SweeTLemonS

Is there any way to require a password to use the browser? Such as creating separate profiles within the program, and passwording them? I'm really lazy, and I like to save all my passwords/stay logged in, but I don't want anyone that uses my computer to have access to all my online profiles. If it's impossible with Opera, is there a browser that this is possible in?

Could someone who is smarter than me, and better at finding good/reliable information (maybe you've done research on this) point me to some good information on why Global Warming/Climate Change (or whatever it's being called now) is NOT a hoax (i.e. it's true). This is not for homework, but from everything I've read it makes perfect sense to me that Global Warming/Climate Change is true, and I'd like to be able to argue the point more effectively against people who don't think it is true.

I've looked up some of the information, but most of what I find (beyond what I already know) is way too technical for me to understand. So, if someone could help me out with this, that'd be awesome.

The reason I ask is that a friend posted a blog on FB (which I shouldn't really care about, but he's got the Glen Beck attitude towards everything, which pisses me off in most cases) bashing global warming, claiming the 2 degree increase is nothing, and that the intensity of the sun has increased and that's why it's getting warmer, blah blah. I posted some charts from NASA that are pretty clear cut, but I figure there has to be information out there that I am not finding, other than Wiki...

Does anyone know how to do the Tyler Durden hairstyle in the early parts of Fight Club (not the later parts when he has a buzz cut)? I've been looking all over the place to find how to do it (because it isn't just a sloppy spike or whatever, there's something different about it), and I can't find anything on how to do this, but I figure there must be something around the internets that would tell me, and I just suck at searching for things.

So, if anyone can help me out, please do!

Okay, I'm normally not one to come to the internet for dating advice, unless it's from a pick up site, but this has nothing to do with pick up anymore. You may recall that I recently wrote an entry about asking if my ex had cheated on me. As it turns out, I was wrong, she didn't. But, my suspected reason (that I've only recently realized) for her breaking up with me turned out to be accurate. The problem was that I put myself first too often. I've been like this for a while now, and I think it came as a result of having been alone for so much of my life. And I found it difficult to transition out of that, because in my mind, that was what had initially attracted her to me (but it was probably the confidence, etc, that all that ego building had done for me over the past two or three years). And while being the way I was works excellently for picking up random whores, it does not work well for keeping a relationship. It is because of this that I am asking you guys for help; I am completely lost right now. This is a time for self-evaluation, and change, and it's not going to be easy for me--that much I know.

What can I do to convince her that I will no longer be putting myself first all the time (though, ironically, trying to get back with her is inherently self-motivated, thus I'm putting myself first right now)? Over the past two hours or so I have poured my soul into talking to her, apologizing for the way I acted in the past, and practically begging for another chance. Some may say I fucked up by doing so, because of power-balance and other bullshit, but considering the circumstances doing the opposite (acting like she was unimportant to me) would be the wrong way to approach this.

I've recently been part of what would normally be a two hour seminar for relationships (it was a guest speaker in a class, so it wasn't technically the seminar), and it opened my eyes so greatly to what I had been doing. Everything in my life was win/loss, and I had to be the winner all the time. Instead of working on needs based ideas, and thinking about what she wanted, it was always what I wanted, and always how I wanted it. I was an asshole; I've been an asshole for a long time. And that needs to change. The thing is, I don't know how to change completely. I need help, and I don't know where else to go at this point. What can I do to change, not only to get her back (hopefully that will happen), but also to just stop being such an asshole?

I don't know if all this is entirely clear and focused right now, but it's a rough time, and my thoughts are a bit scattered. There has got to be a way to get her back in my life, and become a better person at the same time. I just need some help to get the ball rolling.

Okay, so I was just talking to my friend about this, and I think it's really interesting, maybe no one else will. Should I ask my ex-gf if she cheated on me? As of now, there is little reason to ask her. She broke up with me a few days after Valentine's day (after dating for seven months, or so), and I think this weekend I'm going to get my stuff back from her (fucking finally).

It was a semi-long distance relationship (40 miles, approx). And she had a lot of male friends. Now, if there's something I know about men, it's that we hang out with women to have sex, not because they're fun to be with (because they generally aren't, imo). And there was some other things I found suspicious a few times. I mean, she claimed she loved me, etc, etc (why'd she break up with me then, right?)

