Phantom

Where at? I'm over in the Plymouth meeting area lol

As many may or may not know I haven't been around here as much. Between work and school, I've been loaded down with a lot of work and there's a reason for it. I'm moving December 27th to my friends house right outside of Philly, PA. I have my own room and I also have a few job applications out and hopefully I'll hear back from them. It's a beautiful area and my roommates (the owner and his roommate) are really cool. The ones a philosophy professor which leads to some amazing conversations and the other is a German and philosophy teacher. Enough about them, let's get back to me! We met over the summer and struck up a good friendship and when I told him what was going on in my life he offered me support and such, but now that it's getting closer to my parents moving he offered me a place to stay for as long as I need to. I live a spit away from Philly and close enough to the area I used to go to school in PA that I'm starting to reconnect with old college friends. I'm also meeting some of my roommates friends and getting to know them. It's a big change for me, moving off on my own for the first time and I'm scared, but at the same time extremely excited. I can be my own person and not worry about the parents finding out and giving me hell, and more importantly I'm near an area that provides a lot of gay youth out reach so once I'm settled I can look into volunteering in that area. I have the key to my new place and I'm coming down here enough that I'm beginning to feel like a local and settle in (I already found my favorite town which is Chestnut Hill lol). Well asi write this I'm looking at the clock and see that I have a few hours before I gotta leave. Damn you time. Take care!

Remind me never to get into your head... you got some scary shit goin on in there.... ....I love it

To my dear friend, confidant, conscience, and all around good guy Happy Birthday Robert!!!! May your dreams come true and your wishes as well PS - you're older than dirt now

While they are restrictive, I find it to be a good thing, kinda. I'm used to the openness of well open source, and being able to download a program that's community supported, but at the same time it's a pain. Look at android for example. There's a central app store like apple, but the main android os has been forked to each carrier, meaning that your not running the same android os on a verizon phone that you would, for example, be running on a sprint or tmobile phone. This has lead to major arguments in the open source community and the handset alliance. Also the price is a bit high, but the same time it's generally because the products are higher end then other computers. My eMachine computer cost me 299.99 but had low end parts. I ended up replacing or upgrading parts on it that made it up to par to a Mac. My Mac mini has a lot of high end parts and works beautifully, the graphics card that the Mac uses is on par with the one I used to replace in my desktop (and that went for about 200 bucks). So with a Mac you really pay for the quality of the parts (and I'll admit the name too lol) Eric

Bleh. Dell... I've had nothing but issues with them at my old job, and heard nothing but similar issues with them from others. I'm glad I have my Apple products... Now to get my iPod touch 4g

It's been awhile since I first started my look into the technology field and it's becoming a long process hehe because it seems that it's never ending. My first computer was a 386 (if i recall it was a 15mhz speed), 8mb of ram Gateway with a whopping 100MB hard drive, a 5.25" floppy drive and a 1.5" hloppy drive. CD-Roms were a luxury (this was back in 1992) and ran windows 3.1 and ms-DOS 6.0 and it served my family well until 1998. In 1998, my family upgraded to a Compaq with a 233mhz processor, 64mb of ram, a 16x CD-ROM, 1.5" floppy and a 4gb hard drive. That served us until I finally decided to get my own. I was working at my high school in 2005 after I graduated and began to build my own computer which was by baby (I won't bore you with the specs but needless to say it lasted me till two years ago and still was performing like a beast). It died and I replaced it with a eMachines and set it up to dual boot with Linux and windows7 because that's all I could afford at the time. The eMachine computer died about three weeks ago which left me for the first time without a desktop computer. I relied on my iPad(since that replaced my windows based netbook) and my iPod touch for everything wihich I have to honestly say it began to begin my love affair with Apple. Why all of this needless info you may ask? Well I just wanted to show you that ever since i was younger I've been a pc person using either windows or Linux. About a week ago I experimented with a gateway all-in-one and hated it. I grew to love the simplicity and functionality of my Apple products and, a couple of days later, returned the gateway and bought a Mac mini. I love my Mac mini and realized something. I now own all apple products, with the exception of my printer and monitor lol. I've been taking classes at the Mac store to learn all the tricks and trades of OS X and Mac in general. I'm not saying that Apple is perfect, far from it. It's to closed tof a system for my comfort and they have very specialized hardware which makes it hard to replace something that should break or buy something to upgrade it. They're strict with their end user agreement, and tend to reject some of the Programs that we take for granted (I.e. iPad/iphone/ipod touch and flash videos). The good side is that they lead the way with creative thinking and some technology. Multi touch for instance is amazing which lead to the advent of the iPhone becoming so popular and easy to use. There are some quirks to apple that mystify me, but I'm slowly becomming a Mac head lol. Doesn't mean I won't still pplay around with Linux or windows (after all I'm going to a school to become a windows it professional lol) but I'll probably stick with apple for a log time to come. Cheers! eric

