Why do I write?

I write simply because I like it.

I think about things then I write about the things I am thinking about. If it’s a matter of wanting it published, I would not write at all. I have written my entire life. We are taught to read and write early on so there is no reason not to carry on the tradition. Subjects that interest me often interest other readers and writers as well. I wrote for Yahoo! Voices and still write for Bubblews and HubPages and PersonaPaper.

The image title format used on Bubblews makes it easy to spot a familiar writer’s post when the writer uses the same graphic but I use a variety of graphics but since they are also used by other writers there tends to be some confusion when looking at articles posted on the front page of Bubblews.

Many good writers are still there but too many other good writers have left due to not getting paid and that is understandable. I failed to receive payment for one redemtion but it doesn’t bother me any more as time has gone by and I have found PersonaPaper, although in it’s early stages of development, going upward in status and gaining momentum with an influx of new writers on a daily basis.

HubPages were all ready established before I got into writing just a few open articles there. I like their appearance. It seems a bit more professional. Also, I like The Examiner. Examiner.com is a website that a number of former writers from Yahoo! Contributor Network and Yahoo! Voices let go thousands of writers and shut down these two departments because of the new Panda 4.0 algorithm. Search Engine Optimization from Google Search ended up weeding through the many plagiarisms and duplicate content from so called content farms that caused many writing sites to go under.

No site is immune to bots and spinners and copy cats. No one is immune to this. In an effort to clean house, Bubblews had to develop a new strategy before going under like so many before them and in so doing lost tons of revenue. They were once ranked very high and at the 2 million dollar mark but since then their profits have decliined to just over half a million based on the following report >

Bubblews.com Estimated website traffic net worth $610,801 US Dollars – 02 Feb 2015

http://www.freewebsitereport.org/www.bubblews.com#estimations

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Did Robin Williams really want to Die?

I don’t think so. I think he didn’t want to feel the pain that was coming. How many people do you know who are truly happy if and when they are diagnoses with a disease that would completely destroy them in time?

He had Bipolar Disorder and so do I. I was diagnosed in 1995 when My Mother died on Mother’s Day 1995 and I was diagnosed with a cancer called pleomorphic adenoma of right parotid gland. That’s a salivary gland near the jaw bone.

I went through 6 hours of prolonged surgery to my face and there were risks of asymmetrical paralysis of the right side of the face that might make it impossible to talk or open and close my right eye and I was willing to risk it because I wanted it removed. They didn’t do Chemo or Radiation therapy. I did many weekly followups on the floor at Parkland where they called the place I went to Oncology. 2 years later I had to have the remaining outer portion of my parotid gland removed along with a local lymph gland, and the surgery put me at risk yet again. Afterward I once again had to visit Oncology at Parkland on a week by week basis.

I wasn’t required to do chemo or radiation but a neuroma developed near the surgery site and they did a fine needle aspiration to it and found it benign and said the neuroma would eventually heal and disappear and it finally did.

When I lost my mother shortly after the first surgery it was after I took a drug overdose with lots of beer and then I went into a sleep in the bathtub for many hours and didn’t drown, I was diagnosed at the hospital a day later after my wife and my step daughter got me dressed while I was in a semi-conscious state of stupor.

I was placed in the Psychiatric ER at Parkland. I was there an entire day for evaluation, and from then on I was put on mandatory admission to outpatient psychiatry and given consultations on a weekly basis for several months and put on 3 drugs, Lithium Carbonate, 300mg, Ativan 1mg 2 to 3 times daily and Prozac 20 mg 2 or more daily.

I ended up losing my job, my friends didn’t call me any more, and I was in a near fatal car accident.

So I can relate to Robin Williams and his depression. Robin Williams had open heart surgery and recovered from it.

He had already been treated long ago for his Bipolar Disorder. But when he was told he also had another disease I believe this is what made him go over the edge. He was diagnosed with the early stage of Parkinson’s Disease.

This is a terrible disease that is not fatal and people can live 20 years later in life if they get the disease but Parkinson’s does progress and cause certain forms of Speech difficulty, digestive problems, coordination and walking difficulties, Rigid muscles, facial, hand and arms and leg tremors and memory loss and moreover depression which can only make having Bipolar Disorder even worse.

So given the prospect of loosing his mental powers that were his life that made his career such a success throughout his ingenious life, it must have played a crucial role in ending his life in such a premeditated manner.

Robin Williams didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to deteriorate!

Psychiatrists often say the with Bipolar patients, especially Bipolar 1 mixed, with rapid cycling, as in my diagnosis, it is when the patient is having a manic episode that they are at highest risk for suicide.

