Technology is becoming cheaper and more readily available and almost too popular (can we say iPhone4 and HTC EVO 4G?), technology is usually outdated by the time the manufacturing process is complete because manufacturers are constantly creating and producing higher end technology that will or has superceded its predecessor.  This is where one of my problems comes in, so I want to upgrade my netbook so I did and now I have a literally worthless piece of hardware that isn’t worth selling anymore because newer technology is available thus pushing the cost of new/used older technology down further.

So now, what happens when you want to upgrade? Or your tech breaks? Do you get it fixed? Do you sell it? Do you recycle it? Do you trash it? Many of these options are available depending on the technology, where you live, and what kind of condition it is in, whether it has any resale value left.  All too often I hear people say “my computer broke, so I got another one”, honestly I am guilty of such however usually I can salvage part of the computer or laptop in question and toss the rest of it. Desktops are easier and have a better chance of fixing and usability than laptops do.  What do you do with your technology that is missing parts? Power Supply? Do you go buy the new parts/power supplies needed??? I recently tossed out an HP printer because it needed a replacement power supply I could not find and then without warning it got rained on (oh well).

I would like to either: recycle my tech, or give it to a family or charitable organization if I have no more use for it.  To my knowledge there are no recycling facilities here where I live to intake and process broken and old technology; Oregon state law requires businesses within the state to only sell certain brands that have met a variety of standards in manufacturing products that will eventually need disposition when that technology can no longer be used and a small fee is usually passed to the consumer during a sale or at the processing facility and the nearest technology/computer recycling facility is about 75 miles north of where I live.

Again, what do you do with it all? I have tons of extra parts, much of it is now obsolete or has an extremely low resale value.  I would rather get some money out of it than none at all if it means reusing the technology, unfortunately $15 for a 1GB SODIMM laptop RAM isn’t worth selling on eBay or Craigslist anymore, I have a Palm Life Drive (wow that is old by the way) probably worth $50 or less… what you gonna do with it? What about my HTC Athena x500 or whatever it is??? It used to sell for $500 unlocked on eBay, probably sells for $100 now with all the newer HTC android phones the Athena is blown out of the water!

All these EPA and environmentalists groups and companies being pushed around by it are pushing this “green” technology stuff, what good is going green if you can’t recycle it properly? Or what good is going green when you have it lying around and you have no more use for it but pointless to sell it?  I see serious doubts and serious flaws in our way of thinking about going green, I’d be more worried about fuel/carbon emissions than worrying about technology pollution issues until a better recycling program is available worldwide.

Just remember, your broken computer is not always entirely broken either, I have salvaged and reused computers that were malfunctioning and got them to work. Laptops and mobile devices are not so easy to do and many times only one or two items can be saved from a defunct laptop or mobile device.

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FAMILY

Is there such thing as a “healthy family”? I know there IS such a good thing as a “good family” and I know there IS such thing as “dysfunctional family” because I know of some. How are typical families structured? If you want to go by statistics, we could say single parented families are quite common in fact which is what I will be focusing on primarily; however a real family has two parents and children; so my question is if you as a person are married and have children and a spouse then are your brothers and sisters and parents part of your family or are they just relatives? The question to that is this: your family that you see everyday and have obligations to are called your “immediate family” those are your spouse and children and the family such as mom & dad and siblings are called “extended family”; your immediate family becomes extended when you no longer live under their roof whether you are married or not (I suppose that is a matter of opinion).   Your aunts, uncles and cousins and all that are “relatives”.

Responsibility of being a Family

This depends whether you live with your immediate family or on your own and depends on whether you are a parent in the immediate family of your own.  Are financial responsibility a part of being a family? What kind of support should/are you required to give as a family?  I have seen families that don’t care or bother to support anything within the family structure/system but that is not like my family or me.

Financial responsibility depends on whose turf you are on, are you living under your parent’s roof and being a part of that immediate family? Yes, some financial responsibility is required and should be agreed upon, how about outside of the turf on your own? You have your own life and responsibilities and financial business you must take care of and can’t be worrying about your family’s financial issues now can you? Sure giving them money once in awhile or paying a portion of their bill they can’t afford for a short time or under an agreed term is fine if amicably agreed upon.

“Owing Life to Family”

I have to ponder this question and I am not sure I will ever find answers to and I see two major parts to this:

1. Your mother gave birth to you, therefore she deserves all the love & respect you give her and quite frankly I agree but this is also a two-way street; if she does not love & respect you then why bother (or just respect for that matter).  miscommunication is not disrespect, not knowing how to communicate properly is not disrespect and I won’t take either of these as an excuse to disrespect me or anyone else either.

2. You have a significant disability and all the professionals thought you would never live on your own and you would need long-term care for the rest of your life and your mother insisted she take you home from the hospital instead of institutionalizing you and because some things happened while you were a child many professionals found the fact your parent didn’t know why you had all these birth defects worthy of a major closed doors malpractice lawsuit and yet somehow this person “you” is me I owe my mom forever in this???

