Peter's Place

OK, so I've been staying with my mother for the past few weeks in the Hartford, CT area. I've been getting a little bit antsy lately, because aside from my mother, I don't know anyone who lives up here. And recently, I tried searching Google to find out about gay life in Hartford, CT , and came up with virtually nothing. I can't even figure out if they have a LGBT community services center up here, as they do in other places, like the NYC LGBT Center or The LOFT in White Plains (for Westchester County). So if anyone out there is living in the norther CT region and is reading this, I'd really appreciate some info about the gay scene up here. I mean, what is there to do? Are there any clubs, bars, or cafes? Fill me in, people, before I go out of my mind. Oh, the one thing that I know there's a lot to do in the area is go shopping but, being that I don't really have the money for it, that's not really an option at this point. As for the New Year, I was ...

Since I was robbed, I lost all of my contact information, including the birthdays of my friends. However, there are a few people whose birthdays I still remember. One of those people is my best friend from high school and college , Stacey . So wherever you are, I hope you're enjoying getting old . Stacey is a few years older than me, even though she was only a year ahead of me in high school. In college, I managed to catch up with her and we wound up graduating from our respective colleges around the same time (in the same year, at any rate). So Happy Getting Older Day, you old goat !

This has got to be the worst Christmas of my life. I'm writing this on my phone so I'll have to reformat it later. For starters, let's talk about the fact that, for the first time that I can remember, I didn't purchase/make/etc. a single present for a single person. Even when I was young -- just a lad -- I remember being able to get presents for people. I had an allowance, or my grandmother would take me shopping, or SOMETHING. But this year, nothing. Not a single damned thing. Not a single present, for anybody. And I'm a very giving person (most of the time), so it really hurts that I haven't been able to give anyone anything. And, of course, it goes without saying that this situation isn't really helping out my depression any. Next up, my father recently dropped the bomb that his marriage is basically falling apart. He's going down south next month to scope out some housing. His wife has no interest in living in the south, and he wants to move furthe...

OK, so I was a little bit bored and I decided to check out some of my friend's blogs -- they don't update their blogs too often, though (some of them made one or two (or *ahem, Dr. Dan * three ) freakin post and now it looks like their blogs have been abandoned. Poivre, poivre abandoned blogs. :-( So anyway, while I was on my friend triLcat's site , I saw this nifty little box: enter your e-mail address and you'll be notified by e-mail as to when there are new posts to the blog. Now, while my blog has this feature built-in, it's something that I have to manually do. That is, I have to manually add in someone's email address in my preferences/settings, and the only way I'll know if they want to be added is if they send an e-mail asking me to do so. So now, it's all automatic. I'm not quite certain as to how well this works, but we'll see. Try it out for yourself, now. It'll be in my sidebar, of course, where it should be. But for now, it's...

I started reading Sandra Brown's novel, Envy . I'm really getting into it. But more than that, it seems that ever since I started reading again (which was during my hospitalization in the Fall of 2005), I've been drawn to certain books, and have found that, at least for the type of books that I'm reading (fantasy, sci-fi, mystery thriller, suspense, etc.) they can be surprisingly insightful into the human psyche, as well as quite philosophical. In any event, some of these books "speak" to me (if you're a reader, you'll know what I'm talking about). Envy is one such book. For instance, take the following passages (select portions quoted under Fair Use provisions of the US Copyright Act ): Not until recently had Daniel Matherly thought of himself as aged. He had refused to acknowledge his elderly status far past the reasonable time to do so. Unsolicited literature mailed to him by the AARP was discarded unopened, and he declined to take adv...

I received the following email from a friend, who asked that I email her whenever I post something to my blog ( Blogger has a feature where you can set this up automatically, so if any of you out there want to be notified by email when I post to my blog, just send me your email address and I'll add you to the list): I will have you know that all your e-mails come through to me except this one that has the word "Gay" in the subject and ended up in my Spam folder. I guess AOL thinks anything with the word "Gay" in it is Spam! I've sent an email regarding this to a friend I have who just happens to work for AOL, in order to find out if he can figure out what's going on. Obviously, the friend who sent me this email has an AOL email address. The troubling aspect about this occurrence, at least to me, is that I'm whitelisted on my friend's account, so nothing that I send to her should be ending up in her SPAM folder. Why is is that she's rece...

Ok, so this is a somewhat amusing situation that my father and step-mother are going through. My step-mother bought her house (where she lives with my father) back in the year 2000. Since she has moved in, a certain governmental agency in the State of Connecticut has been sending mail to the former owner of the property. Just about every month, two letters from "Connecticut CCSPC" arrive in the mail for the previous owner. Here's the thing: my step-mother bought the house from the estate of the prior owner. That is, the prior owner had died, and it was his estate selling the house. So ever since then, the Connecticut CCSPC (which turns out to be the CT Centralized Child Support Processing Center ) has been sending two letters per month, over the past approximately seven years. And every time a letter comes, my father or step-mother put it back into the mailbox (unopened of course) with a note in red ink to the post office, instructing them to return the mail to send as...

