From Beneath You, It Leaks…

Posted on January 6, 2012 by bluedepth

Helping to install and sort through old technology has raised a spectre that I’ve rarely thought of before. There is one place that almost everyone has in their home that they spend absolutely no time thinking about. Somewhere in your house you have a box with some sort of gadget: a box of remote controls, a few alarm clocks, perhaps an old music player or two. Hidden in these little bits of convenience technology is usually a pair of batteries. These cells just lay around for years and nobody pays them any mind, everyone but of course chemistry. Chemistry knows full well, and when it goes along with time, hand in hand, it’s sometimes a recipe for some really hazardous consequences.

Alkaline battery cells that are very old will tend to leak battery acid. This is really not good for anyone, nor the environment. These little caches of chemical consequence lay inert and placid for a very long time. They are almost always stored in pretty tit plastic housing containers where time, gravity, and chemistry can really work their wonders on them. When you open up one of these old gadgets you might discover an oozing corroded leaking alkaline battery cell. Getting this cleaned up can be a challenge if it has progressed far enough. So, if you happen to have a box of these battery-powered gadgets laying about that you won’t ever really use again or won’t for a very long time, please take the alkaline battery cells out of these devices!

Just throwing them in the bin is not enough either. These cells really need to be recycled. If you have a glass jar or a plastic bin, store all the dead or questionable alkaline battery cells there until you eventually take them to a battery recycler. In Michigan we have a chain called BatteryPlus and they accept recycled batteries of any type gladly and for free. BestBuy also provides a battery recycling collection program as well if you can’t get to a BatteryPlus location. At the least you really shouldn’t just toss these cells into the trash – the chemicals they are made out of aren’t good for anything. Not good for birds at might come into contact with the cells in a landfill and not good for any amphibian that might find itself in runoff water from a landfill. It’s corrosive, it’s harmful, and it is likely waiting silently for you in your very own basement or junk drawer.

If you work in a business or run one, one of the best things you can do for the environment is to sponsor a battery recycling collection point. I do this at my workplace. I found a useless plastic index card box, slapped a label on it and told everyone to please use it. People, if told that a recycling depot is handy will use it! My recycling bin at work fills up every few weeks with an assortment of dead cells in various states of decay. On my way along I carry this box of hazardous waste off to BatteryPlus. They greet me with a smile and thanks for recycling. It’s good for the environment and takes almost zero thought and nearly zero investment. The rewards, birds and frogs that aren’t poisoned are all you need to see to know you’ve done the right thing.

Multiple iOS Ringtone Surprise

Posted on January 5, 2012 by bluedepth

Apple’s provision for Ringtones and Alerts on their iOS devices leaves quite a lot to be desired. I bought a handful of alert tones from the iTunes store and thought I could place them on my iPhone and my iPad. Turns out that unless you have your devices synced completely to the iTunes Library, something I never do, you are pretty much out of luck. If you want to get ringtones or alert tones on your other devices, you have to buy them multiple times! This is very shortsighted of Apple and I won’t play that game. That being said, I have bought enough ringtones to make me happy for what I need on my iPhone, so it’s not like I’ll ever go back to the ringtones again for more.

For those out there with multiple iOS devices, watch out. Apple only sort of loves you, they also kind of hate you too.

NDAA 2011 – HR 1540

Posted on December 23, 2011 by bluedepth

Bill HR1540, the NDAA for 2012 has gone through many revisions as it came from the Senate, and snaked it’s way through the House and soon to land on the President’s desk for his signature. The biggest issue with this bill has been the sections 1031 and 1032, which deal with “Detainee Matters” and the ACLU got really bent out of shape when people came to the conclusion that these sections enabled the government to suspend Posse Comitatus and indefinitely detain American Citizens.

This of course is a huge red-button issue. Nobody wants their rights trampled on and even the whiff of this is enough to enrage the citizenry. I have gone to OpenCongress.com and looked up the bill that is being discussed. HR 1540. I then went to the THOMAS site at the Library of Congress and the bill as it is ready for the President’s signature has changed the section numbers of these two parts that upset people. Instead of 1031 and 1032, the new sections are 1021 and 1022.

People are alarmed at this bill and I can tell you that I have read this bill and these two sections and there are two parts, here’s the part for 1021:

(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed
to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of
United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States,
or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United
States.

