Earths Daughter

I had a look at your links, and checked out the NZ Miniature horse site. That's a pretty cool site. I had heard of miniature horses before, but that's about all I knew about them--just that they exist. The pictures on that site of the horse are nice. I think if I had room to keep one, I would want one. My lot is very tiny, I couldn't keep anything larger than a small rabbit on it, unfortunately, if I had some sort of outdoor pet. I have a small indoor dog, though, a Manchester Terrier, and she's wonderful. I let her out to run on the lot a few times a day and she likes it.

I'm currently using the free version of Sygate. I had not yet heard they were bought out, that sucks. If they are not giving free updates for it anymore, I will definitely have to change to something else. I used to use ZoneAlarm, and never had any problems with it, I may just go back to it. I have heard a lot of good things about Tiny Personal Firewall in the past, I may try it if it's still available. The first thing I'll probably do is surf on over to SourceForge or FreshMeat and see what Open Source ones are available. I use an Open Source Anti-Virus program--ClamWin, and it's great. It has updates every day, compared to AVG which only updates every four or five days. Because of my experience with ClamWin, I can only hope I can find an Open Source Firewall program that is as good. Does anybody know of any good Open Source Firewalls that are compatible with Win XP?The only reason I stopped using ZoneAlarm is because my Fiance installed Sygate instead, so I thought I would try it. He said it was better for online gaming, although I'm not sure why, I never asked. Maybe it uses less system resources or something?

I don't consider myself to have any "bad" experiences with applying for an account here. I use enough software to consider minor little glitches of any kind on the computer or internet to just be normal. I tried the link to the hosting form every time, but didn't get a form, the link wasn't working at that time. Hopefully it is now, but if not, anybody who reads my post will know to just copy the form off of another post if the link is still not working and they don't think of just doing it themselves first. As for losing my total account point credit balance, no big deal, it was all free anyway. I can always just post for more. I just thought I would mention it since it wasn't blatantly obvious that would happen, for the benefit of others so they would know about it in advance. Some complain about every little thing if they don't know about it in advance, but are less likely to complain if they do know in advance. That's one of the reasons I mentioned it. And of course, a lot of people don't complain, they just want to know what to expect before it happens. I figure if Xisto is willing to give premium hosting for free, it would take some nerve to complain about minor little things that are bound to happen now and then. As in "don't look a gift horse in the mouth". It is my opinion after seeing what kind of free hosting other hosts provide that people should just be glad Xisto is doing this and not expect everything to be done just the way they would personally prefer it. Xisto is probably the very best free host online, grab an account while you can and be thankful for the opportunity. I just wanted to clear up any misunderstanding about having "bad" experiences with Trap, I think it rocks!

Can you delete it by using the "Edit" button? That may work.

The only reason I can see for young people pressuring others to drink is because they think it makes you "cool". Drinking, smoking, getting high, etc. doesn't make you "cool". It just makes you a conformist if everybody else is doing it. Tell people you're a non-conformist, and want to do your own thing, not what everybody else is doing. Part of being what others consider "cool" is doing what they think you should do, instead of being your own person. The biggest part of being really cool is doing your own thing. Young people that are more worried about what others think about them than in being their own person are usually not happy. And the people they hang out with are usually not true friends. True friends are people that accept you for being you and like you the way you really are. Those are the only kind of friends worth having. One true friend that will stick by you is worth more than a dozen fake friends that won't.

People, governments, and society go to a lot of trouble to insulate children from death in civilized countries. So children grow up detached from the reality of death. Maybe we should go back to public executions where the whole town turned out, brought their kids, and vendors sold refreshments in the crowd, like in the days of the Old West. But that was said to be uncivilized, and that it would lead to violence..........I wasn't allowed to go to my grandfather's funeral since I was only 5-6 at the time. I was considered too young to see anything having to do with dead people. But I still wish I had gone, he was my only grandfather, as my father's parents had died years before and I never got to know them. The first funeral I attended was my grandmother's funeral when I was 15. Before that, I had never seen a dead body. I turned out being very goth-like in perspective before there was a Goth subculture anyway. I'm morbid, but don't go in for all the trappings of the subculture, since a lot of that seems pretty artificial to me. I was a hippie and a pre-Goth at the same time, so I turned out pretty weird. I remember going down into the basement of my elementary school for Nuclear drills, and sitting there with my head on my drawn-up knees with my back against a cold concrete wall thinking about the bombs dropping. Now they only have fire and tornado drills in schools. I think that's a good thing. Maybe society has made some progress, but we need to quit avoiding the subject of death so much. It's a part of life, and I think some kids are disconnected with reality concerning death. I think it leads to children killing other children and adults because they don't have any real concept of what death actually is.

