Some days I really hate computers.

Written on February 27, 2011. Posted in Ranting, Technology. 1 Comment.

Last week, a terrible tragedy occurred. My internet router had an epileptic attack and died. I wasn’t worried until I realized that my family would have to share one computer- the slowest one- for anything we had to do on the internet, and we couldn’t print anything because our printer is wireless. This is the kind of problem that only looks suckish if you’re from a first-world country, isn’t it? If you were from Nicaragua or something you’d probably be happy to have the internet at all, let alone more than one computer. But I digress.

Getting the internet back up was kind of an adventure. Our first mistake was letting my father pick out the router. He went out to buy it Friday while I was at school. I was a little bit worried, because not only had he not taken my mother along, he hadn’t asked any of the people at Staples for recommendations. But I tried to set it up anyway, because how bad could it possibly be?

The first real problem came when I inserted the CD and was informed that I needed to download something called “Service Pack 3″ for Windows XP. A bit of Googling told me that “Service Pack 3″ wasn’t available for my processor- in other words, that I would never be able to use the router that Dad had bought. I got scared, and after about 2 hours of more Googling (with, OK, lots of time on Facebook in between Googlings) I went ahead and downloaded the service pack anyway, figuring if it didn’t work, we’d just have to take the router back. The good news? It worked. The bad news? It took until 10:30 that night to finish downloading.

I gave up for the night, and resolved to finish installing the router in the morning. When I finally got around to it around 11, the computer wouldn’t read the disc. I, of course, asked Google, which told me that my CD drive was broken and I would have to buy a new one. That couldn’t have been true, though, because the CD drive played other discs just fine. (I checked it with a Barbie Riding Club disc. Don’t ask.) By this point I was determined that I was going to get that router set up, disc or no disc, so help me God. And I’d found a website that seemed like it was going to help me to do just that! I started to follow the step-by-step instructions, got to page three, and….

“Please pay the subscription fee to continue further. Only $9.95!” … Oh, you must be kidding me. I was not going to pay some stupid website $10.00 to teach me how to set up my router! So I kept searching for a site that would tell me how to do the same thing. Half an hour later, I was redirected to the router’s official site… where I was told that I could download the program that was on the CD from the internet. ALL OF THAT FOR SOMETHING THAT IF I WEREN’T STUPID I WOULD HAVE FOUND IN FIVE MINUTES. Of course.

5 minutes later, the program was downloaded and I had my router set up. All it took was about five hours of extraneous Google time. But hey, the Internet lives again, and I guess that’s all that matters.

The sexist family ideal- alive and well!

Written on February 13, 2011. Posted in Frustrating, Politics, Real World. 3 Comments.

I know I’ve mentioned before that I come from an area with a fair amount of lingering racism. Apparently sexism is alive and well here, too. Paraphrased from a letter to the editor in this morning’s paper: Women should stay home with their children and keep the house; if a woman wants a career, she shouldn’t have children. If your brain is spewing curse words and other bad thoughts, your reaction is pretty similar to mine when I first read that.

This was, of course, sparked by a bit of local controversy over potential cuts to the county’s Head Start program. While discussing the cuts, a few elected officials basically remarked that women who are using that program should really be staying home with their children full-time anyway, and implied that women who aren’t stay-at-home parents are irresponsible. The worst part of their remarks is that SOMEONE elected them to office.

Is it so hard to understand that women are essentially the same people as men, with slight anatomical differences? We need fulfillment somewhere outside of the home, too- or at least, some of us do. Having a career or a job provides women with something that their family just can’t. After all, if the home life were completely fulfilling on its own, the Feminine Mystique and the woman problem of the 1950’s would never have arisen. Besides that, it’s obvious that in an economy such as this, a lot of families just can’t survive on a single income. A lot of families are headed by single mothers who face either working or going on welfare.

These people cite scientific studies that seem to imply that families who have a stay-at-home parent tend to have better-behaved, more well-adjusted children, and to this I reply: Fine, but why does the stay-at-home parent have to be the mother? Why does HE always have to have his career and SHE her family? Why can’t it be the woman with the career and the man with the family? One simple reason: it doesn’t work with traditional stereotypes. This is called the “breadwinner ethos”, and it’s the idea that it’s a man’s job to earn a living to support his family and a woman’s job to his little housewife. The United States has a history of wanting to revert to this “breadwinner ethos” in times of economic crisis. (If you want to know more, take a women’s history class. It’s fascinating stuff.) It has something to do with an increasing scarcity of jobs along with traditional roles, but that doesn’t make it right.

1950 was six decades ago. So many other things from that era seem hopelessly outdated now- their TVs, their refrigerators, their cars. I don’t know why their “suburban utopia” outlook isn’t one of them. I have no problem with women who choose to stay at home with their kids, but let’s not condemn the women who want a career and a family. After all, it’s not any more or less than what most men have.