And then here’s the part for 1022:

(b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL
RESIDENT ALIENS.—
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain
a person in military custody under this section does not extend
to citizens of the United States.

And I’ve looked over this bill and can’t find loopholes that mean that US Citizens can be indefinitely detained at all! The bill clearly states in both sections that nothing in either section applies to US Citizens!

So does it matter if the President Vetoes this bill? No. It doesn’t. We are protected by these two sections. The people who claim that we are in peril need to point where in the bill these two paragraphs no longer mean what I think they do when I read them.

If nobody can produce text proof that this bill is dangerous to my civil rights then I insist that people STFU about it!

DC Comics – Comixology App

Posted on December 17, 2011 by bluedepth

Several months ago DC and Comixology rolled out a day-and-date program for their comic books. I was, initially at least, really excited for the development and I was ready to leave paper-based comic books in the past. The Comixology app was upgraded and I was ready to rock and roll with the new system. I had my Comixology app all up-to-date, called DC Comics running on my iPad.

The app was pretty to see at first, and as I used it I quickly found my initial pleasure quickly evaporating before my eyes. The first hit was the frequent app jettisoning. In the iOS Operating System when an application does something unplanned, illegal, or encounters some other fault on the platform it will crash, pushing the user back to the app selection interface. This fault is called a jettison, and I learned that fact from another iOS app that was chock-full of these jettisons. Beyond the functional failures of the app lie all the design issues with the user experience that I have a problem with.

I spent a long time comparing the old way I used to get comics to what the Comixology app would suggest is the new way. In the old way, with paper comics I would head out on Wednesday afternoon to the local comicbook store where my pull list was on-file there, after walking in the staff would greet me and get my pre-compiled list of comic books. I would then be able to sort through my pile, but it was almost always just a silly formality and so I would walk up with my pile of comics and the checkout would mostly just be the staff pressing a button, all my books on my list getting tallied up and then a total. I’d pay, then take my comics to lunch with Scott and we’d read and eat and talk about what DC or Marvel were up to. All in all, it worked out very well.

For the past few years, ever since I bought my first iPod Touch I considered how awesome it would be to have a device much bigger than the touch but nearly as thin, and I called it the iPod Touch XL. On this device I could read my comics on the display. Years rolled on by and Apple had introduced the iPad. I was in line that April morning when they had it for sale and I bought my iPad without any hesitation. I finally had the device that I wanted all along.

Zoom forward to a few weeks ago, after Comixology released “DC Comics” updated app, featuring the new art for DC’s “New 52” program. I was so happy, at least at first, and I moved forward. I didn’t renew my club card at my local comic book shop, and I stopped buying paper comics there. I was moving to the digital world. I opened up the DC app, and after several jettisons later I had connected my Comixology store username to the app and connected my Apple ID to the app as well. Apple takes a 30% cut of all in-app sales and the sales themselves are mediated through the App Store. So I browsed through the DC Comics app and started to pick out a host of Issue #1’s for titles I knew I would likely enjoy. I knew I wanted “New Guardians” along with Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Superman, Action Comics, Adventure Comics, Superboy, Batman and Robin, Detective Comics, Justice League and Justice League International. I also noticed that DC was going to publish a new series based on the Red Lantern component of the Green Lantern universe and that was another thing that attracted my eye. So I started to buy comics in-app. It was certainly a smooth process, tap on the comic image that I wanted, then tap to purchase, enter in my Apple ID and the app would begin to download the comic book I wanted. Using the Comixology app to actually read the comics was never a problem for me. I quite enjoy the frame-by-frame lead-through embedded in the comic books that I download, but right after that I started noticing issues.

The problems were annoying and frustrating. The apps instability was the first thing I noticed. While paging through a Superman comic book the app would jettison. This was merely an inconvenience because I could restart the app and pick up where I left off. But then I started to notice some real problems. I would read my comics while on the treadmill at the gym, and I’d use the gym’s free wifi. As I stood there walking away on the treadmill I tapped in vain on the “DC Comics” Comixology app looking for “New Guardians #1” because I knew from earlier in that day that DC had released it, because I saw it on the shelf at the local comic book store. While I stopped buying, Scott did not, so every Wednesday I can see what books should be in the “DC Comics” app around 2pm later that day. It took me half and hour to find the “New Guardians #1” issue. The way that the app is organized, you have your comics and you have “The Store”. This is a structure that I’m comfortable with, however the way it’s designed, it doesn’t live up to even it’s own structure. For each comic book that I wanted to read, I plowed manually through the app and set alarms, as the “set alert” button was on each titles purchase screen. This button does nothing.