Here in the US, they tried smoking and non-smoking areas in restaurants for years. Eventually the non-smokers demanded that all restaurants ban smoking. Smoking was already banned in various places like libraries, book stores, clothing stores, most retail establishments except grocery stores, movie theaters only allowed it in the lobby, etc. Then factories started banning smoking on the property except in one designated smoking area or outside. Then the factories often decided after a while of that, to only allow smoking outside - even if it was raining or in the winter. Many other businesses no longer allowed employees to smoke anywhere indoors on their breaks anymore. They required smokers to go outside to smoke. Many of these companies did not provide any sort of shelter for smokers outside from the weather. When the wind chill factor makes it bitterly cold, and there's no shelter, many smokers still go outside to smoke. The US Government banned smoking from all government buildings, even prisons. Eventually, smoking was only allowed indoors in bars (pubs), nightclubs and smoking sections of some more tolerant restaurants. it was up to a restaurant owner whether or not they provided a smoking section or not. Then my city decided to outlaw smoking in all publically used areas, including bars, restaurants and nightclubs and even outdoor areas like parks. Ironically enough, local governments often added new taxes to tobacco products to build new outdoor sports stadiums. Then they outlawed the very product which paid for those stadiums from being used in them. I have been to an outdoor stadium in the past and saw people several rows away from a smoker doing fake coughing and waving their hands around their faces as if they were choking every few minutes. They would glare at the smoker as if he was an enemy. And the whole time, they were upwind of the smoke, and it couldn't possibly reach them. The smoker pointed that out to them, and said their loud fake coughing and frantic fanning was disturbing a lot more people than his smoke was disturbing them, since they couldn't even smell it. They said he was being rude, and he asked them if only non-smokers were allowed to be rude, since he wasn't disturbing anybody and they certainly were. They summoned an usher and complained that the smoke was bothering them. The usher saw for himself they were sitting several rows below the smoker and the wind was carrying the smoke away from them, and pointed that out to them. They got mad and started causing a loud scene. The other people sitting around them then complained about them disturbing the game since it started, and the usher asked them to leave. They got louder and refused, they had to be escorted out of the stadium. Now smoking is not even allowed in that stadium. More business for the sports bars, which allowed smoking. Then it was outlawed in the sports bars in my town.Now more people throw sports parties in their homes, and friends gather to smoke and watch the game. Less business for the stadiums and the sports bars. I remember seeing a picture of a bunch of people in jail in the Phillippines several years ago. They were there for smoking in their own cars, since it had been outlawed in the Phillippines. It's probably only a matter of time before non-smokers demand smoking be banned in private vehicles in the US, as well. In the US, anti-smokers are very vocal, and those who do not smoke but don't mind if other people do are not. Most smokers in the US are not very vocal, since their families or friends usually have an anti-smoker amongst them. Most smokers don't want arguments, they just want to be left alone to smoke in peace. The government spends a lot of time and money inconveniencing smokers that it could put into fighting illegal drugs. But it is easier to pass a new anti-smoking law and please a vocal minority than to do something effective about illegal drugs.I have had many a meal or movie partially or completely ruined by people talking loudly through it, or using their cell phones right next to me, or loud crying babies or children throwing temper tantrums in public places. I have even seen 3-8 year old children throwing food at other diners, and the parents just told them to stop it, and did not do anything when the children did not stop. The other patrons had to complain to the manager who had to come tell the parents if the children didn't behave they would have to leave. The worst part of it was the parents got mad when he told them that. If they had any consideration for others, they would have told the children that themselves already, and taken them outside if they didn't start behaving.I think these things are all part of the same problem. People in the US feel entitled to do various things. People with disruptive children feel entitled to have a meal in a restaurant with them acting up because they paid for the meal. They do not think that a larger number of paying customers are entitled to having a pleasant undisturbed meal. The same thing goes for watching movies, shopping, etc. Manners and any sort of public courtesies have decreased in the US over the years. People are selfish and loudly demand whatever they want be done, without any thought of accommodating others or compromising.There's an old saying "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Meaning whoever makes the most noise get what they want. It's pretty much true here in America. The lessons of loud minorities from the Communist Revolution or the Nazi party getting what they wanted have not been learned here in the US by many. Indeed, there is a group in America calling itself the "Moral Majority" that is using the same tactics as the Russian Communists or Nazis who were in the minority but named themselves the majority and were louder than the quiet majority. The "Moral Majority" want to have evolution stop being taught in schools, and all forms of entertainment they consider immoral to be outlawed. The head of the Moral Majority considers the Smurfs to be demonic, and the Teletubbies to be immoral, and says the purple Teletubbie is gay since it carries a purse, and the show is promoting homosexuality. If it was up to him, we would have a lot of government censoring, and public book-burnings, just like the Nazis. The scary thing is thousands of people here in the US would see nothing wrong with burning books, in spite of a reasonably good education in history. I have heard about there being a lot of public cameras in England. I wonder if George Orwell's book "1984" was read very much over there? It seems Big Brother is already watching people in England, and the US government would like him to be watching people in the US, as well. This is very disturbing stuff. President Roosevelt couldn't force the country to get into WWII because the government was concerned that public opinion was against it. But Bush forced the US into a war that a lot of public opinion was against. Not to mention world opinion. Maybe the US government doesn't care as much about public opinion as it used to. That is scary, too. The future is looking more and more bleak. The New Millennium is not looking like it's progressing towards anything good here, more like the US is sliding backwards towards a totalitarian state ruled by politicians catering to big business.