Whatever. Long story short, I think I'm getting my shit back next weekend, and I'm considering asking her if she ever cheated on me (because I had a slight suspicion that she did). I really want to know, just for the sake of the knowledge, but--and this is why I'm asking here, because this is what makes this interesting to me--she's never said no in my head. I've played out the scenario, and asked in about a hundred different ways, and she always says no, and gets kind of mad at me for even suggesting it. BUT, what if she said yes? Would that knowledge be worth the potential pain it would cause (i.e. the relationship never meant anything to her, and I really wasted my time)? Would it hurt at all to know this?

Maybe this is a lame blog, but if you could answer the poll, and if anyone has experience with this, chime in, that'd be fantastic.


Poll: Should I ask her?
(Vote): Yes
(Vote): No

A guy I used to be in Boy Scouts with (take your shots if you want to) died yesterday. It's crazy. What sucks is that you always realize too late that you should have talked to that person one more time, or done something with them one more time. It's rough, because I was really good friends with him back then, but we hadn't really done much in several years. Still, when someone that young dies it's hard. I can't even imagine how his family feels. I mean, I guess I can, somewhat, because I've had a lot of family members die, but none have ever been so young. He was my age, two years old, about. He had been battling a brain tumor for four years; he was only supposed to live for one. I just feel like such a douche bag for not having kept in touch with him. And, the last time I had talked to him (on facebook), it had been so long since I had last talked to him, I just kind of assumed that he beat it (it was wishful thinking, and I just had this feeling that such a good, young guy should beat it. It was what should have happened, but I guess that's how life is). I sent him one more message after that, but never got a response.

It's so sad, because he was a great guy. And I'm not just saying that because he's dead now. He really was a good guy. A lot of people are assholes, and he wasn't one of them. I mean, he was a guy I hadn't talked to in a long time, but I still remembered him. People come and go in your life all the time, but not many leave any real memories with you. It's really sad. He was just in a fight that he couldn't win.

I guess, really, it makes me think about how fast things can come to an end. I remember when I found out about it from his dad; I ran into him at a fast-food restaurant near my job. It's like, you see stuff on TV about kids with cancer, and stuff like that, but it always seems so distant, and impossible to enter you life, and then it happens to someone you know. It's unreal.

I don't know what else to say, but I guess when shit like this happens it's always easier for me to write something down about it. He'll definitely be missed, that's for sure. It just makes me realize how fast it can all be taken away from us. If there's someone you haven't talked to in a while, but they were a good friend to you at some point, talk to them. You never know when that last chance is going to be...

RIP buddy.

So, I'm not necessarily looking to make sure everything I say A) is absolutely 100% correct, there's no way she's going to know, or B) that my views correctly align with your own views.

While I welcome that sort of discussion, I would greatly appreciate if you first checked the paper for any mechanical errors (I'm not entirely sure of my usage of colons, semi-colons, and hyphens. I think there may be a couple places that I screwed those up), and any sentences that come across as unclear.

It's a little over five pages long in word at 12 pt print in TNR. Thanks to anyone who does this for me, the help I've gotten here in the past has been extremely useful.

And if anyone knows how to put in superscripts in Word 2000, could you tell me how to do it? I want to have a definitions page for certain terms, but I don't know how to go high enough in numbers (I think I have like 6 terms). I want them all at the end of the paper, by the way, I don't know if that will make a difference.
___________________

      In autumn of 2008, the American financial system witnessed what is probably the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. The meltdown came into public view with the subprime mortgage crisis, which began with the collapse of Bear Sterns—a heavy investor in the subprime market. The crisis really set its roots before then—before President Bush even came into office; the problem began when the tech bubble burst in the late 1990’s. This caused the Fed to sharply drop interest rates, which increased the demand for homes; with that increase in demand, more and more risky investments: the quality of mortgages dropped drastically (NYTimes). It was on September 18, 2008 when Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson released “a three-page, $700 billion proposal that would allow the government to buy toxic assets from the nation’s biggest banks, a move aimed at shoring up balance sheets and restoring confidence within the financial system” (NYTimes). The proposal generated a greater public interest, the nation wanted to know why the they had to “bailout” the “greedy Wall Street fat-cats.” Rather than just throwing blame around, and complaining about the white-collar worker getting bailed out, and the blue-collared worker getting no help, let us assess the situation. What caused all of this? And why is it so important that the banks get immediate assistance?

