Mishmash Musings

I know cabin fever usually applies only to the winter months when it’s impossible (or at least very difficult) to get out and do things, but I’ve been feeling that way this summer as well. It’s probably because for the first time in years, we couldn’t afford to take a family vacation and have just been sitting around the house every weekend.

I have to admit that I never really appreciated any of our past trips before, but now that I’m looking back on some of our fun San Diego and Orlando vacations, I’m starting to feel differently. We’ve done a lot of fun things as a family and have seen a lot of great places, and for that I am thankful. Hopefully we’ll be able to start taking vacations again next year, as we really need to get away from it all!

There’s no question that money is tight for a lot of folks these days. It seems that nearly every personal blog I read talks of that person’s struggles to buy groceries, gas, and other basics for their family, which is depressing to say the least. I’ve also been reading a lot of posts about money-saving tips and so forth, and have actually found a couple of useful ones.

For example, it’s natural that people would want to cut back on extras first when trying to save money, which includes things like going to the movies or renting DVDs. Folks need their entertainment, though, so there have been lots of message board discussions about watching free movies online.

Although I haven’t gone this route myself, there are actually a surprising number of sites to choose from. They all offer free movies online, usually via a streaming source, and include new releases (Dark Knight, Step Brothers, etc.). They’re probably pretty crappy quality though, so there’s definitely a downside to watching this way.

I highly doubt that sites offering free movies online are legal, though. Again, I’m not recommending anything, nor am I linking to any specific sites. Just putting this out there because downloading extends far beyond high school and college students these days!

I’m currently listening to a series of literary lectures, and one of the topics being discussed is the heroic code as it applies to classical epic poetry. In ancient Greece, for example, there was a sort of “contract” between the hero and the city he represented. During the hero’s lifetime, he would enjoy elevated status in society and would always have the finest food, wine, women, armor, and horses available.

He would repay this bounty by laying down his life in battle — with the understanding that his fame would live on through the centuries. (Think of Book II of The Iliad, which contains a seemingly endless list of names of Greek warriors who were fighting in Troy.)

That brought up an interesting question: would you rather live the high life and die young (with everlasting fame as your reward), or would you rather live a long, full life and die peacefully in your sleep at a ripe old age and be forgotten forever?

I would have to go with the latter, since I don’t see much value in dying in a brutal battle far away from home. I would much rather live a long, quiet, happy life surrounded by friends and family. (Then again, I’ve always been a homebody anyway!)

Although I try to post here regularly, I’m always left with a bunch of tidbits and nuggets that aren’t enough to build a single entry on, but that I’d still like to share with you anyway. So I thought it might be a good idea to do a “Random roundup” to get these things out in the open. Here goes:

– I had a very nice Mother’s Day with my family today. I got gift cards and flowers, plus we went out to lunch at my favorite restaurant. And I didn’t have to do any housework, of course!

– I don’t get why so many people in Myanmar had to die. What is going on over there? It’s terrible!

– I purchased a package of Crest Whitestrips and have them on hand for when I get my braces off in three weeks.

– A friend invited me over to watch No Country for Old Men on DVD with her. Um, no thanks. A colon cleanse would be more exciting than sitting through that dreck again.

– Baseball player Melvin Mora is the father of quintuplets.

– I had to put aside the David McCullough biography of John Adams because it is so boring. I wonder where all the five-star reviews came from?

– Hillary Clinton needs to wise up and just drop out of the race already. It’s over.

I have a total of four blogs in my stable, all with a different focus. When I originally started this site, I intended MMM (as I call it) to be more of a personal blog than my other three. Whereas I hardly ever talk about family or work on my other sites, MMM contains quite a few posts about daily happenings, family stuff, and other personal issues. As such, I don’t promote this one at all, and don’t even tell people that I have it. I find that I’m able to write much more freely when I can be anonymous like this.

But unfortunately, my personal life isn’t exciting enough to generate decent traffic numbers. So over the past few weeks I’ve been experimenting with topics culled from the Google Trends list of top 100 searches, and I’m happy to report an enormous increase in hits since I’ve started writing that way.

