two citizens married in said country. The other issue being the legality of having sex as it pertains to the illegal act of sex called prostitution. This brings to mind a number of interesting situations. Outside of homosexuality being wrong to 85% of the population that has a Christian or religious upbringing, if gay marriages are made legal ( as has been the case in a couple of states) they can’t bring any children into this world (between two men) as natural born citizens. Obviously two gay women married to each other can bring a child into the world as a natural born citizen but wont be a product of their marriage, since one or both would have to be impregnated artificially or have sex outside the marriage constituting a natural act of heterosexuality. The only other option is to adopt a child.

It’s interesting to note that most prostitution is between a man and a woman. How often do you hear or read or see a situation where a man pays for sex from another man and is arrested for prostitution, or a woman paying another woman for that matter? Heterosexual prostitution, yes, child pornography, yes, rape of a woman by a man, yes, rape of a man by another man?(usually restricted to prisons) rape of a woman by another woman? Where are these stories?

There are a whole slew of issues and problems and situations that are going to be created from legalizing gay marriages just from a civil standpoint. Obviously from a religious standpoint it is and always will be wrong in the eyes of God. Probably a darn good reason for that. God said it’s wrong. Who am I to put myself above God and say otherwise. How much of an idiot would I have to be, not knowing what comes after this life, to take the risk of superseding, preempting, or rescinding God’s law?

Now, the judges, politicians, lawmakers who make a ruling from a legal/civil standpoint, what must be going through their minds if they are at all religious? Supposing there is nothing after this life, how important is their career or their job or their social status to use it to preempt God’s law if that judge or politician or lawmaker is a Christian or religious and takes that risk?

We all talk about separation of church and state. But how in the world does a judge, a governor, a president or ANYONE separate their religious belief and upbringing from civil law, especially if the law is in contradiction to the religion? This certainly sounds like a conflict of interest in view of the fact that civil law is based in whole or in part on religious law.

Get Involved - Become a social member of Dragon Tail

Go to http://dragontail.ning.com and become a member of “The Dragon Tail” social network then get your network badge and wear it proudly. (found at the bottom right hand column)

Destroy Information on the Internet

Find out everything that’s being said about you online and get rid of the content you don’t like.

Next we DESTROY… This is where we go to work for you. Our trained and expert online reputation specialists use an array of techniques developed in-house to correct and/or completely remove the selected unwanted content from the web. - ReputationDefender™

Does this sound alarming to you or maybe impossible?

Using our network of websites & forums we dominate your name or business!
PROTECT YOUR NAME FROM HARMFUL INTERNET POSTINGS!

We specialize in moving those negative listings aside and replace them with positive information about you or your company! Dont be held hostage by negative Internet listings. - DefendMyname[.com]

How is this possible? How does a company remove anything you have published, from the Internet?

Do you have a Myspace, Facebook or Hoverspot account? A recent survey of hiring managers at CareerBuilder.com found that about two-thirds of the them rejected an application after performing a web search on you.

As soon as I had heard that companies are claiming to be able to do something like “remove” or “destroy” information on the Internet, a red flag went up. Our country is based on certain inalienable rights, of which freedom of speech and freedom of press are just a couple. So how are these companies able to relieve you of those rights? The answer is, they legally can not.

The first company I quoted (ReputationDefender), doesn’t even have a phone number that you can contact them with, stating “…we are in Beta and we are keeping our costs low, which allows us to keep our prices low.“ Prices? Oh yes, there is always a price, and in this case its $10 for you to find out what information about you they can find and then its $30 for them to do something about the information they find about you, if they can do anything at all. Then they claim to destroy information published on the web. If that doesn’t scream SCAM!, nothing does. I personally challenge them to destroy this post about them without hacking into my account.

The second company is a little more careful with their wording, and to an observant reader, disclose how they accomplish “squelching” any information about you on the internet. The process is simple, but completely unethical. DefendMyName will utilize the technology in search engines such as Google, along with their numerous forums and websites to post repetitious “good” information about you to ensure only the “good” information ranks highest in web search results. This is organized abuse at its finest as well as an unethical business practice. The company will only negatively impact the Internet and make it harder for researchers and folks searching the web for information, to find what they are looking for and force a longer sifting process. This type of flooding the internet with repetitious information is in essence suppression of information, oppression, and propagandizing.

I am sure you were thinking it so I will overstate at this time, yes, there is a price for the service.

