Cav's Place

Jealousy is a concept I could never understand. I believe I can explain what mix of elements are responsible for creating it, what makes it take roots, but I can’t understand why do people allow it to grow and flourish. And I find the large number of people who believe that jealousy is proof of love and a good thing in a relationship, even if they tend to specify that it is only good in moderation, as being even more incomprehensible. How can anyone believe that an obviously wrong and harmful emotion is good?
Jealousy usually makes one impose unreasonable restrictions on their partner, or at least track their actions and make unreasonable assumptions about them. That creates power struggles within the relationship, and that can only tear it apart, making the jealous person’s partner more likely to look for someone else, or just for a way out, even if otherwise they wouldn’t have wanted to leave. It’s bad in itself and it only creates more bad things once it rears its ugly head. So what’s wrong with those who think it’s a good and even a necessary thing?

It’s not that hard to explain jealousy, even if you’re not a mental health professional. Actually, those who are might have a different explanation for it, but I never cared to look, seeing as they’re wrong most of the time. The way I see it, jealousy is what happens when possessiveness meets insecurity. Distrust is mandatory, though it could be an effect and not a cause, and ego and pride are also factors. What this means is that one person desires to have exclusive rights over their partner, own them if you will, they even feel entitled to this, but at the same time they don’t think it’s possible. Whether that’s because they don’t feel worthy of it or because they don’t think their partner is willing to allow themselves to be owned doesn’t matter much, as both of these reasons are present, sometimes even at the same time.
So it all starts from possessiveness, the desire to have exclusive rights over your partner. I know that much, but I can’t figure out why do people think that way. The fact that I fully support polyamory might have something to do with why I can’t understand this, but I really don’t. I don’t think they desire to be owned in the same way themselves, which means that they believe they’re superior to their partners. Having reached that conclusion, I have to ask what makes them think that. Actually, while we’re on this topic, why is owning that specific person so important to them, if they believe they’re superior to him or her?
If you think about it, the best thing you could say is that it makes no sense. The worst you could say is that it does make sense and it says a lot of bad things about those who act this way. Of course, if the latter is true and they’re just rotten, like most people are, they aren’t going to care. That might actually be the typical case, as most don’t seem to really care about all the problems their jealousy is causing, but what about those who do care? What about those who realize that their jealousy is hurting their partner and their relationship, yet still don’t stop? It could be that they can’t stop once it went past a certain level, it became a part of them and that obviously can’t change, but what made them let it get to that point? Did they only start to care once it became a serious problem or… What happened? Again, it just makes no sense.

But if that makes no sense, what about those who think it’s a good thing? They seem to believe that love implies jealousy and that you don’t really love someone if you’re not jealous. To me, that sounds like their ego talking, because if you love someone it’s quite obvious that you want them to be with you, but not that you want them to be yours. There’s a big difference beween the two, seeing as the latter implies ownership. The problem here is that you pretty much have to believe that your partner is inferior to you in order to feel entitled to own them, but you can’t believe that about someone you truly love. Ego and love, or pride and love, don’t mix well at all.
There are, of course, some potential explanations… One would include repressed dominant or submissive tendencies, which surface in the form of either jealousy or the desire for a jealous partner because they aren’t included in the relationship otherwise. Another would involve insecurities, which could lead one down the path of wishful thinking and make them reason that a jealous partner is interested in holding on to them and therefore less likely to leave, despite the fact that possessiveness actually makes such a partner more likely to just use them and not return favors. Yet another, and perhaps the simplest one, is that people try to justify what they already feel, so those who tend to be jealous will say that jealousy is a good thing just to avoid thinking that they might be doing something wrong.

There are several possible explanations, but no justifications. What matters is that jealousy harms. Whether it’s intentional or not is less important, because the result is what matters. Insecurity could actually help sometimes, if it’s treated in a constructive manner, if it causes the person feeling it to be the best they can be in an attempt to be good enough. But the other “ingredients”, possessiveness, ego, pride and lack of trust, can only harm a relationship. They create power struggles and a vicious circle which results in nothing but pain and suffering.
That said, why don’t people learn to offer each other the freedom they themselves would like to have? And perhaps even more than that, seeing as we’re talking about those they love… We complain that our bosses treat us as if we were worthless or that our governments are taking away our freedoms, yet we tend to treat even those we claim to love as inferior and take away their freedoms whenever possible.