So my frustration comes from what I think the app should do and what the app fails to do. As I described to Scott earlier tonight, Comixology went miles to produce a shiny app that looks great. All I want is for them to give me just 5 more inches, they’ve gone miles, why not just a little touch more? I started to compare the app to the local comic book store. At the store I had a pull-list, a pile of comics were waiting for me to pick up, all I had to do was plunk down payment and that would be that. The app doesn’t tell me when a new edition of one of my comics is available, as that “set alert” button DOES NOTHING. So when I start the DC Comics app I have to slog through the store trying to find the issues I want, and trying to keep in mind what issues I own and what issues are unbought and whether or not I still want to read that particular comic book. Now along with this irritating app comes at the same time several comics from DC where the quality has gone down the toilet. I tried a lot of comics and found that I didn’t like many of them, Batwoman and Batgirl were both irritating, spending more time being stupid than being the female version of Batman. I also really don’t like the new Robin, which is Batman’s apparent son Damien Wayne. Yeah I understand the story, but I don’t like the character. So I got angry. Angry at the app because I couldn’t easily get the comics I wanted, angry that the “Alert” button was meaningless and angry at DC for selling me crap.

I stopped buying comics in paper at the local comic book store. I have also not returned to the DC Comics app. I have comics that I bought that are unread in that app and I don’t really care one way or another. Perhaps on some quiet snowy day I’ll slog through the damn thing and polish what I bought off. Mostly I’m dissapointed and sad. I don’t think what I had in mind is too difficult to pull off in iOS and the fact that Comixology so deeply overhauled their entire comic book app on iOS, and left such functionality out really boggles my mind.

So what would I want to see? Scott asked this of me after I was done railing against the Comixology app. I don’t want paper comic books, I want virtual ones on my iPad. I know that for sure. What I want is to open up the DC Comics app on any given Wednesday around 3pm or so and be presented with a list of all the comic books that I am following, all listed nicely with a checkbox next to each that is by default on, and a nice big friendly button marked “Purchase Comics”. I tap the button, enter in my Apple ID password and the app automatically downloads all the comics I want to read. I’d also want the app to link these purchases serially so when I’m done reading Green Lantern, the next one up, say Detective Comics is the next, ready to read with a tap of a button. I want to be able to start the DC Comics app, start with one comic book and then tap my way through my entire comics purchase serially. So what is it that I’m after?

I’d like to be able to define a pull-list in the DC Comics app.
I’d like the “Alert Me” button removed, or better yet, HAVE IT DO SOMETHING and throw notifications through Notification Center “DC Comics – Superman #3 is now available.”
I’d like it more, if after I start the app, that it presents me with a list of comics that I haven’t bought yet, but own their predecessors with a clear way to “turn them on” or “turn them off” and buy them in one single transaction.
I’d like to see “My Comics” extended with links into “The Store” so that when I tap on “Adventure Comics” that the app has enough wits to show me all the issues of that title that I haven’t bought. I want to continue reading the stories, and this is the most convenient way to my mind on how to arrange that.

What I don’t want to do is slog my ass through “The Store” searching in vain in the “Day and Date Release” comics list which never really has the comics I’m looking for. Instead I have to either search on the title explicitly or I have to search for the “New 52” story arc section and rifle through that section. It’s really quite an unpleasant experience to be swiping through lists of comics you don’t care about only to discover that the comic book you really really wanted, in this case, “New Guardians #1” was released two weeks ago and you never knew because it wasn’t in the “Day and Date” release list. You sizzle when you go to “The Store” and verify that “Alert Me” is indeed on, and then you get even more angry when you realize that the stupid thing doesn’t do anything at all. It doesn’t alert anyone. It doesn’t fire off Notifications, it doesn’t do anything but toggle on and toggle off.