Dragons and Angels

A recent search engine phrase brought a reader here. The search phrase was from the Ursula Le Guin pro-fantasy manifesto: “Why Are Americans So Afraid of Dragons?”

Of course I had to look this up as well and found an article that was more appealing titled “Why Are Americans So Afraid of The Golden Compass?” which had more interest for me. (read article here)

The Golden Compass is movie adapted from a trilogy of novels by author Philip Pullman called “The Dark Materials.” Philip Pullman is a self-proclaimed atheist, [big deal] and his trilogy published by Random House is categorized as “juvenile fiction.” So why are so many people getting their proverbial panties in a bunch over this movie and the books?

This is the intent of Philip Pullman to further his money making machine. What’s wrong with making money? Nothing. Mr Pullman has sold over 15 million copies of his trilogy “The Golden Compass”, “The Subtle Knife”, and “The Amber Spyglass” world wide. Since it is common for books to become movies, the first book was released as a watered down version movie on Dec 7th, 2007. So far nothing is wrong with this activity.

Mr Pullman claims to be an atheist but his writings and interviews touting his atheism is severely contradicted by the fact that you can’t attack or kill something you believe doesn’t exist. Pullman represents God as a decrepit and perverse angel in his novels, who captures the dead in a “prison camp” afterlife. one character, a fallen angel, tells another character in the book “The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord, Yahweh, El, Adonai, the King, the Father, the Almighty – those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves – the first angel, true, the most powerful…”

Pullman’s writings contradict himself as we all know the first angel, the most powerful, was cast out of heaven and was known by many names, the most common ones being Satan and Lucifer. In later interviews with Pullman he states that two characters in his last book [The Amber Spyglass] kill God. The contradictions are endless as the two characters in the last book kill the fallen angel, the most powerful angel, which was in actuality, not God.

Books of the trilogy have sold more than 15 million copies around the world, with Northern Lights [released in the US as "The Golden Compass"] winning the Carnegie Medal for Children’s Literature in 1995 and in 2007 being awarded the ‘Carnegie of Carnegies’ for the best children’s book of the past 70 years. The Amber Spyglass, the final book of the series, won The Whitbread Prize in 2001, making it the first children’s book to do so.

In conclusion, what do we have?  We have a guy who writes books, who claims to be one thing, then contradicts himself in writing and interviews, trying to make as much money as he can using the resources at hand such as capitalism, commercialism, controversy and press, and trying not to be a “has been” overshadowed by the works of J.K.Rowling in the mean time. All summed up, big deal.

Editorial comment:  As the author of this blog, it is my firm belief that parents have always been and always will be responsible for how their children are raised and their development into adulthood. Pullman is not breaking the law, and he isn’t forcing anyone to buy his writings. Many Christian and non-Christian groups are advocating not patronizing Pullman with a boycott of his materials which only blinds us to the nature and content of his material which reduces our understanding and knowledge of what is good or bad about the content.  How can an individual say something is good or bad unless they have taken the time to read or view it for them self and make an informed decision on their own about the information?

My belief is if you decide to read or view the material or allow your children to do so, then it is our obligation as good parents to be fully involved in the comprehension and understanding of the material and to use the material as a teaching tool for whatever your values and morals prescribe. If some people decide to blind them self and/or their children from the content, then that is perfectly fine as we all should be doing as we believe. One of the great things about America is having that right to choose as we wish.

Norton Removal and PC Tuneup

Happy New Year 2008! I hope everyone had a great holiday season this past Christmas and New Year.

Being that this is the first post of the new year after a lengthy vacation for me, I feel it is important to start off the year with a useful post to just about every PC user out there.

Anyone that has bought a new PC has probably seen a Symantec created Norton product pre-installed on their machine. You didn’t have a choice of having this product, just like you didn’t have a choice of which version of Windows operating system installed on your machine. You got the latest release and get no choice of previous versions instead.

Like myself, many people are annoyed, frustrated, and unhappy with Norton products for various reasons. Some folks will subscribe and others will be automatically subscribed to Norton products when they purchase a machine, and others like myself will not subscribe at all and immediately uninstall (or try) any Norton products.

It is not commonly understood or known that Norton products severely degrade a Windows operating systems performance, however it is visible to a great many people how slow their systems become after a short time. This is due to a number of reasons most especially because Microsoft Windows still does not handle system resources properly after all these years of being on the market, and also because of utilities (like Norton) that bog down your system resources while trying to perform its tasks in the background. Other reasons are not defragmenting your hard drives with a reputable defragmentation program or at the very least the Windows defrag program, as well as a cluttered system registry (which Windows lacks the ability to keep clean and in top condition on it’s own) and an improperly sized virtual memory or page file.