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Hope it's a good one my friend!!!

I use my iPad for writing papers and such at work and at school and while its amazing with mobility, and jotting down notes and such, I find that using a keyboard brings it up to par with a laptop or netbook.

Okay here's the video to the theme song I said was mine http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNxctF0-BW8&feature=related There are so many times I'd love to twirl in a circle and do a wardrobe change

Last night in chat we were talking about our personal theme songs and what they are to us... So I decided to start a thread and see what everyone elses was. Mines the Wonder Woman theme song... I'd post a link but I'm on my iPad and haven't learned to do that yet lol. Eric

Awww no one crushing on me At least I'm crushing on someone

Catchy title no? Well, i've been hellish busy lately and it's all thanks to my car. HA! I've been doing over time hours at my job which is killing my social life, I've also been taking my days off to go to Eastern PA (Philly Area) and meeting people out there through a good friend of mine. The place where I bought my car is dicking around with getting me my registration and plates for my car, their excuse is that they need my union information. WTF?! Anyway I'm gonna get a hold of my manager and get the union info from her and head to the dealership before going into work. Today, I work my 3-11 shift which means I'm gonna murder people Not really, but I hate working that late because it screws up my sleep pattern. Hmmmm... anything else I can add? Oh yea... I burned the crap outta my hand at work. Go me for picking up a heated pot with my hand. Eric

Can't post a youtube link but the one song that always makes me cry is Need You Now... corny I know lol

My current favorite classic movies: Clockwork Orange Logans Run Dr. Strangelove (Or how stopped worrying and learned to love the Atomic Bomb) Rocky Horror Picture Show The Amazing Race and finally... The Wizard of Oz Eric

Forever by Chris Brown... after that dang wedding video and The Office remake of it... it hurts to listen to it...

Happy Birthday James!! Hope its a blast! "Older guys... aged to perfection."

Oh man that brought a smile to my face. But still it's always good to remember that some protesters aren't idiots like The Fred Phelps clan/cult. Yesterday there were protesters outside of Fort Monmouth holding signs like 'Honk for no war' and the like. I had some time before I had to go into work so I parked my car and went over there to chat. I was greeted by a lady who asked if I supported the war or was anti-war and when I said I don't care I only support our troops, she smiled and said thats the perfect way of thinking. I ended up talkin to her and a few others and while I disagreed with them, I have to say they we're respectful and all of them supported our troops. Eric <img src='https://www.gayauthors.org/forums/public/style_emoticons/default/smile.gif' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

ive heard a lot about atlas shrugged but I havent read it. I'll deffiently check it out the next chance I get, especially before seeing the movie