Once again, I can’t bring myself to write anything. There are plenty of things on my mind, but mainly personal things and I was trying really hard to avoid other “feeling sorry for myself” posts. Yet I think it’s better to just write a little about these instead of nothing at all. Maybe it could also help me be able to think about other issues as well and therefore have something else to write about these days, but I wouldn’t get my hopes up, it doesn’t work like that…

Perhaps I should start with health concerns, since a new one has been added on top of the usual ones. I’ve been feeling a dull pain in my lower right side for a couple of weeks now, generally towards the back. My first thought was that my right kidney is trying to say something, but it might just be my hip complaining about the slightly increased difficulty of my daily exercise routine, or even something else entirely.
As for the usual concerns, they’re still there, no reason to get into them. My back also seems to hurt more and more often; there were only a couple of weeks between the last two times. It’s kind of sad that I’m getting used to a level of pain that made me basically unable to do anything, not even sleep, the first time I felt it. Also, my lower lip quivers quite a lot lately, I just find that weird.

Since that’s out of the way, I’m sure you know the real main concern that’s on my mind. It’s the same as always, or always since she left, that is… Of course I’m thinking and worrying a whole lot about Andra, that never changes. Would still really want to know what’s going on in her life, what’s she doing, how she is… And I’m still very scared of what I might find out…
Assuming she’s still in England, the current economic crisis is one more reason for concern, since I heard that the United Kingdom has been hit really hard. Being Romanian doesn’t exactly help anyone abroad, you know? Knowing her, she’d really want to keep her job, assuming she found one again after she went back, assuming she did go back. This would be really important to her on a personal level, not just from a financial point of view. But doing so might prove quite difficult right now, considering everything…
All I can say is that I hope she’s well and happy… But I’d really like to hear from her, though the prospect frightens me at the same time and I doubt I’d manage to handle it better than the last time. Actually, I’m still very surprised by how long I managed to delay cracking completely when we last talked, so I doubt I’d even get close to such a “performance” again. The one condition is still for her to have no kids. Whether her own or adopted or even just in her long-term care doesn’t really matter. That’s the one thing I’ll never accept and therefore the one thing which could kill me more than the current situation does.

Otherwise, I still sorely feel the lack of a real close friend… I haven’t even been that close to anyone on-line in a very long time, but I’m not talking about on-line friends now. Physical contact is really important to me and, while I couldn’t handle having any sort of “real life” relationship with more than a few people, having none is really taking its toll.
You’d think I’d get used to it, since the only time I had a close “real life” friend was also the only time I had anyone I could call my best friend. I’m talking about the short amount of time Elena P. was a part of my life… That’s a story I never wrote about here, maybe I should someday. But life has proven that when something appears to be too good to be true, it usually is. I’m saying this because I’ve had certain suspicions about what really happened back then all along, so I wouldn’t be surprised if I’d find something really ugly if I’ll ever find out what that was really about. But I doubt that’ll ever happen…
So no, I never got used to it. I certainly don’t want “people” around me, but I need one in order to be able to function in any way and a second one would also help. Lacking the first, the second becomes mandatory. The first would obviously be my girlfriend, and as of close to seven years ago that can only be Andra. The second would be someone I could truly call my best friend. I guess I did better with the girlfriend, since I had one for over three years. I’ve only had (what I thought to be) a real best friend for two months…

Those are the main problems that likely keep me from thinking long enough about anything else. Just writing about them doesn’t exactly help, it never does, but I couldn’t exactly do anything else…
Let’s see how I’ll manage to somehow get a second post out of myself this week, and hopefully one that doesn’t deal with personal issues. It’ll probably turn out like crap, but most of them do anyway…

One more thing, completely unrelated with any of this: My new video card’s power consumption is pretty much what I expected it to be, so I was excited for no reason when I thought it was much lower. It only uses as much as it needs, so that’s what confused me initially, because I wasn’t playing something that required any significant effort from it. Just thought I’d add this here, since I noticed it a couple of days ago.