With a Norton product installed and an expired subscription, you will get annoying reminders to renew your subscription because you are at risk if you don’t. If you have performed an “add/remove” of a Norton product, you may think that all is said and done. However, certain portions of those programs continue to run in the background,use system resources and load at start up even after being uninstalled because a Norton product is never fully uninstalled until you get the Norton Removal Tool. The soul point of todays post is to provide you with the link to remove any Norton product from your machine so that you can once again enjoy better performance from your machine. To do so, *clicky* this link: Symantec Home & Home Office Support to choose the Norton product you want to remove and download the tool.

After you have freed your system from the bonds of sluggish performance of a Norton product, you may be wondering what you can use for protection. I like Trend Micro for their Internet Security and PC protection. If you would like to use their free computer scanning system over the internet, visit Trend Micro Home and Home Office HouseCall. They also have a page with four of their best free programs for security of your computer and internet use called Trend Secure (here). This page also includes the HouseCall scanner.

My recommendations:

1. Never use or have active, more than one virus protection program at a time. You can have more than one program installed, just don’t activate or use them at the same time.
2. Never have more than one spyware/malware/greyware program running at the same time.
3. Since no one program for virus protection and spyware/malware protection is ever going to be 100% accurate or the “endall” of protection, I recommend having and using different kinds independently of each other, periodically.
4. Keep your system registry and your system as a whole tuned up frequently with some utility such as PCPitsop’s PC Optimize or similar program.

PC Pitstop is another what I call “can’t live without” pc resource for maintaining an absolutely top notch computer. You can perform a free scan of your system (even anonymously if you wish), read extremely valuable information about spyware and malware and you can download programs to install and maintain your own system. PC Pitstop “scores” you against their database of visitors and their machines so that you know how you rank compared to your friends machines.

If you have any questions at all or would like to relate your experience at PC Pitstop, or discuss any other items in this post, please leave a comment here. The only truly stupid questions are the ones never asked so please ask. I guarantee at least one other personal will learn something from the information, but was afraid to ask.

Vietnam War Memorial in Second Life

by Rocket Flasheart

This post has moved to its new home at the DragonTail Press in SL at http://dtpsl.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/vietnam-war-memorial-in-second-life

Club Tease in Second Life

by Rocket Flasheart - DragonTail Press

This post has moved to the DragonTail Press in SL at http://dtpsl.wordpress.com/2008/01/10/club-tease-in-second-life

The Gift

 

The Gift

 

by Scott Wolf

 

The gift, is for giving

 

The gift, is in the giving

 

The gift, is…forgiving

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s epiphany for me, is that one of the best non-traditional gifts for Christmas is to forgive. Some times we find it so hard to forgive someone for something they have done. If there is someone in your life that has done things that you consider unforgivable (and it doesn’t have to be that drastic), think about offering the best gift of all…forgiveness. Send them a card, a gift, some Christmas cheer with your gift of forgiveness. More than likely, it will make more than one person much happier.

 

Happiest of Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Snakes and Relationships, Don’t Test Them

***WEAK OF HEART BEWARE***

Aynjell (19, male, Omaha) writes:

So, I’m confused. I am not really sure what to do, so I’ll explain everything as best as possible, and maybe, just maybe you can help me figure it out.

A few quarters ago I was in a human’s relation class and I met an awesome girl. She likes games, she’s got a damn good sense of humour, she doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink, doesn’t *&@! everything that moves, and she even has some artistic talent (pretty good stuff she’s done). I know she’s not the perfect girl, there isn’t one out there. But as the book that eljefe reccomended to me (God’s Debris) said, you can’t find the perfect girl, only one with faults you don’t mind. I can’t say I care about any of her faults at all (some of them are even funny), and she’s so fun to be around…

Unfortunately, somewhere along the way I really *&@!ed up when we were dating before. We ended up breaking up rather violently (not physically violently) and I still can’t recall how it all happened… I just know there were factors on both our sides that really made it hard to be a couple.

Where I messed up, I am not sure, but all I know is I got to find a way to apologize and well… I dunno. It could have been me being too affectionate, wanting to hold hands, hugging, etc. It could have been me always feeling uncomfotable about having a car. I know that when we broke up I can’t recall saying anything that was too mean, I remember crying, feeling hurt… and god I wish I had a chat log so I knew just what I said. I know I told her “I can’t just be friends”, because “that never works out for me”.