The background looks nice, but it takes a while to load even with a high speed connection. I saved it to my desktop, and it was 522.41 KB. I just saved it as a jpg again in Irfanview with 100% quality, and it reduced to 396.74 KB. So be sure to optimize it or it will take forever for some people to load it.

Some typos I noticed.....Home: useful, not "usefull"Templates: which, not "wich" hottest, not "hotest"Flash Intros: which, not "wich" In the part where it says "wich you can use them as an introduction..." get rid of the word "them" so it's just "which you can use as an introduction..."Flash Games: built, not "builded"Guestbook: Where it says "be so kind to leave..." change it to "be so kind as to leave" (more formal) or "be kind enough to leave" (less formal). I would suggest using the less formal option with a fun site.Other thoughts:A lot of people use a popup blocker to surf, so don't rely on popup windows. Most people do not like them, and think they're annoying. I didn't even see what was in the popup windows, since I keep my popup blocker on all the time. I don't like flash personally, so I can't really comment on that part of the site, except to say the background part of it looked nice. I think I've seen it somewhere before online, as a gallery to post user-made pictures in at some site. Having a flash splash page leading into your site is not really necessary, the site background looks better. Also, a lot of people find splash pages annoying, especially flash ones. It made me a bit dizzy. Don't submit the splash page to search engines, their bots can't click to enter and spider your site. I don't know if they can get through a flash site like yours anyway. Be sure and have a non-flash site map just in case. But a bot will probably read the site as a bunch of empty pages if it can't check out the flash anyway, and not list you. I'm not sure.

I don't have a Mac either, but if I did, I wouldn't run Windows on it. What's the point of getting a Mac, and then putting Windows on it, you might as well get an IBM compatible and install Windows on it in the first place. Windows for Mac is just a way for Micro$oft to try to get their programs on every computer out there. (And get the money from it.) I'm using Win XP for now, but one of these days somebody is going to come up with a Linux version that will run all the Windows games and programs, then I'm switching to Linux. :(If you don't want your Mac running Windows to get hacked, don't run Windows, use OSX, it's as simple as that.