Don’t get me wrong, I am not discrediting her efforts she did more than anyone I know could fathom doing and nobody had any idea (much less I) that I could write this entry myself with these thoughts and do all the things I do such as drive, talk, ride in an airplane, watch movies, travel, pull a 5th wheel trailer and soon drive a boat! I do have some considerations about my future and I think it is worthwhile that its time for me to change venues about where my money is going if you think that getting $6,000/month is plenty enough for me to not worry about giving $2,000/month to my mom so she can have a 2nd house then I am all ears! But consider this:

1. Medical Costs (I am not insurable anywhere in the world)

2. Medical Emergencies (due to my disability, these can get complicated)

3. My future needs for glasses, hearing aids, and other assistive devices (I am still paying off my hearing aids!!! HELLOOO??? With this kind of money I shouldn’t have a payment!)

4. Any non life altering things I’d like to do… like support my community, offer a scholarship to someone who may be disadvantaged, use funds to help me or someone else gain volunteer opportunities or life altering needs.

5. My life is NO picnic, my years of driving WILL come to an end, I am going to need alternative ways of getting around at some point.

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I was in need of information on a couple of things I obviously knew to defer to Google in reality however what if Google hadn’t existed when I needed this information? I remember the days of Altavista which seemed was a pretty good search engine for its time; however nothing beats Google or does God??? Does God have information that I need now??? It always seemed to me God was a ask now, wait later scenario kind of thing and have faith while you’re waiting.

I just thought it was funny/ironic that I mentioned thanking God for not having to ask him anymore questions because Google would take care of it so I wanted to share my wry experience with the matter.

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I have worn all kinds of underwear and I prefer boxer briefs over typical regular briefs. I buy what I find is reasonably priced and of decent quality and I don’t remember the last time 100% cotton meant 100% ultra THIN! Yes it feels much less than wearing underwear, but I know I am wearing underwear as I do not feel the rough denim.

I have worn medical disposable underwear and they are like paper/plastic and are thicker than the underwear I purchased, I literally can rip it without much effort seriously. The moral of the story? I should have bought those $10 underwear, they didn’t have the style I wanted but they were AWESOME!

What’s next? Paper underwear for sale, I shall go walking around with the underwear tearing split down the middle????? I should color on it and make fun of it while I can if this ever happens *grins*

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Each of us have different lives, experiences, personals, cultural, religion and friends even. But why read MY blog vs someone else’s blog? I am not sure I can answer that question or perhaps I may already have. I would have to assume unless you are interested in how I perceive life and experience it with my extensive disabilities and provisions to life.

I read a couple of personal blogs and a blog/site that gives tips on reasons/why one should want to blog which gave no hardcore answers because there are many reasons to blog for different purposes which is acceptable to me and I am sure to others as well. My good friend whom I speak of in my first paragraph has a blog, he does not blog the same way as I do; he likes to help people and share about features and products he has real world experiences with unlike myself I like to do that but I like to take it further.  My point is I like variety, I cannot stand one trend or it will be so bland to me.

I like to blog about life, experiences, thoughts and all of this can be as simple as to what I think about technology, software, people, economy, family, etc. It’s a GREAT mixture in my opinion; the next question will be how personal should it be??? I suppose that depends on whether you have family that read your blog or not and depends on how they react to your entries and if it is a negative response then you will obviously not want to blog that deeply personal.  I have done so, and I have not received any negative responses from family but I do have a fear of such happening so I don’t do it very often.

Almost anyone with a personal blog seem to write topics like this at one point, but why me? Because I want to share my thoughts and experiences of a person who has disabilities that would not ordinarily necessarily have the same opportunity as me.  Or perhaps they do, but they are limited? I also read that blogging is actually a conversation piece to get a response? I guess you could say that but I rarely get any responses except hundreds of spam per month! (and on occasion my good friend will comment and once in a great while someone from Facebook will surprisingly comment too!).

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Money will only take you so far; money is and isn’t everything. Only my friendship and yours is far better than money can buy! Is there anything friendly about the downturn of the economy, so far I don’t see it that friendly (perhaps for the rich it might be). I understand people have to pay bills and the cycle cannot be broken or things get out of whack and problems start to crop up.

The issue is people need to be able to live in homes, homeowners need to be able to pay their mortgage payments and if the renters are not paying then the homeowner can’t pay their mortgages?  Quite frankly this is not how it is supposed to be, if you are a homeowner you should always have 2-6 months worth of payments should your flow of income change (such as a vacant home with no renters, no job, etc).