Of course, writing about the keywords that appear in Google Trends isn’t a guarantee that you’ll see a traffic spike. After all, they list 100 terms, and those terms are updated several times per day. So something that’s No.1 at 7am might not even be on the list at all at noon. It’s all very hit or miss.

For example, a couple weeks ago, I wrote about the Victoria Lindsay beating and posted a video of it. Even though it wasn’t the full Victoria Lindsay beating video (just a censored one from a news station), I ended up getting more than 900 hits on the story. That one turned out to be a goldmine as far as traffic was concerned.

But just last week, I posted about Cypress Bay High School (featured in the MTV reality show The Paper) because it was the No.1 search term one day, and only received a dozen hits on that post.

Regardless, I think it’s clear that people are more interested in reading about my take on some of the hottest news stories of the day than about how my latest orthodontist appointment went. Sure, I’ll still keep the personal posts coming every once in a while, but for the most part, I think it’s time for this blog’s focus to evolve. After all, what’s the point of writing on a daily basis if no one ever reads it?

Beware the Ides of March!

As a former Latin student, I always remember the Ides of March (the 15th of the month), as it marks the anniversary of the assassination of Julius Caesar near the Theater of Pompey way back in 44 BC.

Although there are conflicting accounts of precisely what happened on that fateful day and what Caesar’s last words were, I tend to believe Suetonius’ version. That historian says Caesar was stabbed 23 times, but only one of the blows was actually fatal. Moreover, Suetonius holds that Caesar’s final utterance was, “Kai su, teknon?” — Greek for “You too, child?” when he saw Brutus taking his place among the assassins.

At any rate, I think Caesar’s role in Roman history remains one of the most fascinating subjects I’ve ever studied. Maybe I’ll read a few pages of De Bello Gallico today to mark the occasion!

My mom totally loves the British royal family, and reads everything about them that she can get her hands on, including tell-all books and tabloids. I have never shared in that interest, so I don’t know the first thing about them.

But I recently saw a snippet of a biography or something on A&E, and it led me to ask this question: Why is Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, referred to as Prince Philip or the Duke of Edinburgh rather than King Philip? After all, his wife is Queen, so shouldn’t he be king?

After a bit of digging around on the Internet, I learned that he’s called Prince Philip because he has no legitimate claim to the throne since he married into the royal family.

I guess that makes sense, but it certainly goes against everything I’ve learned from fairy tales about ambitious schemers who try to win over a queen in order to get married and take the title of king!

I don’t keep in touch with very many people from high school or college, but I do occasionally hear things about old classmates from time to time. In the past couple of days, I heard some terrible news: two former high school classmates passed away recently. One was suffering from bipolar disorder and deliberately jumped from a moving vehicle, while the other suffered fatal complications during childbirth.

Even though I didn’t know either of these classmates very well when we were in school together and even though I never kept in touch with them, the news of their deaths has shaken me quite a bit. I know things like this are bound to happen, but still… it’s kind of strange to be at that age where deaths, terminal illnesses, and other tragedies start to strike. I guess it’s even more jolting because when I last saw these people, we were 18 and ready to take on the world.

So much can change in 15 years that it feels like high school was a lifetime ago.

RIP, fellow Huskies.

I have Citibank credit cards and am enrolled in their online account program, which means I get all my statements and make all my payments on their site. I’ve been using Citibank for several years now, and am less than impressed with how their online service works.

One of the biggest reasons I don’t like it is that they send “online activity confirmation” emails well after you’ve done something in your account. For example, if you make a payment or change some of your profile information, you’ll get an email saying that there was recent activity in your account. The problem is, this email often comes 24-48 hours after the activity it’s reporting! So if there was something fraudulent going on, you wouldn’t know until well after the fact.

This doesn’t make sense to me at all. Why can’t the emails go out right away so you can take immediate action if necessary? For all the bad press PayPal gets, I have to give them kudos for sending instantaneous emails whenever I make payments, receive payments, withdraw money, or change anything in my account. Instantaneous. Isn’t that the whole point of sending out email notices in the first place???

Another reason I don’t like Citibank online is that it seems far too easy to change important info. For example, yesterday I changed the email address that I want my statements to go to. Today (almost 24 hours later), I received a notification that the email address was changed, with a little note telling me to call a customer service number if that info was incorrect.

