Weblogging with Terrence

Double Standards Between Males & Females

2011-01-08T13:36:00.000-08:00

It's about that time again where I rant and talk about daily life issues as I've done before by blogging and creating videos on youtube. Cutting to the chase, I will be discussing the double standards that still exist in our society as I am typing this blog. The type of double standards I'm referring to is "Gender" type standards that divides in equality between a male and a female.

The following below doesn't represent anyone else views and opinions but my own and doesn't necessarily represent the individual views of all people in society as a whole.

A specific double standard between males and females is the sexual activity between both genders. I like to refer to this standard as the "Player vs Whore Philosophy" because this is a standard that results from the same actions from both genders, but contains a variation of consequences ranging from positive to negative outcomes depending on one's gender.

For example, let's say that Bob (male) has sexual relations with 10 women in the same night. In the room next to Bob; Mary (female) has sexual relations with 10 men in the same night. The outcome is the same pertaining to 1 person sleeping with 10 different people at the same time. Generally speaking, the "word" gets out that Bob has slept with 10 different women at the same time and as a result; most people in society, especially other males, will look at Bob as a "God" or "Player" or a man of "game" or high-social status and will try to follow within Bob's footsteps. Bob will even receive glances from some females because of his sexual relations to please 10 different women at the same time. Sad, but true in some instances.

On the other hand, the "word" gets out that Mary has slept with 10 different men at the same time and her treatment is a little different. Unlike Bob who's being praised for his actions, Mary gets belittled and called a "slut" or "whore" or negative insults for committing the same actions that landed Bob a sanitary "praise" from his male and some female peers. Mary is looked upon by nearly all females as "trifling", "slutty", etc and the males look at Mary as being "easy", a "jump-off"; still a negative outlook for Mary.

I have to wonder why do these standards still exist between men and women. I feel as if society is becoming more desensitized to the fact that people in general are equal because we are all human beings, but the treatment of people in general variates on multiple levels. I believe that influences such as the media, the internet, and so on, has caused the desensitization of most individuals when it comes to double standards.

Morally speaking, most people grow up learning how to have a "monogamous" relationship and some venture away from the monogamous style into open relationships or the "polygamous" lifestyle. As we see in the media, most males who sleep with multiple women in a short time are rappers, rock-stars, celebrities, rich men, or any man of high social status. These men are looked upon by other less social status males as role-models or someone who they would like to follow in their footsteps, which is also why I think males who sleep with multiple women are merely praised or simply looked upon as being a "player".

In movies, the media, or in general, you hardly ever see a female being praised or looked upon as a "playerette" as I like to call it when she sleeps with multiple men in real life or even in movies. In the media such as movies and the internet, the only time you really see a female sleeping with multiple men at once is in a rated-XXX porn movie. If you do see a female sleeping with multiple men at once in a movie, she is almost always given a bad reputation throughout the movie. Why is that?
I feel as if society is more comfortable with the fact that men sleeping with 1000's of women is alright because partially of the media and what they see in day to day activities. I feel that females are treated negatively regarding the same standard because of how the media portray females in the industry, whether its in real life, the internet, or the movies.

There are plenty more standards that I want to point out also, but this standard of "Player vs Whore Philosophy" as I call it is something that I really wanted to dwell on for a bit.

I will leave this section open for more "Double Standards" as I formulate more ideas:

Youtube's Removal of Groups [my thoughts]

2010-12-05T12:31:00.000-08:00

As many youtubers are now aware, youtube has removed its group feature from the website. Prior to the removal of its groups, youtube made the following statement which I will paraphrase:

"We will build new group features more thoroughly integrated into YouTube and decided to detach the existing YouTube Groups to avoid confusion among the community and make way for the new product, whatever that product may be. We believe that all group members are important members of the YouTube community and hope that all existing members will beta test these new features when they are released. Groups are going away December 1, 2010. Thanks for supporting this feature and we hope to replace it soon."

In my own words, I've been a fan of youtube groups since I created my youtube gaming channel ("terrencej18") a few years ago. Groups are a way for average youtube users to get noticed by other youtubers while making new friends and gaining insight on their videos. It's hard to get noticed when there's millions of youtube users and everyone is making videos of various types. Unless you're "Fred", "Smosh", "Ray William Johnson", "Schmoyoho", or a few other big-time youtube partners/music artists, the possibility that someone will find your video is second to none. In other words, the chance of "becoming famous" as people put it on youtube is very small, especially if no one is creating content to stand out.