But I’m not an iOS Developer and I don’t work for Comixology. I’m just one lonely angry customer with a list of ideas and I don’t think my tiny angry voice amounts to very much in the great analysis when it’s all tallied up. Comixology will continue to sell comic books with their Jettison-a-palooza app with all it’s do nothing options and intentionally labyrinthine store that forces you to swipe past comic books you will never ever buy because you have absolutely zero interest. I will never buy Batwing. I don’t care for Bats in Africa. Moving on…

And that’s what drives me the most crazy. It’s like this great app was only half-designed. That there are entire sections that feel like it should be in there. Functionality that when you discover it’s absence you crinkle up your eyes and wonder “What the hell were they thinking?” To go so far, to create such a slick app and then leave the most consumer-friendly (and most comic-book-store analogue) features totally absent boggles the mind. The lack of all of these features seems terribly absurd, and of course begs the thought that if it’s so half-baked, perhaps it’s designed to fail. Designed to piss people off so much, to irritate them so thuroughly that they’d rather slog their behinds back to their local comic book store and set up those pull lists again and go back to hauling dead trees around.

So I don’t use the app. I complained on Twitter, mostly as an explanation of why I’m leaving comic books for good. I am no longer really a customer, I used to be, I so much want to be, but I don’t want to go to my local comic book shop anymore, and I don’t want to use DC Comics anymore because it’s so unhelpful. I’ve got money and I might have interest and what really grinds my gears is that I’m fine with 90% of the app beyond the parts I really don’t like. The things that irritate me upset me enough to sour the entire experience. I’m so angry at wasting time hunting and pecking for comic books that I have blown out time I could have spent ACTUALLY READING THEM with trying to navigate through a store I don’t really like. And the biggest rub of all? What I ask out of Comixology and the DC Comics app in particular doesn’t strike me as being a monumentally difficult thing to arrange. The app knows I have a Comixology account, it knows I have an Apple ID. I have to assume there is room in iCloud for apps to store arrays of data. Why not enable the customer to create pull-lists and then adjust the app so it’s as helpful as Alfred? Batman would never put up with this crap. 🙂

So this entire blog post is half me railing against technology that has failed me and a response to someone on Twitter who wants to know why I’m leaving comic books. I could put up with junky content from DC in hopes that it gets better, but I really can’t put up with that app. That’s really what it comes down to. Such a shame. What would change my tune?

Alfred. He would change my tune. Alfred in DC Comics app. That’s really all there is to it.

Pure Michigan

Posted on December 8, 2011 by bluedepth

“Michigan Legislature Moves To Ban Domestic Partner Benefits”

I live in Michigan. I am a gay man. This bill is proof that the state in which I live in regards me as unequal under the law. Everyone else can be married and share benefits but this will not be the case for me and my partner of FOURTEEN years. We are excluded from equality with everyone else in this state.

If this bill passes and becomes law, I know that I for one will never forgive any born-and-bred Michigan resident for their inaction on this heinously bad bill. It will become a statement of fact that people like me are less than other Michigan residents. Who I am, what I am, and who I love will be the basis on which the state agrees that my rights do not matter.

I am not personally seeking to share “Domestic Partner Benefits” with my partner, but this bill, if it becomes law, sets a precedent that gay people are second-class citizens within the borders of Michigan. If this bill passes and becomes law then I will have no choice but to begin looking at migration away from Michigan. This is of course not really a threat as I have for a very long time been considering leaving this state for good and returning to New York.

Funny that my birth state respects my rights and my equality more than my adopted state does. It’s clear to me now, even without this bill being passed into law, just what the surrounding Michiganders feel when it comes to people like me. I am not seeking your permission to lead my life how I see fit to lead it, the only thing I really ask for is to honor equality under the law. With a vote of 27 to 9, it is clear to me that the people of this state, through their state representatives behavior and choices think of me as unequal.

You are free to take this bill, if it becomes law and use it to look down upon my kind, it is a free country after all. But know this, that people like me have measured you as classless hateful bigots. What we say when we refer to you all will not be pleasant or complimentary. That is the nature of discrimination, the majority that suppresses the minority are on display as the slovenly bigots that they truly are. I can only hope that when you look into the mirror that you can stand what you see staring back at you. We will see you for what you are. It’s not pretty.