You may have a trojan or something, too. Kazaa files tend to be infested with trojans, worms, etc. Not to mention the Kazaa program itself has spyware in it. If you want to keep using Kazaa, get a copy of Kazaa Lite, or whatever they're calling the non-spyware version nowadays. Make sure your anti-virus program is up to date, and that it is set to scan your incoming files automatically as they come in. Two anti-virus programs are better than one if you're going to download from P2P networks like Kazaa. ClamWin (open source) is excellent, usually getting new virus updates every day. AntiVir (a free for personal use AV from Europe) is also excellent, and works well with ClamWin. Sometimes one AV will catch something the other doesn't, so use both. Sometimes anti-virus programs don't catch trojans, so get a trojan scanner or two as well. Two trojan scanners work better than one, too, as one may catch things the other does not find.Have your new incoming files go to a non-shared folder, then check them thoroughly before putting them in a shared folder. That way you won't have people downloading infected files from you. If more people did that, there would be less viruses on P2P networks. One of the ways to recognize a bad program is the file size is not right. Trojans and worms are usually of the same size, the file name is just different. So if you download a file that's 712 Megs, for instance, and it's infected, and a search for the same type of file shows several files with different names that are also 712 Megs, chances are, they are all trojans, too. Write down the size of files that are just trojans or worms and keep a lookout for files of those sizes. You'll waste a lot less time downloading junk that way. Trojans and worms are sometimes labelled as something illegal, like "warez" or "illegal copy", so don't download anything labelled like that. You should only use P2P for legal downloads, anyway, of course. Not saying you would, but maybe other people might read this, and be tempted by a label like that. Remember the RIAA is suing the parents of 12 year olds for illegal copies of songs these days. And the parents have to pay heavy fines, so don't get your parents or yourself in trouble by sharing illegal stuff.

Most of the lawmakers are male, including the Governor. What gives them the right to legislate what a woman can do with her own body? Should we return to the dark ages when women were just seen as breeding stock? If a woman has a promising career or is studying her behind off to make something of herself, good for her. Should some rapist's lust make her leave school or work for several months, so she can carry his unwanted offspring? Shouldn't women have the choice of who they want to breed with? Sure, a fetus is alive, but so are plants and animals, and we kill them for food. A fetus reacts on an instinctive level, like a plant or an animal. It is not a person, it's a living thing with some basic instincts. Before it's born, it's not a person, it's just a living bunch of cells that could grow into a person if the pregnancy goes well, and there's no abortion.I do not like the idea of third term abortions, though. That's just cruel. Make up your mind if you want to have it or not before the last trimester. The only way we can outlaw abortions would be to have people spayed or neutered, just like animals. Spay all rapists, so they can't breed. Why not do the same with child molesters, junkies, violent or abusive people, etc. while we're at it? Of course, Hitler was a firm believer in having undesirables "fixed" or killed so they couldn't breed. So unless you agree with Hitler, we can't go that route. Which means an intelligent successful woman who doesn't have the option of abortion could be forced to breed with any man through rape. Guys, how would you like your mother, sister, daughter, wife, fiancee or girlfriend forced to have a rapist's child? Ladies, would you want to be forced to breed with a rapist, and carry his child, putting your career or education on the sidelines until it was born?Quite a few women who are raped are so traumatized, they commit suicide. Pregnancy causes hormonal changes which can lead to depression, increasing the chance of suicide. And post-partum depression is a well known side effect of pregnancy, also sometimes causing suicide. So maybe the mother's life is in danger, just not the way you think.As for God's will, if you believe in God(s), you know they also gave humans free will. So the choice should be up to the woman, not the government. As for rapists seeing their kids, or gaining custody of them, rape is a sex crime. Sex crime offenders have to be registered, and are not allowed to associate with children. So why give them an underage victim to molest in private? That's just crazy. Criminal rights just go too far these days. Like if a burglar breaks into your house, trips over your kid's toy at the top of the stairs, and falls down and hurts himself he can sue you over it. There's an example of a bad law for you. The government doesn't always make good laws, so why let them decide what women can do with their wombs? The only way I can see requiring women to carry unwabted children for a while is if it's not rape or incest, the father wants the child, and they can plant the fetus in a surrogate mother or artificial womb. That way she won't be forced to carry it for long, just until they can move it, hopefully within a week or two.