For example, everyday, I receive requests and messages from different youtube users about "checking out my music track" or something of that nature. For the most part, they all have similar beats and they all talk about the same thing; either "women", "money", "vehicles", or "guns". Eventually, people will stop looking at these music pages as they are becoming more repetitive, just like the actual music industry were 90% of the music artists are using "auto-tune" to enhance their voices in their songs. Getting back on subject though, youtube groups were away for the average youtube user to communicate with individuals that share a common interest without having to search videos and track that person's channel just to add him/her as a friend. For instance, I am a hardcore gaming fan, so I would join gaming groups and communicate with fellow gamers that share a common interest while making new friends on youtube, but that can't happen anymore.

The primary reason I think that the groups were shutdown was due to the "sub4sub" groups and "porn" groups that were being created on youtube. I've done sub4sub before on my channel and I still do it because I know that there was no way in hell my channel views, video upload views, or subscribers would have not substantially increased within three months without joining a few sub4sub groups. Some youtubers talk down "sub4sub" groups but there are several youtube partners that would have never became youtube partners (individual or full-account) without joining sub4sub groups including myself. I'm not a full account youtube partner yet, but I have gotten several videos under the individual partner program [ad-revenue sharing] because of sub4sub groups and posting topics inviting people to watch my videos, while telling them to rate, comment, and subscribe.

The second reason I think the groups were shutdown was because of the increase in "porn" groups, in which some of the porn groups had thumbnails of explicit porn images, however, the porn videos posted to these groups were private and could only be seen by whoever the owner of the private porn video sends that video to if they request to watch it from the group.

As a fellow youtuber, I am quite disappointed that youtube or "google" has shutdown the group feature of youtube. It would be nice if they would give an approximate date of these "alleged" new group features that's coming soon to youtube. It wouldn't surprise me if we don't even see any "Group" features until the year 2015, but then again, shutting down groups is not going to stop "sub4sub", not by a long shot because the youtubers that sub4sub can create videos and start the sub4sub legacy over again, which I am 100% for.

Thank you for reading my post.

Gaming on the Intel X3100 Video Card – Compatible Games Part 2

2010-11-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

I'm back again with a new review and blog about more compatible PC games for the Intel X3100 video card. As long as you have a dual core processor at 2.00GHz or higher, you should be able to play these games below with little or no problem at all:

1) Halo Combat Evolved (Decals, shadows, etc = OFF; textures/particles = "LOW"; Resolution = 1024x768)

2) Toy Story 3 - (Resolution = 1280x800; Graphics = "HIGH")

3) Street Racing Syndicate - (Resolution = 1024x768; Everything = low/medium)

4) Fable The Lost Chapters - (Resolution = 1024x768x32; Graphics = Lowest, V-Sync=ON)

5) Microsoft Train Simulator - (Default settings)

6) Call of Duty 1 - (Default settings and resolution)

7) The Incredibles - (Default graphic settings and resolution)

8) Spiderman Friend or Foe - (Resolution = 1024x768; quality = medium)

9) Portal PC Game - (Resolution = 1024x768; graphic settings = low)

10) The Simpsons Hit and Run PC - (Default graphic settings & resolution)

11) WWE RAW - Ultimate Impact - (Resolution = 1024x768; graphics = medium/high)

12) Cocoto Kart Racer - (Default settings / resolution)

13) NBA LIVE 08 - (Default graphic settings)

14) Spider-Man 2 PC - (Default graphic settings)

15) Rallisport Challenge - (Default graphic settings)

I hope this new list of games will be helpful to anyone that owns an Intel video card. Part 3 will be coming soon once I test more PC games on the X3100 video card.
Feel free to comment. If you need any PC gaming accessories, feel free to check out the GameShark gaming store to purchase your gaming accessories needed to enjoy your PC games.
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Cheating in Relationships - My Thoughts/Opinions

2010-11-21T15:46:00.000-08:00

This is for males and females, so I'm not taking a definite side regarding gender. I feel that there is no justified reason to "Cheat" on your lover, spouse, girlfriend/boyfriend or whatever because cheating is cheating and there's no way around it. If anyone disagrees with me and feels that cheating is justified and okay, please don't hesitate to comment this post so we can have a nice discussion.

In my opinion, I feel that cheating is cheating and it can't be defined otherwise. If you cheat on a final exam, and get caught, can you say that it wasn't cheating? If you cheat on an exam and don't get caught, is it still cheating? You're doing the same action, but with different results. In this case, it's cheating, because you're focusing on someone's else paper instead of your own to gain personal benefit from it. This situation is similar to the situation of relationships. If you're sleeping around with someone else instead of your own spouse or better-half, that's for your own personal gain and it's cheating, no other way to say it.

My definition of "cheating" course is: "the sole attempt to trick one's spouse or lover into believing that one is faithful enough to receive their lover's trust by illustrating that they can be "faithful", although they've contradicted themselves by cheating".