I think people need to understand that most people with Bipolar Disorder have higher than average intelligence levels and are extremely talented, artistic, musical and most of all outgoing and talkative.

The social media sites we go to every day are a way to keep in touch with friends and family

But there’s a darker side that seems to go unchanged. A side that is becoming a threat to the morality of our country. There are no age restrictions to use Facebook. People from all walks of life spend hours and hours on cell phones Texting one another and posting things on Facebook and other social media sites.

The dark side of social media is one that goes unrestricted and has no regard to the morality of the church and it doesn’t protect the children. It is that most profitable commodity that makes people very rich. You may have guessed. It’s pornography.

A friend of the family posted a video on my time line. I looked at it out of curiosity. It was a guy singing in his backyard full of dogs and he held a card that had oranges printed on it and as he sang he turned in circles as he videotaped it then the video ended. The video itself wasn’t offensive. Kind of dumb if you ask me. But it was the left and right arrows that led me to what I am against. the next video as I clicked left, was the same guy, singing and talking as he shopped for groceries in a Walmart store.

So what? What’s the big deal. The guy likes to make home movies of him shopping and playing in his back yard with his dogs. You have to click again to the left of the video window and there’s a guy setting on a sofa with a girl. At first you think they are just hanging out and that’s about it, but if you look a little longer she pulls off her top and then he pulls down his pants, I will not give out more details, Suffice it to say it was very pornographic, compliments of Facebook.

If my kid was looking at this stuff I’d ground him and take away his internet privileges.

If you want more information about this topic in news go to the following site:  GO HERE

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They tell you to recycle. You order a Blue Tote for your recyclables. After you figure what you can and can’t recycle you feel like you’re in control and doing something good for mother Earth.

Yes list:

Newspapers

Mixed paper

Plastic containers

Metal cans

Glass bottles and jars

Cardboard and boxboard

No list:

Plastic bags and Plastic film         solution =

http://www.plasticfilmrecycling.org/s01/s01dropoff.html

Styrofoam and plastic utensils     solution =

http://www.nyc.gov/html/nycwasteless/html/resources/plastics_styrofoam.shtml

Toys                       solution =

https://livegreen.recyclebank.com/the-land-of-misfit-toys

Light bulbs           solution =

http://www.recyclenow.com/what-to-do-with/light-bulbs

Metal hangers       solution =

http://www.keenforgreen.com/recycle/are_wire_metal_hangers_recyclable

Hoses                     solution  =

http://www.greenecoservices.com/can-you-recycle-or-reuse-garden-hoses/

Diapers                  solution   =

http://www.gdiapers.com/

I wash all my jars and cans before placing them in a white trash can in the kitchen and when it is full I take it out back and empty it into the big blue tote. I throw away newspapers and magazines, and milk cartons and paper bags and so on.

I heard on television just last night that Kimberly Clark is making toilet paper without paper rolls inside. They said that they could build the empire state building with them in a year or so. I don’t know if this is accurate information but I do know that they make a new type of toilet paper that has no paper roll in the middle. They think it’s good for the environment

Kimberly Clark article is here:

http://content.usatoday.com/communities/greenhouse/post/2010/10/kimberly-clark-tube-free-toilet-paper/1#.U9VZ0P1BFrM

 

They Call Them User Friendly

Who are you kidding?

My wife has apps, I have applications. She has Android, I have Windows 7. She has Silk, I have Internet Explorer. But can you say that all of your apps or applications are truly user friendly?

Maybe not. I know that there are people who are even smarter than me. The programs and the devices that are desined for most people are created by the genius IQ few. And they are smarter than me.

Just because I am able to open a program and run it don’t mean that just anyone else on the planet has the patience to do so. Does everyone have to be an Albert Einstein to use an app?

There’s an app to help you lose weight but if the app ain’t user friendly then that user will be a loser.

Does anyone like using Windows 8 touch screen? Perhaps not everybody. I like easy programs and easy operating systems. It is not getting any easier I can tell you. There are many types of cell phones with so many different types of apps and tablets and they all use a slightly different operating system with different menus to learn to use.

When I bought my first computer it was a TRS-80 Tandy Color Computer Coco 2. It looked like a typewriter with the hard drive inside. It had a game cartridge slot on the back right hand side and had a basic operating system.  It was one of those nifty gadgets I just had to have some fun with. I played Rampage on it more than anything else. Eventually I purchased the all new CoCo3. Yea buddy.