Senate Bill 1867 Sections 1031 and 1032

Posted on November 30, 2011 by bluedepth

Sometimes cleverness is a valuable trait and sometimes it’s just more bullshit. In this case, I revise my earlier statement about the ACLU claiming that S.1253 could lead to the indefinite incarceration of US Citizens in light that the actual bill has been resubmitted and altered as S.1867. It would have been helpful to know that this bill was what the ACLU was carrying on about and not S.1253.

So what is the problem with S.1867. Section 1031 LACKS the paragraph that S.1253 Section 1031 had. In both bills, 1032 still has it’s prohibition however the difference is quite upsetting.

According to OpenCongress.org the bill is still being considered by the Senate. It is important to clear up the confusion between these two bills. It appears that S.1253 is dead and S.1867 is moving forward.

Now that the confusion has cleared up, the ACLU was correct to raise an alarm for S.1867, but not for S.1253. These bill numbers are important!

Senate Bill 1253 Sections 1031 and 1032

Posted on November 30, 2011 by bluedepth

I caught myself in a mistake that I’m trying to correct. I accidentally shared a link to a web article that states that Senate Bill 1253 (Also apparently Senate Bill 1867) which is called the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 has two sections which have everyone really bent out of shape, including me, erroneously, until I READ THE BILL.

Section 1031 has most peoples attention, the bill text excerpt online lacks a vital section that exists in the raw material of the bill itself. For this I blame THOMAS at the Library of Congress for omitting it.

Section 1031’s Prohibition

20 (d) CONSTITUTIONAL LIMITATION ON APPLICA-
21 BILITY TO UNITED STATES PERSONS.—The authority to
22 detain a person under this section does not extend to the
23 detention of citizens or lawful resident aliens of the United
24 States on the basis of conduct taking place within the
1 United States except to the extent permitted by the Con-
2 stitution of the United States.

Last I checked the only exception that I can reason out is the set of laws established by the US Constitution. I have lived quite well under those old laws and I don’t see how this text has ANY wriggle room to do what the ACLU claims it does.

Section 1032’s Prohibition

(b) REQUIREMENT INAPPLICABLE TO UNITED
12 STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain a person
13 in military custody under this section does not extend to
14 citizens of the United States.

This one is utterly inescapable. It’s printed in BLACK AND WHITE. I can’t for the life of me see how either section would enable the government to indefinitely incarcerate any US Citizen at all. Such a thing would be a gross violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, to say nothing of violating the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendments to the United States Constitution!

After reading this blog, which pretty much states what I see as a gross display of fear-mongering by the ACLU and adherence to the bombastic bullshit claims that this bill somehow puts our civil liberties at risk. The text is clear for both sections, if you read the text itself!

I did a cursory search on Google for the phrase S.1253 and there are just too many sites all repeating the same bombastic bullshit. Claiming that the ACLU knows, or that Lindsey Graham said this or that, but nobody can show me in the text where the proof of their argument lies. I have read the bill and those two paragraphs, for both sections seem to me to be perfectly acceptable when it comes to protecting my civil liberties as a US Citizen.

If I am right, that means that the ACLU is guilty of misleading the public and engaging in misinformation. If that is the case, I can’t trust anything else they say because if they lied once, what proof could there possibly be that they are honest about anything else? They put their necks on the line over this bill. Frankly, just the fact that I doubt the ACLU’s veracity on this subject makes me reject everything else they say – but when it comes to the court of public opinion, if they are caught, it could ruin their credibility.

Responses

Posted on November 22, 2011 by bluedepth

I wrote a lengthy response to a blog entry I just read called “I’m Christian, unless you’re gay.” and I’ve included it below:

I just read your article, Dan, and thank you for writing it. I was raised as a presbyterian by my parents who had all the best intentions. When I was eight years old, waiting in the church library for my parents to retrieve me after sunday school I had a crisis of faith and subsequently lost it completely. Always after that it was just a mechanical pursuit, go to church, go through the motions… the callousness of children. As I grew up I was confused and kind of terrified by gay people. They weren’t anything but ‘other’ and for the most part I didn’t want to know and elected to avoid the subject as much as I could.