So what do you do with people who have faithfully paid their rent on time or months ahead of schedule for several years that all the sudden get laid off and have no income to support their rental bills? Some people go to great lengths to have a roof over their heads and would rather shed unnecessary items that are not needed to live by selling hobby projects and other items that are not needed that can bring in significant amounts to help offset the cost to live for the next month.

Everybody knows the term “Money Talks” if it isn’t there, you can find yourself landing on the street and not have a roof over your head (or you go to a homeless shelter, Gospel Rescue Mission, etc.  Even these have limited resources available to a family size with more than 3 kids let alone a family size with any kids!

In my opinion: as a homeowner with no job I would accept any rent than none  (although this does not appease the banks to cut your mortgage payments so you have to ante up to this one).  The landlord and tenant should come up with a plan to back pay or cut rent costs for X amount of time until X something happens,etc. Someone I know is going through something similar, they are doing far more than they are required to do as tenants so in my opinion their landlord should take into consideration of all the facts including their attempt at possibly buying the home with a down-payment already being made that can’t even be applied towards rent or refunded.

I am sure landlords can rent to the next person who does have money, what happens when their new tenant finds themselves out of a job are you going to evict them too? What happens when NOBODY has any money to pay YOU anymore? I suppose you are So Out of Luck!

In the end it is better to leave them in the home than on the streets unless your bank plans on foreclosing it really does not matter anymore now does it?

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Do I expect perfection, well I suppose that is debatable as I probably prefer perfection but I know the world isn’t perfect so e I shouldn’t expect perfection so it is safe to say that it isn’t wrong to want to expect perfection. But I have to wonder, would more perfection help ease the flow of direction of traffic? I’m guessing that will be debatable too.

Yesterday I arrived in Corvallis and camped at the Benton County Fairgrounds, nice place, the fairgrounds is an interesting place to camp. I had to go to town because I needed replacement parts for the plate light and I needed money to do laundry; so what I discovered isn’t so bad in terms of road design, but more so the people (people are also drivers ya know…) in general.

Other than the fact the roads were in a disarray so were the people who were walking and driving these cragged streets. The speed limit on the older cragged streets is 25mph which is mighty fast enough to do plenty of damage to something or someone and put them in a hospital.  People seem to think that if you are doing the speed limit is is ok to turn out in front of the oncoming car and get in front of them even if they are doing 25mph and then decide to arbitrarily slow them up forcing the car behind them to drop down to 20mph or even perhaps 15mph.

I was taught to never cross the street unless TWO conditions exist: A) at a controlled crossing where the light is GREEN for you to safely cross with the flow of traffic that is going parallel the crossing point.  B) if at an uncontrolled stop or at a stop sign to either wait until there is no traffic or vehicles acknowledge you as a pedestrian.  So what do most people do? They just walk out in front of you when you are within 25ft and have you wondering if they’ll cross before you ever have to stop?  Or they cross thinking you’ll see them and stop???

I know legally as a vehicle driver I am legally required to stop for any and all pedestrians at MARKED and UNMARKED crossing points.  However that doesn’t mean that a pedestrian should be absolved the responsibility to make it safe for drivers to either omit the fact that there is a pedestrian waiting to cross or for the driver to acknowledge their existence (although I know that more drivers choose not to acknowledge them sadly).

Ok that’s the end of my rant, I’m off to another populated area see you all a state and a day away!

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I have not taken any road trips with my new rig which is a 2003 Dutchmen Victory Lane Toy Hauler since I bought it in November (about 4 months ago) I’ve been waiting for the right time to do the “maiden voyage” and the time has come! I have talked about my much-anticipated road trip to Tacoma, WA with stops in Albany/Corvallis, Oregon and a possible stop in Camas, Washington (I will post about that journey later this week!).

I have plans to take trips to Tacoma, Port Townsend and possibly San Juan’s Island in Washington state later this summer (and one trip to Tacoma next week) with plans for a trip to Pocatello, Idaho for a friend’s wedding (I haven’t seen him since my parents separated/got divorced). Upon seeing him get married to that awesome girl of his, I will be making my way to Sacramento, California to see my cousin Graduate! (he was going to get married, but postponed it for now) before he leaves for Hawaii to attend Manoa University this summer.

My trips in the following order:

1. Tacoma, WA (stops in Albany & Corvallis, Oregon) Arrive in Albany: March 17 Depart Corvalis:  March 19 Arrive in Tacoma: March 19th Depart Tacoma: March 21st

2. Corvallis, OR Arrive: March 21st Depart: March 22nd

2. Portland/Fairview, Oregon Arrive: March 22nd Depart: March 24 or 25

3. Return to Grants Pass, Oregon Arrive: March 24th or 25th Depart: March 28th

4. Return to Portland/Fairview, Oregon Arrive: March 28th Depart: April 4th

5. Return to Grants Pass, OR Arrive: April 4th Depart: April 6th or 7th

6. Return to Portland/Fairview, Oregon Arrive: April 6th or 7th Depart April 8th or 10th

6. Return to Grants Pass, Oregon Arrive: April 8th or 10th

7. (possible) Kelso, Washington Arrive May 14th Depart: May 16th NEW!!

