Peter's Place

It is with deep sadness that I inform you of the passing of Ingrid E. Barnes this past Monday, 4 February, 2008 from cancer of her colon. I will always remember Ingrid as a driving force, a strong and driven woman; one with whom one would not want to find one's self in opposition with. She was an advocate for equality for many, many years, and was politically active throughout most of her life. Her words will hopefully be forever immortalized in the writings on her blog , as well as in Letters to the Editor that you can find by performing a Google web search on her name. Ingrid served as a Co-President of The LOFT: The Gay & Lesbian Community Services Center in White Plains, NY, and also later served as a director on their board. Most recently, she was President of the Hudson Valley chapter of Log Cabin Republicans . Professionally, Ingrid was most recently employed as Associate Director of Adult Services at PACE University . There was a time when I counted Ingrid among the c...

Keep it simple. The more you say, the less people remember. (on a fortune cookie I just ate) This sage advice is ignored most often, I believe, by our politicians .

I'm writing this in my word processing program on the train back into NYC, where I will then take the subway back to Forest Hills. Today was emotionally wrenching for me. I wound up spending the night in Throgs Neck at my friend's because I went over to her place in the afternoon to help resolve a problem that she was having with her computer and wound up working until almost midnight, and by then I was just too exhausted to spend the two hours it would take me on NYC's subway system to get back to where I was apartment sitting for my friend in Forest Hills (remember that I've been homeless for about the past two years and have been couch hopping among friends since then). Originally my mother was supposed to come out and see me in Forest Hills, pick me up, and take me to Yonkers where I could finally get to the police station there and file a complain/report regarding what happened to me in October/November/December, and how a really disturbed individual named Louis...

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. ~ Dale Carnegie (1888-1954), American author and lecturer

If you really do put a small value upon yourself, rest assured that the world will not raise your price. ~Anonymous

Well, it's official. I did it. I'm so anxious right now that I'm shaking. And I'm about to s**t my pants! What, what, you're asking, what is it already? Well, I sent a letter (via email) to the law school that I attended but was unable, due to my depression, to complete my studies. At the time, however, I didn't know that I had depression. Hell, I didn't even know what depression was or even that it existed. But now, after a few years of therapy, some psychiatric hospitalizations, and the like, I know about depression. In fact, I know quite a bit about depression. And I have a much better handle on my own depression. I know how it affects me. And I've gotten better at managing it. I know that I have to remain in treatment. I know that I have to take my medications. And I'm doing my best to do both of these things. I have a treatment team that knows mjy situation and is flexible and willing to work with me. I know that if this works and I'm accept...

I really don't know what all the fuss is about. I think that if one is going to make a resolution, one shouldn't have to wait until the New Year to do so. But as is custom and tradition, far be it from me to go against the grain (actually, it wouldn't be far from me to do so but, I digress....). So keeping in mind that I find the entire notion of resolutions for the coming New Year to be ridiculous and out of place, especially considering the abysmal failure rate in keeping one's new year's resolutions (maybe more people should read some articles on how to keep your new year's resolutions ), here are my resolutions for the coming 2008 New Year: Eat more and Weigh less Shop more and Spend less Earn more and Work less Compute more and use less Energy Be more tolerant of Intolerance Start, then Quit Smoking Stop to Smell The Roses, then Cut and Sell them Get Drunk but don't get a hangover Help Others more but Give Less to them Keep Everything but Throw Out t...

Little Love Among Matchmakers - New York Times It's amazing the sort of news that one can find in those "non-essential news sections" of the newspaper, e.g., Lifestyles, Culture, Theatre, Travel, Technology, Business, etc. I usually tend to avoid the "regular" sections of the newspaper, e.g., local, national, and world news, as all too often these days, the stories are just too depressing. For instance, the last time I dared venture a look at the regular news section, the first article I came across was about the teenager who shot and killed nine people and then himself at a mall in Omaha, Nebraska. I mean, who can deal with this kind of information shoved into your face when all you're trying to do is keep abreast of current world events? It just makes my depression dovetail. So with that in mind, I pretty much stick to the relatively less sensational and more boring sections of the paper, such as the Business, Technology, Life, Culture, Travel, and other ...

The New York Times just sent an interesting article to my Inbox. Here's a paragraph from the article that, I believe, explains fairly well its gravamen: The growing confrontation between Google and Microsoft promises to be an epic business battle. It is likely to shape the prosperity and progress of both companies, and also inform how consumers and corporations work, shop, communicate and go about their digital lives. Google sees all of this happening on remote servers in faraway data centers, accessible over the Web by an array of wired and wireless devices — a setup known as cloud computing. Microsoft sees a Web future as well, but one whose center of gravity remains firmly tethered to its desktop PC software. Therein lies the conflict. There have been a number of articles online about the growing battle between Microsoft and Google--David (Google) taking on Goliath Microsoft). One of the odd things about this analogy is that Google is described as being a David when it...

Gmail ( Google 's free web-based email service that offers tons of storage ) has just introduced AIM integration into its chat feature. Provided that you're able to access Gmail with chat enabled (at the bottom of your Gmail screen, make sure you're using the Standard view), users can now sign into AOL Instant Messenger and chat with all of their AIM buddies right from within their Gmail window. This is totally awesome news for me. I no longer have to launch AIM just to chat with a few people who I haven't convinced to use Gmail (stubborn, they are at that!). And this means that I'll basically havce another 75kb or so of free memory to run other applicatoins on my system. The only hitch, and it's a very small one at that, is that you'll need to have an AIM account separately from Gmail in order to use this new feature. If you're an old AOL user or you have an AIM account, that's great; if not, just go over to AOL Instant Messenger and create one-...

It is said that music truly is the universal language; perhaps there is truth to this statement because music is both mathematical (and we all know math to be a universal language) and emotional at the same time. Case in point: I was listening a new station on Pandora.com (clicking on this link brings you to my profile page on Pandora). Pandora is the free Internet radio service where you can create your own station by naming just one/song artist, and Pandora will use the Music Genome Project to discover related works that it think you might like, you can vote individuals songs and artists into/out of your stations, you can create an unlimited number of stations, you can share your stations with your friends and the rest of the world, you can see who else is listening to any particular song/artist at the moment, you can get information about the currently playing song/artist/album with one simple click, while Pandora goes about playing new content it thinks you might like, you can p...

I'm really about to blow my gasket. I mean, after everything that I've gone through over the past month with having to straighten out my financial accounts (which, to this date, still aren't straightened out but at least they're on the way toward getting there now), I almost had a stroke when I received an email alert from my bank, letting me know that my account had gone below zero. WHAT???????!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is getting to be quite ridiculous. My bank account is less than two weeks old, as I had to open a new account with my bank (which, thankfully, they were able to do for me even though I have no identification because they had all of my ID on file already and were able to confirm my identity through my ID on file and also by asking me questions that only I would be able to answer) as my old account has been frozen due to fraudulent activity on it that Louie Rivera committed while I was in the hospital this past October/November and all of my possession were left...