This is a picture from public domain of the CoCo3 system

 

“CoCo3system”. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commonshttp://commons.widimedia.org/wiki/File:CoCo3system.jpg#mediaviewer/File:CoCo3system.jpg

The TRS-80 had interfaces for an external modem, floppy drive and cassette player, used in this case for data tapes that stored programs on them, not for playing music. I bought all the extras for CoCo3. I liked to be state of the art.

The external modem was enormous. You would have to  like BASIC a lot to create your own programs for this impressive early prototype of the personal computer or PC.

Soon after came the Atari 2600  and Commodore 64 gaming systems and they were not computers but rather game machines or game systems. You connect one of these puppies into your antenna switch behind your t.v. and slip in a game cartridge and grab you a joy stick and turn on the jams. Play on! Frogger, River Raid, Pac Man, Asteroids and Elevator Action boy what a time I was having them. radio music playing in the background and plenty of Dr. Pepper and M&Ms peanut candies to munch on as we played for hours unless we were playing games at the local Red Bird Mall Aladdin’s Castle Arcade in Dallas, TX.

The television was your monitor and the television’s speakers were your sound system.

The Next thing you know they come out with the windows 1.0 personal computer which was released on November 20th, 1985. Enter the new personal home computer of the 21th century. People from all walks of life, young and old, private and business people began to change their very way of life with this new type of personal computer technology.  But you ask, was it user friendly? Not exactly.  Sure there was lots to learn. Nobody knew just what ws about to happen, but it happened sooner than anyone anticipated.

Back in 1994, Al Gore possibly coined the phrase Information superhighway, aka the internet.  he was the vice president then. On January eleventh, when he stood before a large audience at Royce Hall at the University of California, Los Angeles.

By this time a later version of Microsoft Windows, which was released on April 6th, 1992, before Al Gore gave his speech, was soon surpassed in 1995 on August 24th with Windows 95 aka Windows 4.0 or Chicago. It may very well have put OS 2 off the map.  From here the upgraded version of Windows 98 came to town in 1998 on June 25th, to local retail office suppliers like OfficeMax and Office Depot and electronic super stores like Fry’s and one of my favorites, Best Buy.

But, again, was the PC and Windows operating system or OS, user friendly?  They were trying.

Everyone in the retail business knew that you can’t just sell a computer.  I was a sales rep at OffceMax back then. I knew that when a customer walked into the store to buy a computer or a fax machine or printer that he or she wanted user friendly.  part of being a sales rep there was that I had to read up on Windows and learn as much as I could so I would be a better sales representative of the products that were on the sales floor of OfficeMax.

The customer liked it when I explained just how simple and easy a fax machine was to use and how easy it was to use one of the latest models of personal computers running Windows was for practically everyone.

When the customer was confident in the user friendly aspect of any item they wanted to buy it was easier for them to make the next important buying decision, that is, which model was best for them now and in the years ahead.

I sold a number and variety of new fax machines as well as personal computers, but if I had known then what I know now, I would have told them to wait a few years when the personal computer would be much more upgradable and even more user friendly than before. At that time no one really knew where the market was going. I figured it would only get faster and better in the years ahead.  Bill Gates knew where the personal computer was headed and his Windows Operating System skyrocketed into the 21st Century to what we all now simply take for granted.

Beyond Wndows 98 came Windows Me, in the year 2000, on September the 14th.  Then came Windows 2000, on February 17th, 2000. Windows 2000 was also referred to as Windows NT 5.0 and so on to the present day with Windows 8.0 we all know and love.

My reference to Windows was accessed via Wikipedia at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Microsoft_operating_systems

We have Windows phones, iPhones, a product of Apple and we have Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy s5. Even so, we know all about the gadgets, but there are still lots of apps and applications, for wireless devices as well as desktop and laptops that can easily be called USER UNFRIENDLY.

I think the software part of the hardware thing is what will make or break the market. If I like a program it’s not because it’s user friendly exactly.  If I can use it it’s only because I read the instructions and the help pages that come with any software.

My sister is trying to get used to Windows 8 touch screen technology on her new laptop and she is also learning to use Microsoft Office 2013. it is a great bargain.  My PC came with Microsoft Office Word Starter that was part of the software bundles in my Windows 7 computer system.  I use it frequently, but she still finds it hard to learn.  I figure she will get better as she learns all about the program and I know that the programs in Office are user friendly because I can figure them out.  It ain’t no genius, remember.  I have an average brain.  If I can do it then anyone can.

Here is a link to a list of user friendly apps for you to take a look at:

http:/appcrawlr.com/ios-apps/best-apps-user-friendly