The second order was delivered yesterday around noon, so I finally had a better video card and could also finish building dad’s new computer. Something I only figured out after writing the previous post about this was that he might not have needed a new computer after all, but I’ll get to that later.
As expected, having to interact with the delivery guy was quite scary yet again. It’s a person I don’t know, so I’m extremely uncomfortable. But it went well enough, the only issue being that the bag was stapled at the top and I didn’t notice that when he handed it to me, so I pricked a finger in one of the staples. Actually, I’m quite unhappy with the fact that they always put the items in a plastic bag. Since computer parts come nicely boxed anyway, putting them in a plastic bag as well is just waste!

The video card I got is an EVGA GeForce GTS 250 1 Gb, as I said I might. If I’d rank video card manufacturers according to how much I trust them, EVGA would be the sixth or seventh, which isn’t too encouraging, but I didn’t really have any other options. It seems that I got the last one anyway, because the shop I ordered it from had it listed as “available upon on-line order” and then changed its status to “unavailable” as soon as they called me to say they ordered everything. Actually, it’s likely the last one the importer had, because other shops changed its status to “unavailable” that evening too.
I was quite impressed by its size, being the first dual-slot card I ever had. The volume is likely at least five times that of my old card, so I had to rearrange some cables to make everything fit well again. Otherwise, I noticed that its cooler is really noisy when it’s running at maximum speed, which it did until I installed the drivers. It’s still noticeable even at low speed…
I’m yet to put it through a serious performance test, but I’m sure it’s more than enough for any needs I might have in the near future. A very good thing is that it seems to use less power than I thought, at least if I understand the data from my UPS properly. With my old card and the CPU at 100%, it said the load was 17-18% on the desktop and 18-19% in games. Now it says 18-19% on the desktop and 22-23% in games. I expected more than 30% under full load…
Something seems to have changed since I installed it though. My HDD seems significantly louder and my case fans somewhat quieter. I keep thinking that I didn’t plug something back in quite right, possibly the front fan. The only problem with that theory is that I never had anything to do with the front fan when I installed the video card… I should probably open it again and check, but right now I really don’t feel like it…

Moving on to dad’s computer, I have to say something about the old one before writing about the new. I took it apart, looking for any visible signs of anything being burned, but all I found was a whole lot of dust. I even found dust in between the CPU cooler and the CPU, which made me think that was the reason why it decided to burn out now, after the cooler problem had been at least relatively fixed. But then I even found dust under the CPU, when I pulled it out of its socket. So I carefully cleaned that up, put it back together, tried to turn it on and saw that it worked! The dust might have been the cause of the problem, not a burned out CPU! Still, dad could certainly use a faster computer, even though it seems he didn’t really need it right now…
As for his new computer, the configuration is as follows:
Motherboard: ASRock P45DE
Processor: Intel Pentium E5200, 2.5 GHz
RAM: A-DATA 2 Gb DDR2, 800 MHz, “Gaming Series” (Link is quite generic, I can’t find a more specific one.)
Video card: Leadtek WinFast PX8400 GS TDH Extreme 256 Mb (My old one…)
HDD: Seagate 7200.10 250 Gb SATA-II, 16 Mb cache
Power supply: Rasurbo DLP-435
Case: Foxconn TLA570A
The RAM might seem like overkill, but the price differences are so small that it just wasn’t worth getting anything cheaper than that.
Overall, I think I did well enough, considering everything. He still needs several programs installed, but I’ll get to those when he’ll ask me to… Building it, installing the basics and copying everything from his old one to this one was quite enough for now.

I just have one more thing to say, thinking of my previous personal post: I found out what the most common Finnish curse word is…

I believe I know one more reason why file-sharers can’t be pirates: Pirates are supposed to be at least somewhat brave! Yes, this is partially a joke, but the joke is mainly on us. Very few file-sharers are willing to stand up publicly for the practice, which generally creates stark contrasts between the results and the comments when any site has a poll on this issue. And the very low number of people who have uploaded their pictures on filesharer.org only supports this theory even more.