Well, it's about time I finally came across a nice blog that pretty much sums up all the interesting news out there affecting the LGBT community, around the world. Sure, I could keep going to sites like gay.com but, the thing with them is all the clutter that's thrown at you when you're just trying to find out what the damned story is. But this blog I came across (through Digg.com, actually, I believe...) does a great job of summarizing the relavant information, and compiling it all together. Take, for instance, this article on the growing phenomenae of the acceptance of gay marriage around the world, and the increasing rejection of gay marriage and refusal to recognize any sort of gay relationship on the same terms as heterosexual relationships within our soon-to-be dearly departed (especially if our government continues on its current kamikaze run) United States. I mean, in order for me to get all of this information, I'd probably have to run around the Internet v...

I'm a .dll: Which File Extension are You? Isn't that fun? I'm in danger of bringing down the house because I don't play well with others. Hrm ... I have this friend whom I always accuse of not playing nice, because she just wants to nuke most of the world. Note to the nuclear regulatory agencies out there: Please ensure that JLW does not get her hands on any nuclear material of any sort, whatsoever.... So take the test, and then leave a comment here with your result.

Over the past few months, in dealing with my depression, I've noticed something that's both disturbing and annoying. When I tell people -- especially my friends and acquaintances -- that I have depression, they really don't understand what I'm talking about. I put most of the blame for this on the English language, itself. You see, "depression" is a synonym for "sadness," the meaning of which is related to "being sad." However, having depression is much, much more than "just" being sad or being in a state of sadness. In searching for definitions of these words, the meanings themselves become convoluted and twisted, intertwining different aspects of the different definitions together. Let's take a look: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition , defines depression as The act of depressing. The condition of being depressed. which then goes on to define " depressed " as To lower in sp...

Today is World AIDS Day . What are you doing to increase awareness, and remember those who have passed into another realm as a result of being defeated by this deadly disease? Just how much do you know about AIDS and HIV (the virus that is suspected of causing AIDS)? Test your knowledge on HIV/AIDS. Even if you think you know everthing that there is to know, why not visit a few sites and learn just a little bit more, and then tell other people what you know. AmFAR has a lot of information about HIV and AIDS, and breaks down a lot of statistics into easy-to-understand plain English . It's a great resource site. Some other sites that you'll want to check out to expand your knowledge, and let your friends/colleagues know about them are: World AIDS Day, 2006: 25 Years of AIDS, 25 Million Reasons to Take Action What it's all about: World AIDS Day 2006 Remembering those who have been lost to AIDS: The AIDS Quilt Memorial AIDS and its effect on the world's children: World ...

You may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in a while. That's due to the fact that my depression has its hand firmly gripped around me. Just about a month ago, in the early morning, as I was getting ready to go to my partial hospitalization program , I heard a knock on the door. I checked through the peephole and didn't see anyone, so I opened the door, with the chain lock still on it. That's the last thing I really remember. I was either punched in the face through the door, or the impact of the door being forced open (breaking the chain lock) knocked me out. I spent a few days in and out of consciousness, lying on the floor, until the person I've been staying with came back from spending the week at his sister's and found me. Since I'm not supposed to be there, I couldn't go to the police (the person I'm staying with is in a subsidized housing program and on Section 8, and he's not allowed to have people -- like me -- living with him)....

Most Microsoft Windows users know that from time to time, they have to "defrag" their hard drives. But most users probably don't know why the y have to defrag, and just what defrag means. Geek Girls has a pretty good explanation of the what ("Sometimes when you install a program or create a data file, the file ends up chopped up into chunks and stored in multiple locations on the disk. This is called fragmentation "), and a partial expanation of the why: Why should you bother with the housework? A couple of reasons. First, disks are hard working, mechanical devices and, like all mechanical devices, prone to failure. A little preventative maintenance can warn you of potential problems and fix minor glitches before they can do damage to your data. Second, the way files are organised on your drive has a perceptible impact on the performance of your computer. If your files are stored neatly, end-to-end, without fragmentation, reading and wr...

I was in NYC's Central Park a few weekends ago, up near the reservoir . I took a picture of this tree on my mobile camera phone, because I thought it was interesting, and beautiful, in a non-traditional sort of way. It was so peaceful and beautiful up there. Nature is a beautiful thing , but it can be pretty darned dangerous (how's that for some funky alliteration ?). Then, I had to be whisked back to the cold, drab realities of what life really is like .

Test from my mobile.

OK, this is kind of scarey, given the non-traditional , do no evil , corporate culture/philosophy that they usually portray. But guess what? Google is pulling an Oprah : Search engine giant Google, known for its mantra "don't be evil", has fired off a series of legal letters to media organizations, warning them against using its name as a verb. Rather than focus on the use of their trademarked name (which they have every right to protect ), perhaps they should focus on ensuring that the definition of "Googling" retains its current meaning, and that this definition spreads throughout popular culture: The verb to Google , or to google (depending on the dictionary) means "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet ." That way, Google is protecting its trademark, but allowing its name to become a part of culture. To me, I think it would help a company, not harm it, when the name of something that the company has invented (...