      The growth in the housing sector was largely responsible for the problems the U.S. economy faces today. Three main factors can be attributed to the rise in housing costs. The first was future price expectancy. A change in current prices affects the expectancy of future prices; in this case, the rapidly rising housing prices, coupled with the historical trends of housing (i.e. housing prices never fell too drastically) led people to falsely believe that housing prices would continue to rise, and that investing in a house was a very safe form of investment. The second was an increase in household income. From 1995-2000, household income per capita rose considerably, which increased demand for homes; the increased housing prices, however, rose faster than household income (Origins 11). The impact of increased income is a rather obvious one. When people make more money, they spend more money. Spending money did not create the problem; housing prices increasing faster than income growth created the problem: “People were stretching to buy houses” (Origins 11). The third factor was the decline in nominal interest rates, which began to fall in the early to mid-80s. Similar happenings throughout developed nations tend to agree with the idea that “the decline in mortgage interest rates was a key factor in triggering the run up of housing prices” (Origins 11). Lower interest rates make loans easier to attain. Easily attained loans are good when the people attaining the loans are able to pay the loans. The low interest rates made it easier for people who could not attain a loan at a higher interest rate to attain loans for homes, which created riskier loans.

       Had interest rates not gone up, and the housing market not seen a decline, people with risky loans probably would have been okay, and those that defaulted probably would not have hurt the banking system quite as much, as the bank could have turned a profit on the sale of those homes. Interest rates did rise, causing people to default on their mortgages; and the housing market did decline, making it nearly impossible for banks to rid themselves of the homes they now owned. These riskier loans are known as “non-prime loans”, which includes subprime, Alt-A and home equity lending. From 2001 to 2003, 85 percent of loans were to prime borrowers; by 2004, however, that percentage fell to 64, and by 2006 only 52 percent of borrowers were considered “prime” borrowers (Origins 14). The problem with those statistics is rather obvious, and it is quite curious that bankers approved such risky loans at such a staggering rate. Mortgage creators often quickly sold their mortgages to another bank, which created a lack of incentive to ensure the loan would be paid: “The banks buying the mortgages failed to check what they were buying” (Credit 3).

      The decline in lending standards can most certainly be blamed for many of the problems in the housing sector. Still, some people blame the Fed for keeping interest rates too low for too long, or they blame foreign investors for “flooding the U.S. market with liquidity seeking high returns.” While that did play a role in what happened, an “aggressive tightening of monetary policy” would have increased the risk of significantly slower economy-wide development. And taking away the funds from foreign investors would have solved the problem, but “given the integration of U.S. companies with the rest of the world, it would be infeasible.” The decline in mortgage-lending standards could and should have been stopped. Appropriate incentives must be created within the current lending model, or a “better and more integrated force of regulators” must be created to “compensate for the misaligned incentives (Credit 4). The system needs to be changed; the nation cannot continue to operate in the same manner and expect that its problems will be solved. Change will make things harder for some people, but it is necessary to the economic prosperity of the nation as a whole to no longer undertake such risky behavior. Truly, people must live within their means, and stop taking out loans that they either have no intention of ever paying, or are simply incapable of paying.

      All of the behavior above was a recipe for disaster, but the banks compounded the possible problems by creating non-transparent derivatives on mortgage-backed securities (Credit 5). Derivatives are bets made on a wide variety of things, using mostly borrowed money. Derivatives are high risk, and carry a very large monetary value; the US commercial banks alone had 182.1 trillion dollars worth of derivatives, and the global total was 596 trillion dollars. The way banks handle derivatives is similar to someone gambling on a roulette table that puts some money on both black and red, so that they never lose a lot of what they bet, but they never win a lot either. There is a major difference between the two, though; banks were not betting against the house the way one would at a roulette table, they were essentially betting against the equivalent of the other players at the table (Citigroup). That actually works very well, if everyone pays when they lose, but when a player does not pay their bets, a domino effect occurs. The failure to pay by one bank carried the possibility of destroying the entire system, which is exactly what happened when Lehman Brothers failed.

      At this point it is nearly unimaginable that banks would make even bigger mistakes than what had been made, but they did. Banks were betting with far more money than they ever had; the 596 trillion dollars worth of derivatives were ten times the GDP of the entire planet. Secondly, there was no oversight on the derivative market. Banks were making bets with other banks without knowing how stable they were. Why banks were allowed to engage in such risky behavior is mind-boggling, and the fact that they did engage in such risky behavior is enough to make someone think, “let them fail.”

