Dishonest people

Some times you find those people that you wonder if they have any real friends.
My resent run-in with one of those came from a singles site. A "woman" contacted me with an email address for me to contact her at (not my preferred way to start things off).
They had a nice profile on the site, so I emailed them a fair length email.
I got a response a bit later, which was my first red flag.... Some how they had read my email, and responded with a similar length email in about 9 minutes. I personally take my time reading an email, and then take my time responding, it's important to me to communicate as best I can (sometimes not one of my strong points).
I read her email, seemed nice enough. I did note that she didn't use my name, and the email seemed a bit, generic. I bit puzzled by the 'all-this-in-9-minutes', I gave them the benefit of the doubt, and responded with another fair length email, mentally noting that it took me not quite an hour, and I made it a point to put an question at the end, to see if I was really talking to someone that was reading my email.
Again I receive an email from her in about 10 minutes. I read it, and read it again, I was amazed, and in a bad way. First off, she called me "Hey Baby". Uh, we don't know each other well enough for that kind of thing. And she still never used my name. She went into a speal about being able to trust each other, so on and so forth, which for a second email seemed a bit thick. The part that made me go 'what the hell?" was her questions to me, one of which would have been very clearly answered by my profile if they had read it. She asked if I was married, and had kids. My profile said single, no kids. A few of the other questions seemed like would have been covered by my emails. It was a *facepalm* moment for me. I had been found by fakes before, but this one was one of those to-good-to-be-true at this point.
Being pretty well frustrated, I responded to the questions in something of a generic matter, until I came to the dumb one. I said "Really? If you had actually read my profile, you wouldn't be asking this." The other 2 questions I answered in a similar manner.
I finished the email by saying that she had not answered my question, and pointed out that it looked like she really wasn't reading, and expressed my displeasure.
I got no further response. Being mad, and emailed one last time asking "What's that matter? No forum letter for this situation?" I ran through many of the inconsistencies, and said I didn't believe they were who they claimed to be, having done an extensive search on google and public record type searches, not finding her name in Michigan.
I have not received an email since. I reported the profile on the singles site, with a semi-detailed description of the situation. The ad is now blocked for me, like she never existed.
There use to be a gambit of "Russian woman" type profiles on these sites, that basically panned out that they wanted the guy to send "her" money so she could come see him. This last once claimed to be taking care of her mom after an injury, in Malaysia. My guess is, when her mom was "going better", she wouldn't have quite enough money to get back to Michigan, and I was suppose to be the sucker to give her money. I was born, but not yesterday.

I've been thinking...

I do a fair amount of thinking at night before I go to sleep, sometimes so much so that it keeps awake longer than I like. I evaluate myself, I evaluate peoples action vs that they say. Notice I said evaluate, and not judge. I don't have any business judging anyone (and neither does anyone else). A judgment is based on facts at hand, be them true or not. An evaluation is more a measurement with commonly understood knowledge and concepts. A judgment is more permanent in it's nature. Evaluation is more flexable, and is apt to change when new information or ideas are found, and takes the bigger picture into account.
It seems like people judge me on there own ideas, and so I they don't really give me a fair chance. If I don't fix their predefined picture of how I should be, I am a lower life form than them. In that case, I evaluate them as shallow and unfair. They could change my evaluation of them, but they have already made up their mind about me. Any attempts I might make to get more information are opposed in some way. Instead they only re-enforce my evaluation of them.
But also have to evaluate myself, to see that I'm not falling into the same trap they are in.
Maybe you see why this can keep me up at night sometimes. I confuses me heck out me.

Mean People

I really don't get people some times. How can someone be rude to others as almost a profession?
For example, this once person is rude and insults people, then says they are joking and not to get upset. But then if they get the same thing back, they get bent out of shape. And then they decide not to talk to certain people because they are rude... 'What, can't take what you dish out? Then maybe you should change.' It's funny, if you say something like that, the rude person looks at you like you are insane, and then calls you an idiot or something.
And then there are others that are just plain mean to everyone. I'm sorry, but I'd have to work too hard to be like that. If someone actually makes me mad, I don't even have to be a jerk to get the idea across. Don't they realize they shoot themselves in the foot when they are mean to everyone?
Amazing.

Well...yeah

I finally had one of those occasions that a woman contacted me on a singles site I'm on. She wanted to talk, gave me her email. I'm always skeptical of that kind of thing, but ok. I email her, attempt to come up with something to say, and asked her a question. That was at least 2 weeks ago if not 3 (I lost track), not a peep. Same old sh!t, another day. And another one of my younger friends is engaged, and I can't even get a woman to talk to me that said she wanted to talk. What kind of crap is this!? And in just over a month, I have another birthday... another year of being alone.
Yeah, one of those rough nights. And I'm typing on something that no one reads, hoping someone would care. Best I get is something like, "Aw that sucks. I'll be praying for ya." In other words, here's a hankie in lieu of a parashoot. Thanks.