I’m quite sick and tired of often being the only one arguing with copyright holders and their defenders when there are such polls or articles. There are polls where most people, sometimes even the vast majority, clearly support file-sharing and oppose punishing those who take part in it in any way, but if you read the comments you could think it’s exactly the other way around!
This time it was a poll on Care 2… Once again, I was pretty much left to argue the case alone until I got too frustrated. Yes, the results do appear much tighter than I’m used to seeing, but that “it depends” option might have something to do with it. Considering my stance on this issue, that’s what I should have picked too, but I picked “no” in order to make a point, plus that I assumed it was mainly about the regular kind of file-sharing, for personal and non-commercial use. So I was hoping for more of those who picked “no” and “it depends” to speak out, but once again very few did and not even those really argued the case.

How are we going to change these laws and overthrow the greedy publishers if we won’t even speak out? They can just pick us off as they see fit and we won’t even stand up for each other! They couldn’t do that anymore if only we’d band together. We’re probably talking about hundreds of millions of people worldwide, so if even 10% would make a stand in public they probably couldn’t do much about it anymore. But what am I saying about 10%? Even 1% would probably be good enough, though that might be quite risky.
It’s just a question of numbers in the end. They can sue and even jail one person or perhaps even one thousand, but if one million would speak out to support them, revealing themselves as being guilty of the same “crime”, there’d be nothing they could do against us anymore. You can’t jail millions! And if those millions decide to truly fight for something they believe in, no influential individuals or authorities could hope to go against their will. The problem is that publishers know that terrorism works and file-sharers allow it to be so, staying quiet and only breathing a sigh of relief that it wasn’t them when another is being charged of this “crime”…

Wanted to wait a few more days and only write a single post about all these things, but I think I need to split the story into two parts. Actually, it’s not a story, I’ll just babble a little about the last few days.

My dad’s computer finally decided to die a few days ago. I’m actually surprised that it lasted this long, considering that it’s been overheating for about two years. I could never figure out what was wrong with it and therefore assumed that it was a temperature reporting error, because otherwise I thought it’d have died rather quickly. But a couple of months ago he took it to a shop because of another problem and those people noticed a small crack in the CPU cooler, which caused serious airflow problems, meaning that it had really been overheating. Why did it decide to only burn out after it stopped overheating is not quite clear, but the fact is that it did.
Since you can’t find socket 478 CPUs anymore, and it wouldn’t have been worth repairing anyway, I was asked to order the required parts and build him a new computer as cheaply as possible. He also wanted me to reuse as many parts from the old one as I could and didn’t exactly like it when I said there’s hardly anything I could use… Was particularly disappointed that he couldn’t keep the RAM, since he had just bought some more for it. Hey, I told him it’s not worth spending anything on that piece of junk anymore, it’s not my problem he didn’t listen!
Either way, I got the parts yesterday and built it. Now I still need my new video card, which I plan to order tomorrow, to be able to put the one I have now on his new computer. I’m still discussing ordering a SATA HDD tomorrow as well, because until last night he insisted to keep using the IDE one from his old computer, despite the problems this causes. I might also persuade him to legally purchase the operating system…

Since I mentioned ordering a new video card for myself, I have to say that it seems I’ll need to sacrifice reliability for performance. After I saw the reviews which said that GeForce GTS 250 uses significantly less power than GeForce 9800 GTX+ despite the fact that it’s the exact same card as far as performance is concerned, I said I finally have something to buy. I had my eyes on one from BFG, but apparently only a few of those have been produced and sent to reviewers, as the model doesn’t seem to be available for purchase anywhere, not even abroad. MSI seems to have done the same thing with their overclocked 1 Gb version of the GTS 250, as they have even removed it from their own site recently.
Since I still want one with 1 Gb of memory, despite knowing that it doesn’t really matter if it has 512 Mb or 1 Gb, and want it at least somewhat overlocked from the start, I find myself required to accept only a two-year warranty, because the manufacturers which offer more don’t seem to have any such models available. I think I’ll get one from EVGA, which would probably be a little faster than the one from BFG I initially had in mind anyway. They have an even better one available, but it doesn’t seem to be sold in Romania…

On another note, met someone I’ve been talking to on-line for the past several months. This means I have now actually met three people after initially talking to them on-line, the first two being Andra and Jen. It wasn’t as scary as I thought, but I still was quite uneasy about the prospect. Actually, the previous times it went rather well as well, but that doesn’t mean the idea of meeting someone like that won’t still be just as scary from now on.
The difference between now and back when I met Andra or Jen was that now we just went for a walk, so all of it was in a public place, we didn’t get in and talk in my room (or in our room, since I met Jen when I was living with Andra). I’m not sure if that made it easier or harder… Being out makes me quite uneasy in itself, but at the same time it’d probably be a little weird to be in the same room with someone I don’t already have a connection with at a quite different level. Still, the fact that she found things to talk about for most of the time we spent together certainly made things easier, because if I’d have had to say much it’d have been very awkward for both of us.