When puberty hit me, square in my too-short-jeans (they always seemed to be too short, because I was growing so fast) I discovered that my own sexuality was starting to develop around me. I say this in hindsight as a 36 year old gay man now, but back then, I had no concept at all about sex other than some vague ideas which entertained anyone I asked when it came to sex education. Mostly met with laughter and a shrug, it was uncomfortable for every adult I ran into. Over the years I found myself looking at other males and having feelings for them, females were there but they weren’t anything more than just people. I wanted more with the other males. I tried lots of ways to suppress and destroy what I was becoming. I would masturbate until the feelings I had went away and that was a way to cope for a while, then I thought if I found the right girl, she could save me from being gay. I tried very hard to be what I thought of as normal, and it all culminated in a really uncomfortable attempt at losing my virginity with my at-the-time girlfriend. I was so conflicted and so worked up that I never got to actually lose my virginity with her. A few days after my 18th birthday I was in college. I was online. I met another boy, also 18, another student and we started to talk. It was a few hours after that, sitting in the late-night-nobody-around student union atrium that I made my first overtly homosexual act. I reached out and laid my hand on the other boys leg and it was an incredible feeling. I finally found what I was supposed to be. When years of pain, agony, confusion, and suppression suddenly lift – it was as close to an epiphany as I think anyone can really have. Ever since then my life has felt good and right and correct. That this was what I was supposed to be. That in a very relevant way, this is how God intended me to be. That’s how it felt.

As I said, I lost my Christian faith, but I started to build another around me. Instead of buying into things I could not possibly believe (affectionately called the hocus-pocus of Christianity) I started to read. I read about Christ, about Siddharta Gautama, the first Buddha, about Moses and Mohammed. I wandered and ranged over as many religions as I could get books on – Zoroastrianism, Shinto, Wicca… you name it, I had read at least something about it. Over the years I have synthesized my own faith and it struck me that the core of almost every faith on Earth can be summed up by the Golden Rule. In so far as you would do, do as you would have others do unto you. That was all I needed. I found that every religious “teacher” was basically shaping this one rule into differently shaped and colored packages and selling that to their believers. I felt uniquely good. I knew myself, I knew what Jesus was trying to teach me (along with the others) and I knew I wasn’t wrong for my feelings. Shortly thereafter I had several other epiphanies including one which revealed my purpose in life. So I know why I’m here and what I’m supposed to do. That’s incredibly comforting.

As I grew up I was regularly exposed to a nebulous menace from the established religions. They didn’t want me, they didn’t love me, they thought I was broken. They called what I did with other men a sin and as I got older I started understanding things better and this understanding helped me avoid “Jews” and “Christians” and “Muslims” because they were toxic human beings who were uniquely unpleasant and unhealthy for me to be around. I loved that in America, with it’s secular approach to everything I could deal with people right up until I had to really know who and what they were. I didn’t come out of the closet to them, and life moved along well. Deep down I was filled with a kind of deep sadness. I knew what the teachings of Christ were, but everyone was muddled in Leviticus and completely confused about what the story of Sodom and Gemmorah was really about. It wasn’t about sex. It was about treating guests well and honorably. As I got older and my thoughts and tastes refined through education and experience I came to see modern Christians as hypocrites. I went thru an anti-Christian phase where I actively hated the shape of chuches and the people I saw spill out of them on Sunday mornings. My anger was rooted in my disbelief that people can go weekly and hear sermons of love and tolerance and then when it’s all over, they go back to their mean wretched vile little lives. It was anger at just how meaningless their faith had become. They were the clockwork drones of the Church. They went, they heard, they sang, they got all dressed up and all of that, but they never really listened. Once service was done, they went back to what they really were– Horrible human beings. From my mid-twenties thru my early thirties I actively cultivated a marvelous misanthropy. I hated my kind. I hated human beings. We were monsters. The very worst possible thing ever created. Satan doesn’t have shit on us, we’re so much better at his game than he ever was.

In the past few years I have mellowed on my misanthropy. Most people don’t really care as long as their little lives are not upset. I also got over my sadness that nobody had listened to Christ, or any of the others. We were all so busy killing, cheating, maiming, and otherwise blowing each other up – and that life trudged forward helped dissolve all my sharp edges about religion. It doesn’t matter if religion tries to make people better, they’ll be what they really want to be and life will just keep on going.