I am from the USA and have been to France, Canada, and lived in the Phillippines when I was a kid. I would love to go to Australia, and see the Great Reef, and Ayer's Rock (or whatever they changed the name to now), and the zoo where the Crocodile Hunter works, and some of the other scenery. I would like to visit England and see Stonehenge, the Tower of London, and the Textile Museum. I would like to go to Norway and see the Viking ship at the museum. I would like to go to Ravenna in Italy, and see the Byzantine mosaics, and Constantinople, of course. The pyramids and sphinx and the Temple of Karnak in Egypt. I would also like to see some more stuff in the USA. I would love to go whale watching at Glacier Bay in Alaska. The Grand Canyon, Mt Rushmore, Colonial Williamsburg, the Petrified Forest, and the Redwoods. Those are the main ones. But there are a lot of other places I would love to visit, too.

Some people think their opinion is important to everyone else in the world. So they post it wherever they feel like it, considering it valuable instead of unwanted. Some people think they know what everybody else should do and how they should live their lives. And they love to share their opinion of what they think is right.Some people may just do it because they've been having a bad day/week/life, and it's a way to vent a bit of their sour mood and unhappiness onto others. If they're not happy, they see no reason you should be left alone to be happy. Misery loves company.And some people just need to feel like they're superior to somebody else to have any worth. So they put other people down to make themselves feel better.Then there's just weird people out there who like to cause trouble because they think it's fun. And it makes them the center of attention, like they're important. As in the saying "any attention is better than no attention at all". Then there's people that want to do something but feel trapped and can't. Like being stuck in a dead end job and wanting to quit, but not daring to. So they knock anyone else that seems to have the nerve to not give in and conform to what everybody else wants. They feel trapped into conforming, so they think everybody else should conform too.And have you ever considered anybody with a computer and internet access can get on and go post wherever they please? Even if they're a mental case, or a total loser. I've read some prisons have internet access for the inmates. Maybe mental institutions have it too.Just ban their IPs. Maybe require a membership to post, then you can cancel the membership. You could set up a section where you just moved all the bad posts, call it the trash can, or dung heap or whatever. When they see their posts keep ending up there, maybe they'll go pick on some little kids, old people, or the handicapped for their kicks.

Part of the reason kids are learning to swear so young now is they hear it all around them. Try riding a public bus in my city through a 'bad' neighborhood. There will be a group of young people hanging out together and practically every other word out of their mouth is a curse word. There are young children on the bus hearing those words. Same thing in shopping centers, malls, stores, downtown on the sidewalk, city parks, etc. Parents used to watch their language around their children more, too. My parents hardly ever cursed, usually my dad only by surprise when he stubbed his toe or something like that. So as a child, I just wasn't exposed to bad language until I was a teenager. And I got in trouble for cursing as a teen, so I tried not to. Now, how many times do you see parents cursing in public with their children there to hear it? Or hear children with their parents cursing, and the parents don't even do anything about it?It probably has something to do with more cursing on TV, in movies, and in songs too. But I think the main reason is lack of parental concern over it. And lack of parental discipline in general, about cursing, and all kinds of other things.I remember when I was a kid, when I got home from school, I had to sit at the kitchen table and do my homework where my mom could watch me. Until my homework was done, I couldn't do anything else. My parents went to PTA meetings, talked to my teachers, and kept track of my grades. They kept track of the days I stayed home sick, so they could check my absent days on my report card and make sure I didn't cut any classes or skip days at school. How many parents do that nowadays? And so many people wonder why their kids aren't learning anything at school. Parents have to get involved with their kid's education if they expect the kid to learn anything. Nowadays, parents blame it on the school system, other kids influence, society, the government, anything and everything except themselves not getting involved. They do it for everything else too these days, because they don't get involved enough with their kid's lives.