Moving on, as if I didn’t feel embarrassed enough as it was, dad made me make a fool of myself yesterday morning… The guy who was supposed to deliver the parts for dad’s new computer called me to ask if I was at home and say that he’s in front of the building and is about to ring to be allowed in. I wondered why did he have to call and tell me that, but I went out of my room to wait for him. Parents asked if the order was about to arrive, I said yes and then was left to wander around for a few minutes, wondering why wasn’t that guy ringing yet.
I eventually looked and noticed that he couldn’t, because dad hadn’t turned the damn thing back on when he woke up, so that’s when I realized why he called. I assume that while I kept pacing and wondering why wasn’t he ringing, he kept ringing and wondering why I wasn’t answering.
Asked dad why was it off as soon as I noticed and he just shrugged, despite knowing that it should have been on and even saying the night before that he’ll remember to turn it on… Great, making a fool of myself when it’s not even my fault…

Since I had to wake up rather early to make sure the delivery guy won’t catch me still sleeping, I only slept about three and a half hours yesterday morning. So I got in bed after finishing what I had to do with the new computer and eating a bit… That didn’t go quite well, because it seems something didn’t want me to sleep then…
A few minutes after getting in bed, I get an SMS from dad, saying they’re coming back from the dentist. I roll over and try to get back to sleep, only to hear the really loud alarm clock from the living room ringing. I sigh, roll my eyes and try once again to fall asleep. Just then, they come in and start making noise… As soon as I thought I might get used to that, dad knocked on my door to ask how’s it going with his new computer, so we talked about that for a while. That left me thinking about too many things to be able to fall asleep just then, so I paced around the room for several minutes. Eventually I got back in bed, but things still didn’t go quite as planned.
Just as I was falling asleep once again, I felt the bed shake. Since I was partially asleep and things are quite different in my dreams, at first I assumed someone was shaking the bed. But I was still awake enough to remember that I’m sleeping alone a moment later, which made me wonder what’s going on. At first I felt around behind me, to make sure I was alone, then I really woke up and looked around in confusion. Eventually I figured out that there had probably been a small earthquake, but I wasn’t certain until I saw an e-mail with the news in my inbox right after I woke up.
I did manage to finally fall asleep after that and slept for about one hour and a half, but the problems weren’t quite over, as waking up was quite scary. I thought I was already awake, but still felt too tired to get up, so I waited a bit longer in bed. Then I felt this incredibly powerful blow to my face, followed by going completely numb. It made me think that a truck had somehow slammed into my face… My first thought was “and now I die”. A few seconds later, after realizing that’s not the case, the train of thought went to “apparently not, but I doubt there’s much left of me, so if I still have arms I have to reach under my bed, grab my cell phone, call 112 and then, if I also still have a mouth, say something, because I have no idea what just happened but it was really bad”. Luckily I actually woke up when I started moving towards my phone.
I was still seeing a lot of letters, numbers and pictures in all sorts of colors swimming in front of my eyes for a few minutes after I woke up and my brain felt rattled for about one hour after that. At first I checked for blood, then for bruises and lumps, but I didn’t find anything. And my head was pretty much below the pillow when I woke up, far away from anything I could have hit myself with, so I still have no idea what happened. Could have just been one of those nightmares you have when you’re very tired, in which you dream that you wake up, are convinced that you’re awake, and then something terrible happens.

So what about Finnish? Not much, just that I was noticing that my Finnish “vocabulary” went from two to about ten words over the past week and yet none of them is a curse word. I need to ask Alina for some soon, because that’s quite weird. Those are usually the first things you learn in another language, after all!