The problem? They sent this notice to the NEW email address I entered into the system! How does that make sense??? Let’s say that someone did hack into my account and replace my email address with theirs. Well, now they’re getting this notice in THEIR email saying that the account is changed, while I’m sitting here without any idea what’s going on. See what I’m getting at?

Most other places (PayPal included) send an email to your OLD address to confirm the change. That way, if there really is a problem, you’ll actually get the notice and be able to call to tell them that’s not your email account or whatever.

Come on, Citibank. Get a clue!!

While I was surfing through BE this afternoon, I came across a site that had a meme about learning to let go. I thought I had bookmarked the site, but when I went to check, I couldn’t find it again. That means I can’t give proper credit and a link here, so I apologize for that.

At any rate, here are three things that I need to learn to let go of.

1. My high school/college years. No, this doesn’t mean I’m partying ’til I puke every weekend or anything like that! It just means that I made a ton of mistakes during those years, and continue to beat myself up over those missteps even now (15 years later). I need to realize that there’s nothing I can do to change the past, that everyone does stupid things between the ages of 16-22, and that I just need to look at where I am now and be grateful that things have worked out so well.

2. My former friend MJ. This sort of ties in with the above, but also goes beyond that, so I’m giving it a number of its own. MJ was my best friend in high school and my roommate in college. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out so well for us when we were away at school. We ended up drifting apart, and though we reconnected a couple of times after college, I haven’t heard anything from her in over five years.

The problem is, I’m having a hard time accepting that all ties should be severed. We went through so much together and she was such a huge part of my life at the time that I can’t believe we simply don’t have anything to do with each other now. We both know how to get in touch with each other, so the fact that we haven’t done so in years ought to be enough to signal that I need to move on. But I can’t do it, and am planning to email her again sometime soon. Sigh.

3. Trying to impress people all the time. I went to school with a bunch of rich kids, and did my damnedest trying to keep up with them in terms of brand name clothes and all that stuff. Of course, I couldn’t compete when everyone else got BMWs and Saabs for their birthdays while I was still hoofing it to school.

These days I still try to impress people by buying expensive name-brand items that I don’t need. From my Prada shoes to Gucci handbag and Cartier watch, I own a bunch of crap that I hardly ever use and never should have bought in the first place. I need to quit caring about what other people think and just be myself for a change.

Whew, I feel better for having gotten this stuff out in the open! Now, if only I can actually make these changes stick…!

I was going through some of my old books yesterday trying to decide which ones to donate to the library for their annual book fair, when I came across a couple of my Latin texts from high school. Latin was my best subject (by far) and I actually considered majoring in classical studies in college. Of course, it would have helped if I’d attended a school that offered that major, but that’s besides the point now !

Anyway, I cracked open one of the books on a whim, and ended up becoming lost in the pages for nearly two hours! It was one of Cicero’s orations against Catiline. I wouldn’t be able to translate it very well, but I could still read it and I was surprised that I remembered enough to get a sense of what was being said.

Plus, I still remembered all the famous quotes from the speech that we had to memorize for our tests, including my favorite:

Ad hanc te amentiam natura peperit, voluntas exercuit, fortuna servavit.

I really miss Latin sometimes — to the point where I’m thinking about taking classes again. The University of Georgia offers an online Latin sequence consisting of six courses. It would be so cool to take those, but I just don’t have the time right now.

It amazes me how airlines are still so strict about the use of electronic devices during takeoff and landing. I guess I can understand how a hundred people using cell phones at the same time could possibly generate enough electromagnetic or radio frequency interference to cause a disturbance in the plane’s instruments, but what about things like MP3 players, PDAs, and handheld gaming systems? Those shouldn’t be a problem, right?

Wrong. I was asked to shut off my PDA, on which I was simply reading an ebook, until we got the “all clear” signal from the captain. It was just 20 minutes and not a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but still. You’d think that airplanes would feature the best in RFI Shielding technology these days so that passengers would be free to enjoy these gadgets at any time during the flight. I mean it’s a bit scary to think that a bunch of kids playing their DS Lites while the flight attendants aren’t looking could cause serious problems to the plane!