Then the gay marriage flap started. Generally I don’t care one way or another, but on a more civics-minded level all I really do care about is equality. I don’t care for tolerance, I’m not looking for love from strangers. I’m just actively interested in them keeping to their own little lives and not trying to hurt me or kill me for who and what I am. I’ve been in a loving relationship with another man for 14, soon to be 15 years. This relationship has lasted longer than my parents relationship did and longer than many straight relationships do. Yet I cannot get married. It’s fine actually. It was a shock to me just how much people don’t really care when it comes to certain things… I was hospitalized recently and the hospital, a methodist-linked hospital at that had no qualms about respecting my partners rights and even went so far as to have a lawyer handy to help me fill out medical power of attorney for the both of us. So, Hospitals don’t give a flying rip. I asked my Credit Union if my partner could have an account based on our relationship and once again, they didn’t care and were fine with it. I could fill out my last will and testament and that would set my wishes after I die, that really isn’t an issue either. Neither is the religious angle of a marriage as I would prefer to have a pagan handfastening ritual than anything else and I have a priestess who’s ready to rock-and-roll if given the word. So what does it come down to? That CONTRACT that you all (the intolerant, so don’t feel upset, if that isn’t you) don’t want me to have access to. That’s all I’m missing. I’ve got 14 years down, all of this other stuff too, everything but equality with the rest of you.

In the end, life will trudge forward. Perhaps the intolerant will die off and we’ll eventually be equals under the law. I will always hold out hope that someday Christians will wake up and listen to Christ. Maybe not be so monstrous and evil and horrible.

And as for you, Dan, and your article. You have woken up and I thank you for what you wrote. I’m sorry that so much pain and horribleness has to be in our world and that you have to be the lone voice of love and compassion that Christ was all about. I try my best to imagine that other people feel as you do and that feeling fills me with hope for the future. You seem like such a dazzling and wonderful gem, and so much a minority, so very alone in being so awake.

Gays are not monsters. We’re just people. We cry and we hurt. We hurt when you ignore your messiahs lessons about love and compassion. And we hurt the most when we can’t celebrate the people we love like you can all because you keep us under your heels. It hurts when you declare that God hates us, it hurts when you deny us basic equality. Next time you look in the mirror I hope you see yourselves for who and what you are and you weep for what you have become. Feelings are everywhere. Step lightly.

Why I Left Facebook

Posted on November 9, 2011 by bluedepth

Why I Left Facebook

I just logged into Facebook for the last time, at least to actually use the site for anything really constructive. I got an email from Facebook telling me I had a friend request from some stranger that I don’t recognize in the least. I logged on to kill off the friend request and then I found there were others from people I do recognize, so I accepted their requests and I wanted to add them to my NoWall group. I then started a useless trudge through Facebook’s interface looking for my Friends Lists. They were moved and so I had to search for them all over again. I lost about an hour on-and-off looking for this stupid settings page before I finally blundered into it.

I have had enough of Facebook.

Why? There are many reasons that drive me to abandon Facebook. First is the unpleasant user interface. The way that Facebook has altered their pages over the years has just gotten worse and worse. Functionality that used to make Friends Lists useful were dumped and my requests to have the old functions restored were ignored. I just don’t want to use it anymore. Every time I look at the site my head hurts. I can’t find anything worth following beyond meaningless claptrap related to all the scrobbling applications that fill up Facebook. Bits from stupid game apps that do nothing, and aren’t really games or even fun contributed a lot to this general sense of irritation. Secondly, I’m living a rather involved compartmentalized life on Facebook. I keep half of my friends list in the dark. I want to share a lot of things with my loved ones, but I want to pick and choose them. I love some of them more than I love others. Facebook used to have really easy ways of managing Friends Lists, but recently they’ve eroded a lot of that functionality away. I maintained a NoWall group and banned that group from seeing any content on my Facebook page. I then stuffed family members, friends, and people I know a little bit into that group. Partly because I don’t want to deal with them seeing all that I have to share and partly to punish some for being social twats. Finally, and probably the biggest reason why I am leaving Facebook is because the lack of controls for sharing got me into serious trouble at work.

That in the end is the biggest point of all. Share controls. I want to share different things with different people and Facebook really made a mess of things. So I left Facebook and moved to Google+. There I can control how I share very conveniently and I quite enjoy the clean wide open spaces and all the ways I can segment the social flow of information. On Google, I have placed everyone into neat little circles and that’s how I want to manage it. With Google+ I can be free to be who I am and say what I want without having to fear reprisals, retribution, or censorship. The people in the dark are happy there, and I’m happy keeping them there.

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