OK, so I was driving home tonight, and the battery light came on in the car (I have a 1995 Buick Park Avenue Ultra , which needs a paint job). This means that the car is now running off the battery. I saw the voltmeter begin to go down, and I knew I had to make it home, fast. I stopped at my friend's work place and hung out there, where I let the battery "re-charge" for a few hours. Then I went for the gold and made it the rest of the way "home" (you know, the place where I'm sleeping on the living room floor of a friend's Section 8 apartment that I'm not really supposed to be staying in). So, there's now something wrong with the electrical system. I don't know much about the inner workings of cars. All I do know is that I just replaced the alternator about four months ago, and it appears that this is the same -- or a similar -- problem. Oh, and did I mention that it's also a new battery -- less than six months old? So this means I'...

I really love today's Daily Dilbert . It pretty much reflects are large portion of my outlook on life. Click on the image below to go to the Daily Dilbert site and be taken (hopefully) to the right strip. Post a comment and let me know if you can figure out this large portion of my outlooik on life. OK, still haven't figured it out yet? I'll give you a hint: the mildly retarted consultant, or a certain aspect of what he represents, or a certain aspect of what he says, to me, at least, represents life, itself (have I used enough commans in this sentence?).

OK, so on a scale from 1 to 10, today's pain factor is about a 7. And that's after I've already taken about 8 Aleve pills. And it's only 11:22 am. This is really getting to be a bit ridiculous. Not to mention, painful. And, of course, the pain affects my depression . Scientists have just begun looking into the effects that physical pain has on the effectiveness of various drug therapies and other treatments for depression: "In particular, the odds of a poor depression treatment response were twice as high in patients with moderate pain at baseline and three to four times as high in those with severe pain," Bair says. In another study , researchers have linked chronic pain to depression. So it's kind of like this vicious cycle, wherein pain causes depression to worsen, which in turn causes more pain: Among the participants, 17 percent had chronic pain and 4 percent had symptoms of major depression; however, 43 percent of those with major depression also had...

Well, it's taken a little more than fifteen years, but the original purpose of the Internet has finally come to fruition: But as the internet and other communication technologies have made it easier for academics to share information with others in their field (not just at one's own university), the relationship between one's output, and that of others at the same university has been eliminated. Techdirt: Who Needs Harvard When You Can Blog?

Some of my friends have begun asking me, "Is there any way I can be notified (by email) when you post something to your blog?" The short answer to this is, well -- it depends. You see, most blogs, and some web sites , have something called a feed . Six Apart, the maker of some of the best independent blogging software out there, has a nifty little page that tells us all about what feeds are , and why we need them Many websites have links labeled "XML" or "RSS" or "Atom". All of these are ways of saying that you can find out about updates to that site without having to browse to it yourself to check. The Site Wizard has a more in-depth article about feeds and how to use them: RSS feeds and ATOM feeds are simply special types of web pages. Websites typically use such feeds to notify its visitors when something new has been posted on their website. thesitewizard.com's RSS feed, for example, usually contains news about new articles appearing ...

OK, so I FINALLY get my car back. Let me tell you something, eSurance is also the Suxx0r. It took them an entire week just to send someone out to look at my car. Then, they pay me only $600 out of the $2,000 it cost to get it fixed (and I didn't even get the replacement parts painted, because they weren't going to pay for that since the paint on my car is chipping away as it is). I mean, WTF is up with these people? (Not to mention, I rented a car, for a weekend -- which I could have afforded, except I kept it for a little over a month-- ooops! ) Anyway, so I get my car back last Friday. I'm driving back from the grocery store, and there are mad crazy thunderstorms all about. (One of my best friends, Stacey , lost her power due to the storm. She has some crazy pictures of damage that it did to her yard (mind you, this was just a thunderstorm!) But I digress....) So I'm driving back to the apartment that I'm not allowed to be in because it's my friend's and...

Time Warner Cable is definitely the Suxx0r . OK. I'm back online with RoadRunner hi-speed. At first, I ordered AOL Broadband which provided the RoadRunner Intro internet connection at $25.95/month and that operates at 768/128 kbps up/downstream, which, after having been accustomed to Cablevision's Optimum Online , which operates at 10 mbps downstream and 2 mbps upstream . So I basically had to upgrade to RoadRunner Hispeed , which offers a 5mbps downstream and 384kbps upstream. Not quite what Optimum Online offers but it's better than the Intro package. And, while I was upgrading the Internet connection, I decided to order Time Warner Digital Cable Television service as well. I knew that I wanted digital television, and decided on the DTV Value pack, which offers all digital television channels available. I also ordered Showtime , because I really like their home-grown programming , and there was a deal that if I got HBO with it it came out to a good price so I got...