       As with almost every other situation in life, things are not as simple as they seem. Banks perform some of the most vital operations of our economy. On the most basic levels, banks give loans to people to buy a home, or a car, or whatever it is an individual needs a loan for. On a larger scale, banks provide loans to start businesses, and to fund growth in already established businesses. Generally speaking, smaller commercial banks make these loans, and if that’s all it took was small banks to make loans, then the collapse of larger investment banks probably would not carry such a large impact, but that’s not how the banking system works. Banks almost never actually have the cash to make loans, so they borrow from other, larger banks. And those banks borrow from even larger banks, and so on until the largest banks. Then the rights to those loans get sold to other investors (foreign or domestic), and so on. The process is incredibly long, and complicated, and would take an entirely separate paper to describe. The point is, if banks do not make loans to each other, then we begin to face the problems we currently face; because banks do not only stop lending between themselves, they also stop lending to businesses. When businesses can no longer receive loans, they begin to cut jobs. When people lose their jobs they cannot spend as much money, which affects other areas of the economy, and eventually creates even more job losses.. If the lack of liquidity lasts long enough, it causes a recession, and recessions are generally painful things to go through. So the so-called “bailout” was vital to the banking industry because the banking industry creates opportunities for other industries to flourish.

       None of that is to say that the “bailout” should not be questioned. Certainly taxpayers have a right to know how their money is being spent, and studies have shown that politics has already played a very large role in the voting process for the proposed bailouts (Fisman). The people should question everything done by the government to be sure that the action taken is in the best interest of the public, and people should take no exception with this “bailout,” but the fundamental motivation of the “bailout” need not be second-guessed. Whether or not the 700 billion gets applied in the proper way is something that needs to be scrutinized, because if it gets applied improperly, no good will come of it.

      Making sure banks are properly funded, and functioning is not giving to the rich to make the poor poorer. Adding funds to banks helps to ensure that a vital function in our economy stays functioning, because without them, the whole system faces collapse. This is not a case of making sure the “greedy Wall Street fat-cats” keep their pockets lined with money.

My dad's friend killed himself by ODing on something. I don't know what he ODed on, the guy that called my dad said Tylenol, but they weren't exactly sure. At any rate, I've been thinking about this stuff for the past hour or so..

I didn't particularly care for this guy, he was a nice man, but I had no particular affection for him; it's so strange, though, to me, the concept of death; it's like I'm unable to fully understand it. Yesterday he was, and today he is not, and that is how we all will be. I've been to, probably, five or six funerals, and seeing the lifeless body is always so odd to me. I remember them as they were--alive--and I don't fully recognize the body that's in the casket. I suppose it's because it's not the body which I get attached to, but the personality that body once carried, and now that personality is no more.

I'm not sad in the sense that I'm going to miss this man, as though he were a big part of my life (not like my grandmother was, or my great-grandmother, both of whom I knew very well, and loved greatly); rather, I'm sad in the sense that he saw life in such a way that he no longer wished to take part in it. I can't comprehend that at all. He must have been rather lonely; and his professional life wasn't what he wanted it to be, I know that much. His mother died recently, and he was either divorced or his wife died. I know he had a daughter, she is not a child anymore, so he didn't really leave anyone behind, in a sense (not like a single father that commits suicide when the kid is like 4). He didn't really have anybody, I guess, and that, in and of itself, is sad. He preferred to spend his days in the dark, and alone. I only wish that he hadn't taken this road, not for himself, but for the people that cared about him. I wish he would have talked to someone, and maybe found a greater purpose in his life. I can only hope that he's happier now, dead, than he was alive.

He was a photographer, mainly a wedding photographer, and a rather good one at that, but most of his customers were cheap, and didn't buy many prints. I don't think he was in massive debt, or anything, but I do think that he probably felt under appreciated for his work. He had a lot of work coming, too, so even if he was struggling a bit, he had nine or ten weddings booked for the future, so things would have begun to look up. It just doesn't make sense to me.

I hardly ever think about death, when I do, it's a fleeting thought, but things like this seem to force one to think of it. I suppose I never really think of it because I live my life so "in the moment." I'm not entirely sure that's the right way to live, not planning at all for the future, but I always have this really bizarre feeling that I'm going to die really young, so I had better enjoy the fruits of life while I'm lucky enough to be here.