To be honest being her friend is enough now. but god I feel so empty and sad everytime I hear she’s going on a date with somebody else, or even somebody else she’s dated. I always think in my head “What do they got that I don’t?” I guess I’m a jealous person.

I guess I am at the point where I am gonna be stuck as the nice guy friend. But well… I don’t know what to do. It hurts so bad to just be friend, to know she doesn’t care about me as much as I do her… I was happy once I’d pushed her out of my mind, but I recently ran acrossed her again and well, we’ve been hanging out and the old feelings came creeping back.

At this point, I’ve got two options:

I can push her out of my mind and let her live on happily.
I can keep on being her friend and try and win her back through whatever kindness I can offer her.

I know I can’t be just friends, though. That would hurt me so much, it’d be akin to walking around with a knife in my side. But somehow, I guess I almost enjoy the heartache? I am super confused, and right now I want to resolve this without hurting anyone, not her, not me. Not anyone.

(…time passes…)

I’ve already told her I was still interested in her. She said she never wanted to date me again, and that it hurt her. I am still not exactly sure what I did that could have hurt her so badly. I believe I was 100% sound when we broke up, it hurt that we parted ways…

It had been two weeks since I last heard from her. Not a problem if I had a way to get in touch with her. But the real problem was it had been two weeks since a date that didn’t seem to go all that well. Two weeks of wondering… well, I did something out of desperation, the one thing that might possibly reach her. She had my steam account, and I simply changed the password. I can’t recall how long it took for her to pop up on MSN after I did that, but I know she definitely brought it up during that chat.

I know I had told her how I felt about “just being friends”. When she had said she wanted to break up, in reality, the whole point of me wanting to talk to her was to let her know I also was not comfortable in what felt like a one sided relationship, I told her that too. Apparently she didn’t believe me in that I had intentions of breaking up… and I remember us arguing over that, then she blocked me.

It was ugly, really ugly. And I know I hurt her somehow, but I wish i knew exactly what I did that pissed her off. Maybe she isn’t the one for me, but I know for some reason I can’t get her out of my head.

(…more time passes…)

I think I am going to give it up. I don’t want to hurt when she leaves, and well… since I know she’s not interested in a romantic relationship, I’ll go ahead and back off. A friend told me that if you are chased, you run… but if you stop and run, and they don’t chase you… something’s wrong in the relationship. I am going to test this, and if she doesn’t pursue, I’m done with it.

I just don’t have time to be wasting my heart and money on somebody who says they don’t want a relationship. She’s like, my best friend right now, but somehow I think even that isn’t exactly true. So I’m gonna test it, and react upon it. I’d go to the ends of the earth if I knew she loved me… hell I’m still debating pursuing her blindly… but *&@!… what do I do, guys? This has got me completely *&@!ing wrenched up.

First, dude, without ALL the nasty details (and I don’t think I want them anyway) there is no way to help you with only one side of a situation, but it very obviously appears from what you describe, that she is using you. She’s a user. She wants things (not you), and when you deprive her of them, she gets upset. Changing the password on YOUR account that you shared with her was a hint.

As for you “testing” a relationship? Grow up man! Here is the thing, if you are standing in front of a snake, and you know the snake will bite if you poke it, do you test it by poking it with a stick? Relationships and love are the same thing, if you already understand what they are, why do you have to test it?

Second (and the reason nobody needs any details of your relationship with her), friendship is the foundation to any healthy relationship. A friendship is supposed to be the first thing developed in a relationship, and if romance grows out of the friendship, then great. if not, no big deal IF the friendship is truly important to you.

Things born out of friendship:
trust
respect
general feeling of happiness
confidant

Now if you add romance to that friendship, you have a healthy romantic relationship. If you subtract(or never add) romance to the relationship, what are you left with? Get the point? Honestly, I don’t think you two are even friends, just acquaintances. At best, mild friends.

This BS about “I can’t just be friends with her” is just that, BS. Even if you think you love her, coupled with the assumption you understand what love is, you can still be her friend, you can still love her, and you can still do things for her, be there for her, and show your love for her, WITHOUT her doing anything, since after all…love is your gift to her, no strings attached, hence the definition of unconditional love (no strings attached). Unless of course you think love is just a physical thing, in which case, ya…you are *&@!ed.

