Yesterday, Matt and I watched two shows on the TLC: Discovery Channel. The first concerned the John/Joan case where a psychologist, driven by his mad ambition, took advantage of a family and caused untold harm. Basically, Dr. John Money thought the first 2 years of a baby’s life were gender neutral and that if you essentially determine the baby’s gender identity from how you raised it i.e. raised as a boy or as a girl. In my humble and uninformed opinion, I thought the entire premise of nurture determining gender identity was futile. I digress. The story ended tragically for both the boy, who was raised as a girl, and his brother. They both committed suicide resulting from their psychological trauma. I won’t go into too much detail. Just google “David Reimer” to read all about the tragic tale of how scientists sometimes get it wrong and refuse to admit defeat. The next story was a little more uplifting and really miraculous. It concerns conjoined twin (Abigail and Brittany Hansel) who are simply amazing. I can’t do justice to this article because there are hundreds of other articles that dissect their fascinating lives. The astonishing part of the whole thing is how separate they seem. It’s really like 2 people who happen to share a body! However, they are extraordinarily cooperative and it just blows the mind. They seemed really well adjusted with healthy self-esteem and totally into things that teenage girls would like. I’m really happy for them and I hope they live long & healthy lives! Here’s to Abby and Brittany!
In tech-y news, I’ve been experimenting with a bunch of plugins on my WordPress-powered site. I’ve got close to 30 plugins powering Fading Whispers and I anticipate turning on or off a couple more. 🙂 You could say I’ve gone plugin-bananas. Another thing I’ve over-dosed on recently is the portable applications provided by Portable Apps. Right now, it is fair to say I’ve installed over 80% of the software they have listed on their sites onto my 8GB thumbdrive and there is still room to spare! I figured I might as well use up the space on my thumbdrive because I hadn’t come close to even using up 2GBs until I started installing the applications. Several applications like Filezilla Portable and 7-Zip Portable have become indispensable to me. So, I highly recommend visiting Portableapps.com to see what apps could come in handy for you especially when you are leery of installing software on, say, a company-issued computer. Right now, I’ve got a setup on my usb thumbdrive to where I can write my documents, transfer files via ftp, encrypt documents, erase documents, chat all from the comfort of my thumbdrive! It doesn’t get better than that. The obvious downside to working out of a thumbdrive is the slowness of the applications. It hasn’t been too much of a problem using the portable versions of Filezilla or 7-Zip, but with applications like Gimp Portable or even instant messaging, it will be a big undertaking for my poor flash drive.
Here’s counting down to the arrival of my laptop! I’ve been having dreams about it already. lol. My latest dream that was of me playing with the cool blue light that depicts bluetooth being on the laptop. 🙂 I’m very thankful to have gotten my laptop during the tax-free weekend because I’ve been configuring and re-configuring other laptops similar to my specifications and coming up with a figure that’s typically ~ $100 or higher due to taxes! That definitely eased my buyer’s remorse, but I found out that earlier in the year, HP and some other retailers had a $500 off coupon so that a reviewer online purchased his dv9700t for less than $1000 with similar specifications to mine!!! lol. Well, now that I’ve scratched my itch, we will definitely keep an eye out for deals while we are hunting for Matt’s laptop. There’s no hurry now. 😀