#ROW 80 1st QTR – POST 26 – WHAT AND WHO DEFINE US AND SHOULD WE CARE?

Short answer; hell, no. But as with everything else, it's a lot more complicated. It gets even more complex when you start throwing in an ex-husband or 3, some interesting careers and times and some health issues that in another century would have landed me in an asylum (well, I've been there, sort of) or a Freak show.

The cool thing about getting up into your young-middle-age, or whatever the hell they call it these days, is I can say anything I please, and not give a good Goddamned about any of it. I used to care. I really did. Now I save my care for stuff that really matters. Like Bingo or Runescape. No, I save it for people who are too weak to defend themselves and there are loads of those. I care about writing and creating a good product and hanging around people who have the same standards. The usual stuff.

I'm not unique, but I am finding the world to become more and more slip-shod in quality. Maybe it's just old fart-ism setting in. I've just spent the day fighting with my HP printer, which seems fine, MS Office which is a giant zone of suck and it's little brother MS Works Suite, which managed to suck up any of the suck MS Office left behind. Another, not 1, but 2, count 'em! Microsoft products down the drain!

Don't forget Service Pack 4! New Bugs for all your .dll files!

I found a perfectly good little Office Suite online and put it through it's paces, databases; relational with pivot tables, spread sheets with formulae, and some kind of Power Pointy type thing, which I'll never use. Price? Free. It also doesn't take up 80 gazillion gigs and needs no java, which needs to be banned from the universe, anyway.

I told JC, I was taking all of my Microsoft shit and putting it on Nebraska Ave and let the hot rods run it over 8 or 10 times. He said, “Well, from all the bitching and hollering, it'll probably work just as well.” But that's what I mean by quality products. We had idiots at Verizon who were becoming MS Certified Engineers, who would format the C drives. If you can do that and be an MS Engineer, I don't want to do that. It's kinda like Mark Twain says, “I am no member of an organized political party. I am a Democrat.” A left-landed compliment if ever there was.

And of course my music and my viola! It's always been all viola, all the time. My folks must have just shaken their heads. They could not understand the obsession, but it's been lifelong. I'm a violist; was born one, and I shall die one. All this is sort of leading up to this whole “Parkinson's Disease, not-Parkinson's Disease, that is the question.” I got some really good advice from a Twitter buddy, when I cracked wise about the drooling. 

@dbsDad said, “Don't let yourself be defined by the disease. You take control.” (dbsdad is a very wise, cool and fun guy; I suggest following him!)

I know it's 3:30 in the fucking a.m., Ma! I have to play this stupid "Scratch Frantically at Solo Ensemble tomorrow!

Damned good advice. I'm still drooling; it took me 25 fucking minutes to type this stupid title, but so what. This is not who I am. I am someone who was not a very good girl child; a better boy than a girl. I love music, computers, mathematics and I'm a gamer. I'm trying to be a writer. I'm a friend.