Thursday, September 30, 2004
One of my most important friendships has been unraveling for about a year now. It's almost cliche', actually. When two long-time friends decide they can be roommates, there are bound to be struggles. You expect all the cartoony mishaps and the sudden urge to kill and a lot of other things. The last week has just been ugly and stupid and now I'm homeless again. Nothing I can do. I'm staying with a friend for now, and I'll be moving in to a new place as soon as I can come up with a deposit and first month's rent.
Physically, I'll be fine. Emotionally, I'm a great big wreck, but I've been one for some time.
I've seen it coming for months. Nothing I could say or do was right, and the demands were getting bigger and bigger. SHE is the one who is changed. Objective as I try to be in a situation like this, anyone who knows her would say the same thing. She is going through a rough time, and I'm a convenient target. This is what logic tells me. It still really really hurts.
Way back in May or April or something, I tried to tell a second very important friend about it. I really needed someone to talk to for the sake of my sanity. She promised to listen and be there for me, and immediately afterward, I felt like I was getting opposing signals from her. Like she felt I was a nuisance and a burden and a lot of other bad things. This could have been my imagination. It could have been a lot of things. But on top of everything else that was happening, I'm afraid that I did what a lot of people do when they're emotionally overwhelmed, and I started to revert to childhood patterns.
Now, for me, this means assuming that no one really likes me. That I'm not doing enough. That I'm not happy enough or helpful enough or that I'm just plain not enough and that everyone is just tolerating my presence. When a child feels this way for long enough, they decide to prove that they don't NEED any friends anyway.
Adult brain fought off these evil impulses to the best of her ability. However. I couldn't seem to stop myself from thinking childish and unworthy things about my remaining friends. Things like "This is the THIRD birthday present I've gotten her. How come she's never given ME one?" and "I TOLD them I wanted to play too the next time they dressed up for a convention! They didn't even ASK me!" and "If I'm not cool enough to be in their little clique, the least they can do is stop TELLING me about all the fun stuff they did together if I'm not invited!" All these signs seemed to point to the original conclusion. Nobody really likes me. I'm not four. I know better. But everybody HAS those little voices, and if you listen to them long enough, your changing beliefs may affect your behavior.
So I guess this is my apology to the world who never apologized to me. Or something. Lame as it may sound, I am sorry. But I'm down. Please stop with the kicking, already.
2:32 PM
Saturday, September 18, 2004
I had almost no use of my computer for the months of May and June. In March or so, I had picked up an adware program from KeenSpot. Yes, spot. It had been slowly adding programs and crap mostly of the autostart variety until my poor old processor was so burdened it could hardly do anything at all. I could run lavasoft every day and I would catch many things, but no matter how many items I removed that way, they would all respawn by the time I was done checking my email.
In the end, all I could do was reformat my harddrive (an epic struggle all by itself) and re-install windows. Luckily I have a cd. All praise Michael.
That was at the end of June, and about two weeks ago on a forum site, my computer showed signs of picking up the same ghoul infestation. Sure enough ...
Since it had been around for months, I assumed that I couldn't possibly be the only person who had struggled with it, so I tracked one of the ads to it's root server and then put a search in google for "Casale Uninstall." Fifth on the list was a forum discussion on PointSite "Casale Media popup spawning - SitePoint Forums" at http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/showthread.php?t=192716. The thread had started with someone complaining about the same problems I was having and was followed by expressions of sympathy.
So about six posts down is an outraged response from a representative of Casale Media demanding an appology for the slander and insisting that his company does not do that sort of thing, or associate with anyone who does.
I can only assume that someone was playing around with different ways to ruin other people's computers and decided that they might as well throw in some advertising from a random ad company's client base because they thought they needed the sales. That must be it. Or. Out of the goodness of their hearts, some ad company with less than ethical practices decided to include a rival company's ads so that they wouldn't be burdened with all the revenue themselves. Maybe that's it.
Look, JasonCasaleMedia SitePoint Member, if you WRITE a program that causes popups when I'm in the shower with no copy of IE running, or you support the guy who does, WHAT is the diffence exactly? Either way, your company is making enemies.
One of the other posts pointed to a program for eliminating the problem. "HijackThis." Their Kung-Fu is strongest. Lavasoft won't touch the thing, but "HijackThis" eliminated it completely. If I had known this back in March, I would have saved myself a lot of pain.
Read this cautionary tale, and take what wisdom you can from it, my children.
And sorry about the invisible links problem. I'll fix that ... some day. Right now, I'm going to the library fair.
10:10 AM
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