Friday Shorts

I’m done with American Idol. The American masses don’t care about quality. They want cute, sexy, or attractive. This is exactly why I stopped watching all prime time music award shows many years ago. It’s all about packaging and marketing. Make the performer attractive to pre-teen girls and who cares if they can sing or perform – they’ll be successful. Disgraceful.

Kyle (our 22 year old bipolar son) called a few days ago and asked if we needed our carpets cleaned. We did, of course. Kyle can clean carpets better than any professional. We rented a cleaning machine, and he cleaned all day and into the night. We paid him well, he works so hard and does such a great job. My wife paid him in front of his girlfriend, we didn’t want to offend him by giving the money directly to his girlfriend. Kyle continued to clean well into the night, and he asked if he could stay with us that night. Of course he could. We got up the next day, and guess what? Surprise, surprise, he’s gone. Haven’t heard from him since. When will we learn, you don’t give money to someone with untreated bipolar disorder.

70 degrees in the heartland within a few days! Woo-hoo! I’ll get reacquainted with my deck and my humidor of cigars.

My mania is settling into a more pleasant hypomania, and I hope it stays for a while. Of course when I’m manic I slide between the two, but I’m REALLY tired of mania. I need to be able to accomplish something at work again.

USB memory sticks are everywhere these days, I’ve used one for years to carry things back and forth between work and home. I got one not too long ago that has something called "U3". This allows for programs to be run directly from the memory stick. Firefox browser, Trillian messenger, Filezilla FTP, Open Office, IrfanView, RoboForm, and many more free applications. This is a very cool piece of technology. Launch the programs with a single click, leave no footprints or trails on the computer you are using, securely store passwords, bookmarks, and so forth. I won’t work without one ever again.

I encourage everyone to jump over to http://bipolarconnect.com. My blog is located here. If you survive seeing my picture, take a moment and subscribe to my posts, it will help me out. Actually, the new design they have there is pretty cool, and makes it very easy to interact with others.

Finally, I got to thinking about the concept of a "community blog". A blog where anyone, named or anonymous, could post. A bipolar disorder theme, of course. You could plug your main blog, make announcements, tell others if a fellow blogger is in crisis, give those who just lurk or are intimidated by blogging a chance to be heard, and so forth. These ideas come a million miles an hour when I’m hypomanic, and can be difficult to implement or maintain when I’m "normal". But this wouldn’t be a big deal, especially with assistance from others. Thoughts?

Enough for now, everyone have a GREAT weekend!