As I was thinking about this earlier, I was reminded of "The Death of Ivan Ilych", which I had to read for my English class this semester. I didn't understand the philosophical side of the story until earlier today. I wonder if that's how he felt before he decided to kill himself. He certainly wasn't a young man anymore, he must have been in his sixties, maybe into his seventies; more than likely he was going to be afflicted with the same disease that struck his mother--Parkinson's disease--and he knew this. I wonder how big of a role that played in his decision. But what I really wonder, is what he thought of his life as a whole. On the outside (a not-so-distant outside, but distant enough that I didn't know him on too-personal a level) it seems as though his life was almost without meaning. I hate to say that, but it doesn't seem he accomplished a whole lot in life. Yes, he was an excellent photographer, but he didn't really use his talents in the way they could have been used. He owned his own studio, and for a while made some okay money, I suppose. Times were probably hard recently. He lived his life day by day, and probably never did what he really wanted to do. That's so saddening. I'm still trying to imagine what he must have felt like to be able to actually kill himself--the depression must have been unbearable. I keep thinking of this, but I don't want to comprehend that deep level of sadness that he underwent: no one should have to. It all keeps coming back to the exact same thing, I wish he would have just talked to somebody. And here I sit, in tears for this man I hardly knew, and didn't love, because of how sad his life must have been. I guess I cared for him a bit more than I thought.

This actually happened on my way to dropping off a friend after we left this weekend, and it pissed me off like crazy.

We're driving down a road, and I'm speeding, not excessively though. I'm doing about 63 in a 55, and there's a car in front of my doing about the same. Then this asshole decides to turn out in front of two cars going over sixty miles and hour and then go 40. It's not like he couldn't have waited the ten seconds it would have taken us to pass him, and the guy in front of me definitely had to hit his brakes pretty hard to not make contact with this douchebag. That was the first of a string of incredibly annoying events on the way to dropping my friend off.

After the jackass that was mentioned above turned off to a side street, which he did about as slowly as he pulled out in front of the guy in front of me, we hit another snag in our trip. Suddenly, I don't find myself doing 63-70 miles an hour, I'm hitting the brakes, and I'm hitting them pretty hard to slow my car down quickly enough. Apparently the sign that says 55 just doesn't matter to the people of this town, who all seem to like to drive way below the speed limit, because about two miles after the last guy I get stuck behind a guy (or woman, not sure which... but probably a woman) doing 35 in a 55. Yeah, thirty-fucking-five miles an hour in a fifty-five. What. The. Fuck!? Twenty-goddamned miles an hour under the limit. I can kind of understand being a bit below, no more than five below, because the road was kind of dark and he might have had some trouble seeing, but TWENTY BELOW?! AHHHHH! I was so pissed, and there was nothing I could do about it. Every time an opening was there to pass this jagbag we entered a no passing zone. From what I'm told the cops really like to pull people over out there too, so there was no chance of me passing in a no passing zone.

There were about five other people who just refused to do the speed limit after that guy. Luckily the road became a two lane road at some points and I was actually able to get past these people. I just could not believe that there was actually a guy going thirty-five miles an hour in a fifty-five zone. There's just no reason for that at all.

So I saw my friend from up in Wisconsin this weekend. It was fucking sweet. We got drunk as shit playing some card games, and I guess he got some ass from the girl who's house we were staying at.

It was weird though, I have no idea how I started it, but I know I ended up grappling/wrestling with an ex-marine. I did pretty well against him, thankfully we agreed to know strikes (I would have been killed I'm sure). It took him a long time to submit me though, and he was definitely sweating like crazy when we got done. Luckily he happened to be very ticklish or I would have been out way beforehand, because he was definitely choking me out but I jammed my thumbs into his ribs and he couldn't take the tickling feeling that it created (even though I was going for a more pain oriented feeling) and he had to roll off of me, so I got back to controlling it. Eventually it ended with me tapping though, which sucked, but it was loads of fun.

Other than that nothing really happened. I got super drunk, my friend discovered he is allergic to vodka (or maybe just shitty vodka)... Good weekend all in all, and Chuck Liddell lost which makes me happy.

EDIT: I did not see the ability to edit this before commenting. Oh well... it's time for bed now, and I think I'm going to turn this into a sports blog when football (American) season starts up again.