Facts, Opinions, and Hot Air

The Salamander is feeling philosophical (and a tad wistful) (and fairly opinionated) this morning. Feel free to make your escape now, should you desire. The tests I provided earlier this morning should keep you amused and give you sufficient reason to avoid an entry that is really of no interest to anyone but myself.

I’m still in touch, via e-mail, with a few of the regulars from the Professor’s forum. One of them, Starbright, had asked me to consider downloading an instant messenger service. Previous to this, I’d already loaded MS Instant Messenger, and found it annoying because it had a nasty tendency to log me on when I wasn’t paying attention. I’d be in the middle of working on a project (OK, OK, in the middle of playing a game of Snood) when I’d get IM’d by someone. After keeping that for a few months, I ended up uninstalling it a few weeks ago.

My next attempt was to install ICQ last Sunday, which came highly recommended by Starbright. ICQ is evil, evil, evil, evil. Even though I told it I wasn’t on a dial-up service it went in and changed all the settings on my Internet Explorer and Outlook Express to dial-up. It also found Netscape on my computer (a vestige of installing the DSL software, and a browser I do not use) and made it my primary browser. It managed to cut me off from my router, and then refused to relinquish control of my dial-up modum (which I do have as a back-up in case the DSL goes down). I couldn’t get on-line, then I couldn’t get my email to download, and I absolutely was unable to change the setting on ICQ to DSL even when it was using my DSL to work online! While I was fighting with all this, some ditz named Linda IM’d me through ICQ (I hadn’t even finished the set-up yet) and wanted me to visit her economics site. Yeah, right. I uninstalled that sucker so fast my tower is still spinning. As a note of interest, I still can’t get my Outlook Express to work correctly after that experience – it will download mail if my Internet Explorer browser is open, but can’t seem to find the DSL connection by itself, even though I’ve manually switched corrected it from “dial up”.

So last night I bit the bullet and installed AIM, again at Starbright’s suggestion. Understand that I consider AOL to be the McDonalds of Internet Providers. Every Troll who has ever been a burden to our board has used AOL, which rotates the IP#’s it assigns to users in such a way that it becomes impossible to insert an IP# block on an AOL user. In spite of my spite, I found myself pleasantly surprised with how easy the download went last night. I told AIM I was on DSL, and it believed me. It changed no settings in my browser or in OE. AIM is not as intuitive to use as MicroSoft’s Instant Messenger was, but I’m hoping to get the hang of it. Of over-riding importance to me is whether or not I can control whether others can tell if I’m online. If I can’t figure out a way to cruise invisibly with this installed, then it also is going suffer the indignity of uninstall. (Why don’t they equip these instant messenger things with an off-switch, anyhow?)

I tested the AIM out with Starbright last night, who tried to give me some pointers on how to use it. She also updated me with some news from the forums I’ve stopped going to and asked once again why I don’t just post on her forum. I had to explain to her that The Professor gets hurt when I post to other forums in our group, but not his. The Prof returned from teaching at that point in our discussion, so I ended up cutting things short.

The conversation got me to thinking about our little cybergroup though. I’ve been part of this group since even before the beginning of our current forums. Few of us are left from the pre-beginning times: The Prof, The Cop in Pink, The Curmudgeon (who posts very seldom now and with whom I had a huge email blow-out fight last fall over how he treated another friend of mine on the board) and the Hippy Mountain Climber, who’s fallen into an abyss and made no appearance in over a month. And of course, myself.

There’s been very little stir about my “disappearance” from the boards, which should reassure The Prof somewhat. The only person who seems to be questioning where I am is someone who actually hadn’t conversed with me for several months (I assumed I’d offended him somehow, which is really easy to do in his case). I miss talking with a few people like MWUFFLTHB and Texan Elf, and the Oregonian. I do not miss having to duck the Tattletale (athough I am apparently the only one who has a problem with her) and the Austrian Artist (who posts mostly with smiley faces and “how’s the weather?”, making coversation challenging) and The Home-School Kid, who really needs some friends her own age, poor thing. I’m not really finding my niche anywhere else on the web yet, though, and not having the forums has left a huge, pathetic gap in my social life.

While this diary helps to fill that gap somewhat, I’m finding that even this community has it’s “problem children” who really need to be spanked and sent to their rooms without dinner, regardless of their chronological age. This affects people I’ve come to regard as friends here more than it affects me, so I’ve refrained from making comments about the situation or telling people off who badly need to be told off. I am dismayed that good people have elected to seek refuge away from this site, while those responsible continue to update here, telling half a story badly.

I will note this though: If you feel like “there is a group of people” working in concert against you, then perhaps you should take a moment to ask why. A single person might be in the wrong, but a group of people are more likely to have a good reason for their actions.

A second observation: It may be that if the other people have walked away from you, it is perhaps a good time to walk away from them. All sides would benefit. What benefits no one is a constant justification of actions, listing of perceived injustices, and self-nomination to sainthood. Even if you think it is all true, it is still unbecoming.

A third observation: Always name your friends when you are among those who know of whom you speak of. Never name those you feel have slighted you, unless you truly wish to burn bridges. Both friends and foes have long memories. While a friend might appreciate public praise, I assure you that those to whom you assign blame will not appreciate public accusals. Besides, it only makes the person assigning blame look smaller.

And because I am feeling opinionated this morning, a fourth observation: If you are unwilling to put the your name behind a statement, then it is in all probability not a statement you should be making. A corollary to this is that talking to yourself using multiple names is a sign of insanity.