If you take this information, and look at the relationship differently (with this information in mind) ask yourself, is SHE portraying any of the aspects of a friendship or romantic relationship? You see, relationships involve two people doing the same thing…”giving” to each other, giving their friendship, their respect, being trustworthy and trusting (if you have earned it), and  giving their love (if its a romantic relationship). I don’t see or hear about any of this in your description of the relationship.

Look dude, you are in college, an adult, act like one. Even if you are the only one acting like one. I understand hormones at 19, I was 19 once, but get your priorities straight, get your degree and stop d***ing around with a girl who is d***ing you around.

Last, pay CLOSE attention in your Human Relations class. I hope you ace it.

And best of luck with all you do.
Rocket

A Recovering American Soldier

I don’t normally write posts to my blog about chain letters or junk mail in my email, but this particular time, I do feel it is pertinent to the season and to my need to prevent a vast number of people wasting their time on a heartfelt, good intention.

The chain letter in question is the one going around about sending a card or letter to “A Recovering American Soldier” at the Walter Reed Medical Center in hopes that it will bring good cheer and warm feelings to a soldier at the center. The email looks something like this:

A Great Idea!!!

When you are making out your Christmas card list this year, please include the following:
A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Ave., NW
Washington, D.C. 20307-5001

If you approve of the idea, please pass it on to your e-mail list.

While no one can fault the sentiment behind the suggestion (not only to remember the less fortunate during the holiday season but to make a special effort to reach out to those who have been wounded in the service of their country), the plan falters on one central reality in these times of heightened security, mail from strangers to unnamed soldiers must for everyone’s safety be discarded unopened.

The U.S. Postal Service will not accept mail addressed to “Any Soldier,” “Any Wounded Soldier,” or “A/Any Recovering American Soldier.”
Such offerings are either returned to sender (if a return address has been provided) or donated to charities (if no address for the sender is found). Similarly, military hospitals will not accept letters, cards, or packages addressed in such manner because if it did, it could be providing a conduit for those who might do harm to armed services members. Such beneficences, no matter how kindly meant, are not permitted to reach the soldiers they were intended for.

Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials echoed this information in a statement regarding the proposed plan to send cards to unnamed soldiers in its care:

Walter Reed Army Medical Center officials want to remind those individuals who want to show their appreciation through mail to include packages and letters, addressed to
“Any Wounded Soldier” that Walter Reed will not be accepting these packages in support of the decision by then Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Transportation Policy in 2001. This decision was made to ensure the safety and well being of patients and staff at medical centers throughout the Department of Defense.

In addition, the U.S. Postal Service is no longer accepting “Any Service Member” or “Any Wounded Service Member” letters or packages. Mail to “Any Service Member”
that is deposited into a collection box will not be delivered.

Instead of sending an “Any Wounded Soldier” letter or package to Walter Reed, please consider making a donation to one of the more than 300 nonprofit organizations dedicated to helping our troops and their families listed on the
“America Supports You” website, www.americasupportsyou.mil

Other organizations that offer means of showing your support for our troops or assist wounded service members and their families include:

http://www.usocares.org
http://www4.army.mil/ocpa/tooursoldiers
http://www.redcross.org

For individuals without computer access, your local military installation, the local National Guard or military reserve unit in your area may offer the best alternative
to show your support to our returning troops and their families. Walter Reed Army Medical Center will continue to receive process and deliver all mail that is addressed
to a specific individual.

As Walter Reed continues to enhance the medical care and processes for our returning service members, it must also must keep our patients and staff members safe while
following Department of Defense policy. The outpouring of encouragement from the general public, corporate America and civic groups throughout the past year has been
incredible. Our Warriors in Transition are amazed at the thanks and support they receive from their countrymen.

Although the Walter Reed Army Medical Center is not accepting holiday cards for recovering soldiers, the American Red Cross has said that small gifts may be sent to patients in that facility through them:

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center is ONLY accepting phone cards, CDs, individual small packets of candy, things like that; which they will distribute among the
soldiers (as they have a lot of in and out patients). They are not accepting Holiday Cards, as they don’t have the human resources to distribute them.

You may send your packages to:

American Red Cross
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20307-5000

Email Etiquette

Email has been a part of our lives for many years now. In the beginning of the Internet we [geeks] used email to inform the person running their server or BBS (bulletin board service) that we were looking for certain programs or files, and in turn we would also let them know what files we had to share. Email was simple and it was safe.

Email has come a long way since those days and many types of email programs have shown up since then. With the growth of the Internet and email services also came the growth of users on the Internet. Growth in numbers yes, but not the growth of responsible computer geeks using the services. Today, with the simplicity of the Graphical Interface built into our computers, anyone with zero experience using a computer can surf the web and email their friends and family. Even a 10 year old can use a computer to surf the web.