Sorry I haven't been around as much... I just have a lot going on and needed some time to think... so I'll write a blog to sum up everything that's going on... It's been like the cold war at my house between me and my parents. I'm starting to let more of my social ideals and homoness be more prevalent at home which is rubbing my mom the wrong way so needless to say it's been a constant struggle between me and her. We have our up days and our down days, so needless to say I'm throwing myself into work. Sounds like a weird solution but it's not. I'm trying to get a couple of bucks together to stash into my savings account so that when the time comes and I can afford to, I can get myself an apartment where I can be free. It may sound like I'm running away, but after much thought and discussion with friends and my sister, it really is the best solution. Me and my parents get along well when I'm not around as much which would be an ideal solution for me to finally move out because I can have my own place and still maintain a relationship with my parents. It'll also let me be myself so that I don't have to feel as constrained as I do now. I haven't talked to them about this really, though they aren't too supportive of it, though they know somethings up since I'm constantly broke (yay for paying off debts) and been going through things that I don't need and sticking things in boxes that I do want to keep. Mom asked me the other week why I was getting all organized and such and I told her that it's something I needed to do and when i started to rework my room (tear out the old carpet redo my baseboards and such) she know's that somethings up. Also I've been helping my family get the house ready to sell by fixing things up around here. This weekend is going to fun since I'm going to be rewiring the phone lines (I'm upgrading all the phones to cat5 cable hehehe). The previous weeks and weekends have been filled with various things like yard work, cleaning the attic out, and the like. Also work is kicking my ass right now. I have two IHP (Individual Habilitation Plan) that are due in the next few days. For my job this is a big deal since these IHP's have the largest impact of my guys life. It details everything about them and their goals for the year. Think learning plans but on steroids and you might come close. There's a whole bunch of work that goes into it, like assessments in various areas, life biographies and medical/psychological assessments to name a few. Oh and to top all of this off, my social life is taking a hit because of a few things, but that's for another time. I know what I gotta do with it so I'll get through it like I always do Well off again. Eric PS - follow my twitter to get an insight into my life @phantom113

To a really amazing guy... Happy Birthday! Hope all your dreams and wishes come true today! Eric

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!! Hope it's a blast (and you fix your Tom-Tom )

My thing is this, I love my netbook dearly but because I'm always moving around and find it cumbersome to whip out the netbook at the office, apartment, in-service days, etc when I'm juggling about a thousand things at once (think papers, forms, meds, etc). I like the idea of a pad/tablet because it's thinner then my netbook, easier to carry around and provides more stability then my netbook. Also the reason why I'm leaning towards the ipad is because of the no contract built in 3g card. I'm always on the move and don't always have access to a wifi spot (I'm lucky that the apartment I'm generally in at work has an open wifi spot thanks to the neighbors). Also I deal a lot with medicine, behaviors, psych disorders and such so it would be nice to be able to look things up on the fly (I.e does asprin interact with drug b?). So those are my reasons as to why I'm leaning towards the ipad, but I think I'm goin to wait till the fall before being certain. Now on a side note I use android on my netbook sometimes because I like to mess aroud with it and I like it, that's why I'm hoping google comes out with one like the ipad. Thanks for you input guys and keep it coming! Eric

Well, this is gonna be a first, I'm ranting about technology for once instead of my life, issues, etc lol. A few days ago I was taking a look at the iPad and realized how helpful it would be at my job because I've been lugging around my netbook since I've been doing a lot of paperwork on it (we're starting to switch over to all digital stuff which is easier IMHO). Lately though I've been getting irritated dragging around my netbook because it's so cumbersome, especially since I've been having to take my charge cable with me. So I was thinking of getting an iPad. Honestly something as closed as an Apple product makes me worry. I'm used to using open source for a lot of my programs (except windows and iTunes which is are necessary evils because of school and my iPod touch not liking any open source alternative to iTunes heh). Anywho... I know that Google and a few other companies are coming out with their own slate pc's like the iPad so should I wait to get one? Or should I suck it up and get an iPad?

At my job we deal a lot with confidential information (HIPPA rules and company policy) so out Internet use is limited. However because I work in an apartment complex (I work in a supportive living setting) some of the apartments I work in have neighbors who don't protect their wifi But while I can access it, I try not to except to check email (and when I have some down time I'll read a story lol) Eric