8. Sacramento, California Depart From: Kelso, WA May 16th with transient stops in Camas WA May 16th and Grants Pass, OR May 17th and Arrive in Sacramento, CA on May 20th or 21st then Depart Sacramento, CA: May 23rd or 24th

9. Return to Grants Pass, OR Arrive: May 23rd or 24th Depart: July 8

10. (possible) McMinnville, Oregon Arrive: July 8th or 10th Depart: July 17th

11. Pocatello, Idaho May 6-10/11/12 Arrive: July 20th or 21st Depart: July 25th CHANGED!!

12. (possible) Monmouth, Oregon Arrive: July 27th or 28th Depart: August 6th

13. (possible) Port Townsend, Washington Arrive: August 6th or 7th Depart: August 11th

14. (most likely) Tacoma, Washington Arrive: August 11th Depart: August 20th

15. (most likely) Return to Grants Pass, Oregon (with transient stop in Camas, WA arriving on August 20th and departing August 21st then arriving in Grants Pass, OR on august 21st)

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I bought a new to me used 5th wheel a few months ago, as with buying used there is a certain amount of “baggage” that has to be handled while that may be so some baggage is far from ordinary and is not worth ANYONE’s time unless you don’t exist within time?  I do not have a problem working out some of the issues that may come along with a used product such as a Recreational Vehicle, car, truck, computer, etc. Unless the ad states outright major work is needed then you knowingly know that you are in for something out of the ordinary.

As to whether someone might use all or some of the RV’s features is understandable but that does not mean that if you do not use it then you are free to let it rot! Or that you don’t care and can just throw in a fuel tank of any kind without proper filling pipe and can just run off any direction you want to go! Or how about letting your axles wear down to the point they cannot be re-aligned? I have two assumptions to make: either you are VERY stupid to do this OR you are just ignorant!  Oh I already knew I would have to work on some things, I did not mind that since it was a USED item; If it were NEW then I’d be pooping cows!

What is so HARD about preventative maintenance? Gosh it only takes an hour or so to wash the entire RV every 6 months (or as needed if you are traveling with it) by doing this you end a lot of later “lazy” maintenance cleanup from being LAZY! (or did you just not know???).  I am not suggesting if you do your regular maintenance that you’ll get better money, but it will cost you LESS in the long run and when you sell something that has been maintained well it sure will command higher dollars! Well I for one plan to continue to learn and do better maintenance to the best of my abilities even if it does not increase serviceable life of the item; again just because you don’t know a thing about how to keep up something does not mean you should just go out and do it all wrong. Why? Because it is just as bad or worse than not maintaining it at all!

I would love to buy new, I could start making owning the damn thing a lot easier! I don’t want/need more complicated ways to have to keep it held with duck tape! Buying new is just another topic just for a carefree day! Because I could rather go on a Maintenance Free Life!

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Well shoot! I suppose i DID get out of my microwave for the moment! (oh I’ll be back!); anyway, not to sound like an idiot or trying to insult the deaf however I have met a variety of deaf people (and hearing people) regardless they can either be clueless or very smart!  (no offense meant, just stating the obvious) The good news is I was amazed at how well the pastor understood the concept of radio waves not just any radio waves but particularly radio waves that pertain to sound as it would strike me to think that deaf people would not understand this concept to some degree sometimes. (I don’t know why I didn’t consider thinking more of them though!).

I know this isn’t how I am supposed to get out of my microwave by being on the computer writing this experience I had, the idea of getting “out of your microwave” is to get out of your comfort zone or known as your “box” if you will but more than that. I won’t get into the technical details of microwaving and why this way of explaining it to the congregation suited it best.  Microwaves excite molecules that it passes through to be able to create heated foods or liquids; the idea is that we need to be excited and go share our experiences and get others to get out of their “microwaves” which is basically what the story  was about last Saturday night and so I liked the story and what the pastor was involved in and that a few deaf people in my community which is potential for considerable opportunities for me.

I like the idea of a deaf church, it brings a different unique experience that you will not get at a church full of people who don’t sign but flail their tongues around (ok just kidding again!), there is one interesting subject I will have to talk to the pastor about because I am not sure how the deaf people perceive the ability to speak in “tounges” the llanguage of the holy spirit. I don’t suppose you need the ability to speak to be able to use the gift of the holy spirit of speaking in tongues and in my past experiences not one person speaks tongue exactly the same way as the next as if it has its own unique linguistic dialect only specific to that human. Overall, I believe that I will fit in more and be able to do church at a level I can understand and take part (regular churches are cool too!) and I definitely look forward to going again and we’ll see how it will “explode” from the microwave from there!

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