Here-in lies the problem of today’s discussion. Persons of ill repute conduct “data mining” by preying on the inexperienced users of the Internet to mine their data from and use that data to spread viruses and spam advertise. Security holes are exploited very easily but most importantly, the number of people freely and innocently disclosing private email addresses due to basic computer inexperience, is out of control in epidemic proportions.

Here is an example of how it happens:

Sally Smith has had a computer for about 6 months and though she hasn’t had it very long has managed to make use of it to accommodate her need of being in touch with her friends and family. Sally uses a messenger like MSN Messenger and Yahoo Messenger and she emails all her friends and family quite frequently. When Sally first got her computer, her emails resembled an actual letter to a friend or family member depicting how her day went and how frustrating the organization of the PTA meetings have become and so on. It is now 6 months later and Sally has hundreds of email addresses of friends and family, and her emails have declined to a majority of forwarding chain letters, spreading urban legends (unintentionally of course because she doesn’t know how to verify the validity of urban legend emails she receives before forwarding them on), forwarding cool web sites she has visited, and sending photos of the family pet and the new quilt she just made. Sally’s emails look like this:

From: Sally Smith <salsmith@bignet.com>

To: Joe Public <joepublic@123isp.com>, Jane Doe <jdoe@myisp.com>, (insert 74 more friends and family members)

Subject: <fwd><fwd><fwd>Mickey and Minnie Mouse are brother and sister, not boyfriend and girlfriend.

Message: (insert urban legend)

The problem with Sally’s email is that emails are typically passed along to hundreds of more friends that Sally doesn’t know, and that hundred or so friends each pass it along to hundreds of their friends, and so on. Now literally thousands of people Sally will never know, have her email address, AND all the email addresses of her friends AND family. Why? Because Sally is not experienced in the basic use of the Internet and not educated on maintaining privacy and securing the privacy of her friends and family members over the Internet.

The very first order of business is to obtain a free “virtual email” address such as hotmail, or yahoo, or any one of a large list of other virtual email providers. A virtual email address is your security door on the Internet. Sally provided her ISP assigned email address giving data miners her general physical location. Using the virtual email address protects the privacy of your ISP assigned email address. From the Virtual email you can view your mail on the web, keep it stored on the web or download it into your favorite email program on your computer (commonly called POP mail forwarding).

The second and most important order of business, is protecting your friends and family’s privacy by using BCC (blind carbon copy) to send or forward email to. Sally publicly sent all those email addresses over the web which will get sent all over the world. When sending an e-mail to multiple recipients, you can hide their e-mail addresses from each other. This is a sensible anti-spam precaution because it avoids making a long list of e-mail addresses available to all the recipients.

Here is how you use BCC:

To set up Blind Carbon Copy in Outlook 2000, select “Bcc Field” from the “View” menu, as shown below. This will cause the “Bcc:” field to be displayed from this moment on.

To use Blind Carbon Copy in Outlook Express, choose “All headers” from the “View” menu. This will cause the “Bcc:” field to be displayed from this moment on.

Now for actually using BCC in your emails. I have found the most effective way to send email and protect your privacy, your friend’s privacy and that of your family, is to use a dummy virtual email. I created a free email account called e(dot)dump@**********(dot)com. [For this post I used the word (dot) instead of the actual punctuation mark to prevent email harvesting.] Every single email I send anywhere is addressed to this virtual email address. Every single email that goes to this email address gets deleted/trashed without question. Then the actual people I want the email to go to besides the e.dump address gets put in the BCC: field, and the message is filled in accordingly.

If you are forwarding a message, do not use “forward” or “forward message.” Take the extra time to copy the portion of the email you want to forward, then create a new message to yourself (or a dummy email address like I created), paste the message into the message field, then add the addresses of the people you want to receive the email, into the BCC: field.

Your email should look like this (click image for full size view):

When your email is received, it should look something like this:

You will notice that all the important information is left out of the email, such as ALL email addresses, yours, your friend’s, and your family’s.

Now you can go to your dummy email account at the end of the day or week and delete everything in it, unless you want to save it all as your sent emails.

The most important thing you want to remember is, an email is like a phone number. If you are in the habit of keeping your phone number and other phone numbers private, so should you be in the habit of doing the same with email addresses.

If this information was helpful, please leave a comment saying so, and if you have any suggestions or care to add something, please do that as well.