| Broken Ties |
[18 Dec 2009|09:50am] |
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mood |
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 crushed |
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As I grow older, I continue to form new relationships and older ones seem to just pass on, leaving behind great memories and unfulfilled dreams.
When I make a friend, I like to think it's for life, but it usually isn't and mostly it really is my fault. I get aggressive about something and then I either jump the shark — I reach my best in the relationship and then backslide — or so radically change my stand on something as to put them in shock. I remember one friendship in particular I was getting into that I started to vie for something more and just when she started to warm to the idea, I panicked and withdrew so quickly as to leave her head (and her heart) spinning.
Here lately I've started losing touch with more friends, for various reasons, and it's really bothering me because I'm actively trying to stop it but it seems like it's the inevitable result of current events beyond my control. It started being in my control, and now it isn't. I guess I just don't like losing control of a situation, or a relationship.
That's been one of my hardest things in my walk with God. Letting go has always been so difficult for me. I try to hang onto things that I really should just let go of and it only seems to make things worse. I think God is trying to teach me how to let go and I'm just being stubborn, but can you blame me? Who wants to let go of any relationship that one values? Although I can see how it might seem that I didn't value this one in particular. Almost six months of minimal contact and then all of a sudden I want to be best friends again. So now I'm being told to just let it go and it's about to bring me to tears.
I really did value the relationship. The camaraderie. One of the few friendships that I had that I felt like was just right. I'm trying to focus on the present now, though. It's hard. Instead of healthily dealing with this ending I seem to be just trying to fill the void now and that never works if God isn't in it.
Please pray, friends, that I allow myself to be carried by God through this because I definitely cannot handle this one by myself.
[tags]relationships, friends[/tags]
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| HowTo: Blocking Websites |
[09 Dec 2009|10:53pm] |
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mood |
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 accomplished |
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music |
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George Friderich Handel - Messiah |
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Are you sick of Internet ads but don't want to be bothered using FireFox and the Adblocker extension (which works wonderfully, by the way)? Or how about your kids going to sites which you don't approve of? Are you using Windows (specifically XP)?
Well then I have a tip for you that will help you get a handle on what sites are loaded in your browser. For this example we are going to block Yahoo. How to block it is really simple.
First, you need to find a file simply called hosts. On most versions of Windows this should be in
C:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc
The file has no extension but it's a plain text file so you can use notepad without any problems. Once you have the file open, you should see something like this at the top:
# Copyright (c) 1993-1999 Microsoft Corp.
# This is a sample HOSTS file used by Microsoft TCP/IP for Windows.
# This file contains the mappings of IP addresses to host names. Each
# entry should be kept on an individual line. The IP address should
# be placed in the first column followed by the corresponding host name.
# The IP address and the host name should be separated by at least one
# space.
# Additionally, comments (such as these) may be inserted on individual
# lines or following the machine name denoted by a '#' symbol.
# For example:
# 102.54.94.97 rhino.acme.com # source server
# 38.25.63.10 x.acme.com # x client host
Pretty much telling you exactly how to do it with one entry defined:
127.0.0.1 localhost
You do not want to change that entry. It's how the computer recognizes itself as home and how network services "connect" to a network without there actually being a connection to the Internet or any other network.
To block a website, Yahoo in this example, you'll want to add another entry that looks like this:
127.0.0.1 yahoo.com
Once you restart your network connection (do it however you like), yahoo should be completely blocked.
Now this only works on the top level Yahoo domain. Any sub-domains might still be available. To block any sub-domains, you'll have to block them one at a time following the same format.
There are programs out there that automatically generate a list of known harmful websites (pornography, sites that distribute malware, etc.) that also allows for easy editing of the hosts files. If I only had to recommend one, I would recommend Spybot - Search & Destroy. It's free, it searches for malware on your computer (mostly software that tracks your usage of the Internet (aka spyware)), allows for the editing of your hosts file, and is free and fairly simple to use.
Of course I like doing things without having to install any software and the above mentioned method for blocking websites is by far the easiest. You don't have to be a computer guru to edit the file, just remember the changes you've made. If you ever want to undo them, just delete the entry in question and restart your network connection. Another bonus is that while you have to do a little more monitoring yourself, in the end you don't have to pay someone else to block the sites for you.
Update: One thing I failed to mention, when you save the edited file, you'll have to delete the original and rename the file you saved from hosts.txt to just hosts, otherwise it won't work. For some reason notepad won't save this file without the extension. Don't worry about the warning about removing the file extension. In this case it isn't needed.
[tags]technology, computers[/tags]
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