Happy Mother's Day

Today is Mother's Day. Happy Mother's Day, Mum, Grandma, and every other Mum out there that I know (and don't know).

My desktop computer had a hiccup the other day, and so it is now waiting for me to buy a new video card. I hope that's all that's wrong with it.

I'm using a dicky borrowed laptop, currently, though, and it's terribly terribly slow. It's meant to run Win 98, but it's got Win XP on it, so it takes half an hour to start up, and then when things crash (and they do), it takes about an hour to get the Task Manager to finally respond, so I can shut down the offending program, because attempting to shut the program down by clicking the close button just causes even more crashes. Grr.

Anyway, I'm finally getting the laptop to play the mp3s I have stored on my external hard drive. It's only taken a complete restart of the system for that to happen, though. Yikes. Can't wait until I get the new video card, and my desktop starts working again. The system works, starts up, does all the right sounds, etc, just no pictures. And no it isn't the monitor. I checked that with various monitors I have. I checked the RAM. Everything is fine, just no picture. The video card is an old 64mb card though - about 6 years old, I guess, maybe older. It's been telling me it was dying for a while now, actually. It's just a pain that it couldn't wait until my next paypacket before it died. Oh well.

I'm struggling to get over a cold currently, so I'm spending a lot of time on the computer and watching foxtel. That and I'm kinda hiding out in my house, avoiding certain people who won't leave me be. So now I have a very large display cabinet in front of my front windows so people can't peer through my front window to see if I am home and at my computer (which is in the lounge room right at the front of the house), but it means I no longer get to see much of the outside world. It's actually amazing what lack of sunshine, rain, or weather in general does to your soul. I wonder how the prisoners who are locked in their cells for 23 hours every day manage? Sometimes I feel like that, I guess. I'm being good though. I'm making myself go out for a walk each day, just to get some fresh air and sunshine. The last couple of days I've stayed inside, however. It's Autumn here and starting to get cool, and the sky's been cloudy and looking like rain for a day or two. Or maybe I am just making excuses for staying inside and procrastinating on the net? Yeah, that'd be it :-)

That said, I think I'm addicted to the game, Bejewelled 2. And, possibly, to Fox News (yikes!), and to the show Cops. The American show, Cops. The one they all seem to rave about over there. Or at least, the guys all seem to rave about. Or so I gather from various blogs I read. It's actually a pretty cool show. Fox News, though - "unbiased"? "fair?". No on both counts. Unless, of course, you think George W is a god. I'm not giving an opinion either way. He's made his mistakes, and he's sometimes done good things for the US, and really I can't stand up and say Georgey boy is bad when we have Little Johnny running our own country down into the ground! There's a show on there called Hannity and Colmes. Colmes I don't mind. He at least tries to be fair. But whenever someone says something (and generally it's a Democrat who says it) that Hannity obviously disagrees with (and he seems way too fond of old George W), then he practically jumps down their throats, tells them "how" they should be thinking, and then goes on to say that they've run out of time, and doesn't let them answer. But if one of the republicans is on, he lets them waffle on for ages. Grr. So much for being unbiased and fair. Neil Cavuto is pretty cool though. I don't always agree with him, I don't always like him, but I can at least respect him and listen to what he has to say. He's probably one of the only ones on that channel that even comes close to fair and unbiased.

So, given I live in Australia, why am I watching an American news channel, and watching American shows? Well I have friends in the States, especially a very good friend in Michigan, who I haven't heard from in a little while, and who I am a bit worried about because of all the bad weather heading her way just now. Plus I have a thing about learning about other cultures. After doing a year of Italian last year, I felt I needed a change, and wanted to learn about a country that basically speaks the same language as I do. That and Foxtel seems to play mostly Yank stuff these days. Yank or Pom, and not a great deal of Oz or Kiwi. Ummm. Maybe I should re-phrase that? :-) American or English, and not a lot of Australian or New Zealand.

I believe that everyone in the world has something to offer. I hate it when certain people tell me I should not talk to people overseas, and that I shouldn't watch overseas tv or listen to overseas radio. Why not? What's wrong with watching M*A*S*H*? Why shouldn't I watch Everybody Loves Raymond if it makes me giggle? These same people, however, see nothing wrong with sitting down and watching Dr Who (well known and well loved British show), The Bill (also british), Oshin (a very old Japanese soapy that used to be on SBS tv here in Australia in the 1980s), Inspector Rex (German cop show)....

So what, exactly, is wrong with watching the odd US show? Do they have the plague over there or something? :-) Am I gonna catch it if I watch their tv shows? Or listen to their music? I doubt that very much! I hereby proudly stand up and say I love The Monkees, Blood Sweat and Tears, most of the Barbershop groups, Roger Miller (yes, I know, that one's kind of embarrasing, but I still love a lot of the lyrics to his songs) as well as a fair few other musicians and bands!

Am I patriotic to my own country? Hell yes! But I am also willing to look out and about, and around me. No blinkers for me. The world is there to be explored. And with the internet, it's a whole lot easier now to do just that. I believe that if we were meant to all be exactly the same, then we'd all be living on the one continent, all speaking the exact same language, with the exact same accent. Wouldn't life be dull as dishwater then? Infinite Diversity, and all that. :-)