I wonder sometimes...

Why do I post a blog? People generally don't care what I think (even if they ask, they have already made up their minds). People have generally shown that they think I am like a second rate human being to them. If they made a blog, I would be expected to read it, and take what they think would be like bible, not an opinion. Opinions and Ideas are fine, we all have them... but trying to force them on someone else isn't right. That is the beauty of a blog, a person can share there thoughts, ideas, feelings, etc., and people can respond. To bad I see some people turn blogs and forums into places to have flame-wars. I don't understand why people have to be like that, I generally have to work too hard to be that mean, and I'd end up hating myself for it. It offends me when someone has to flame me because they think I am wrong. Fine, maybe I am, but being a jerk about it doesn't help either one of us now does it? I'm not opposed to being corrected, so long as I'm not being attacked personally in the process. They don't like it, what makes them think I do?
Oh, I forgot, I'm a second rate human being. I'm not even worth checking on, much less responding to. Silly me.

Netbooks & Tablet pc's

Liking techno toys, I've been watching netbooks and tablet pc's with some interest. Intel Atom processors in many of the current netbooks are comparible to my old desktop machine that ran Windows XP for a long time before giving it new live with linux. AMD 64 XP 1700+ (1.5ghz), 1gig ram, Geforce 5200. I also remember how slow it was booting XP. It amazes me that they want to run Windows 7 on almost the same specs in a netbook. Solid State Drives kind of got put back on the drawing board, despite being faster than regular hard-drives (SSD's were expensive, low capacity, and unreliable)... too bad, they might have given netbooks a small boost running windows.
Now netbooks running linux (like many did when they first came out) was pretty feasible and interesting. A 1.6ghz cpu and 1gb of ram makes a pretty nice linux computer, and the low power requirements of the Atom made for some impressive "projected" battery life. The problems is price. Do a little shopping around. Most netbooks go for about ~$300, and buyer beware if you want to put linux on it, some of them have proprietary/non-compatible hardware. Now look at notebook computers, you can find some decent (usually more powerful) notebooks for $400-$500. Still have to check things out if you want to run linux, that is par for the course. Battery life isn't as nice, but in all honesty, are you really that far away from an outlet that long?

Now what is really interesting me is a bunch of netbooks and tablets pc's that are running ARM processors. Maybe you have heard of them? ARM is in many smart phones, PDA's, and other small and mobile devices. The closest thing Microsoft has to an OS to run on these cpus is Windows CE/Windows Mobile. From what I have seen of the google phones running Android (a linux OS), I don't know why anyone would want to tie themselves down with Windows on a mobile device. There are a number of companies getting the mobile band wagon with ARM based devices. Even Dell is suppose to have some interesting tablets and netbooks in the works, in varing sizes. Nokia has the N900 mobile computer running a form of linux. Several smaller companies have tablets in the works that have very impressive prototypes, all running ARM and some form of linux (Android, Meego, a few even running a modified version of Ubuntu).
And ARM is not a wimpy processor. A couple tablet prototypes were running HD videos to big tv's with only a 1gigahertz cpu. They have some prototype cpus that are running dual core 2ghz that takes less power than the single core 1.6ghz Atoms that we have now. ARM has been put in phones and PDA's for a while, I think they know how to make good low power processor.
And many of these devices are suppose to be in the sub-$200 range, a couple of the $100 range. Much more practical, and interesting.
Ok, I'm done getting all geeky for a bit.

ARGH!

Yes, I'm a little frustrated. All my "friends" have their friends or family to do stuff with. People have stuff they want me to do, but there doesn't seem to be time for them to return the favor.
Everyone has their 'clicks' and I'm standing there figiting, looking like something has my attention.
If/when I try to seek someone out to talk to, someone else has to come along and interrupt (that is probably going to call them about something piddly tomorrow away). I don't want much, but I'm tired for everyone else thinking they are more important, and other people that enable them. It irritates me to no end when I try to talk to someone I haven't seen in a long time, and someone else has to interrupt! And then we never get to catch up again. I've lost contact with some people because I got tired of it being such a fight to get to talk to them... phones and email never seem to work both ways (in essence, they don't care that we lost touch).
"Alone in a room full of friends." Yep, about sums it up, in real life and online.