If one feels that they lost that "special connection" or just doesn't love the person they're with, I would rather tell the person how I feel and separate from them than just living with them and showing no affection as if you're complete strangers living together. Now if there are children involved, that's a different story because children deserve to have both of their parents when growing up, however children can sense negativity in the atmosphere and if you and your lover can't settle your differences while living together, it can effect the children as well. In that situation, either the lovers need to put their differences aside for the kids or just separate to keep their kids from that negative atmosphere.

Many people also tend to use or try to find loop holes when referring to cheating or something of that nature. I often hear people say some things like this:

"It's not cheating if you don't get caught" - what the hell is it then? Of course that's cheating. If you go to a store and steal a big screen TV and if you don't get caught, it's still illegal regardless because there are laws that make that action illegal. Although there aren't laws regarding relationships, there are laws regarding marriage and can result in a breach of contract if one or the other spouse cheats on the other. If you cheat on your spouse and do not get caught, it's still cheating regardless. If you weren't ready to commit to a relationship, then why in the world would you be in one in the first place?

"It's not cheating if your lover does it to you first" - I'm going be a little more understandable here, but it's still cheating on both parts. First of all, if it was me, I would have rather called off the relationship for one because if they cared about me enough and was faithful enough in the first place, then we wouldn't be having this conversation about cheating now would we? Otherwise, they would have stayed committed and never cheated in the first place and for the person who goes and cheat after their lover has cheated, it's still cheating because you're still in a "RELATIONSHIP" = commitment with that person.

"I wasn't getting "any pleasure" from him or her, so I had to find it else where" - I'm a little more understanding here, but if you felt that way, you should have brought it to their attention because the fact of the matter is, you still were in a "committed" or whatever relationship when that happened and although I understand where somebody would come from on this one, it's still cheating regardless of the situation.

So, there you have it people, that's just a brief thought of what I thought cheating was and how I felt about it, I could have written an entire sermon on this, but again, it's only an opinion, so don't get all bent out of shape if u didn't agree with anything I said because it's only an opinion.
If anyone likes this and agrees with me about this, comment on it and let me know what u think about it too!!!
Like I said earlier, if anyone disagrees with me and feels that cheating is justified and okay, please don't hesitate to comment this note so we can talk about the situation.

Thank you for reading.

The Economic Crisis & My Thoughts about it

2010-11-14T20:41:00.000-08:00

This blog here is my thoughts on the current economic crisis. I believe that the current economic crises resulted from capitalism’s core values. Many people are leaning towards the statement that this crisis is just one more failure of the market economy. I really wouldn’t say that it is one more failure of the market because I’ve learned that markets are usually a good way to organize economic activity in most cases. It is also a good way to regulate competition in the economy because without competition, businesses can charge as much as they want for a product or service, creating a monopoly that can potentially put a nation’s economy in a dangerous situation.

For example, lets say that “Company A” makes the ingredients for corn syrup and “Company A” is the only company in the United States that makes corn syrup. Company A has a great amount of market power and isn’t subject to the competition of other companies. If Company A decides to raise its prices because of the desire to make money (a core value of capitalism), the businesses such as soft-drink companies who use corn-syrup as a main ingredient may have to layoff their workers to remain cost efficient while bearing the effects of the increased price in corn syrup. In addition, “Cereal” type companies also would experience layoffs because of their heavy dependence on corn syrup. As a result also, since production would have substantially decreased in these companies because of their inelastic demand for corn syrup, the workers who drive the trucks for each company or who keeps up with the inventory of each company may be laid-off as well, and as this chain reaction continues, it causes high unemployment rates, inflation, and possible recessions.

Now, I believe that Capitalism’s core values is the root behind the economic crises because the basic purpose of capitalism is to accumulate money or wealth for purposes such as investing, spending, saving, buying, etc. Capitalism allows individuals to own property and decide on what to buy with their money. Capitalism also allows companies to hire who they want, what and how much of a certain product to make without too much governmental interference. I also think Greed is what really failed the market.

Capitalism creates greed and it causes some individuals to do almost anything, whether it’s legal, illegal, ethical, or unethical, in order to maximize their profits while not considering the side effects or future destruction of their actions. Because of these individual’s avarice, these side effects that result may include market failure, which is what the nation is currently experiencing. These individual actions are also referred to sometimes as negative externalities because the actions of individuals that lust after money such as corporations and capitalists causes impact on other individuals or “innocent bystanders”.

One example I will use of a negative externality is the housing market and the loans financial capitalists who were giving “subprime” mortgages to people that could NOT in any way or shape afford to pay for the mortgage. One instance is giving a subprime mortgage to an individual making about $5,000 a year, in which most mortgages costs between about $500/month to about $2500/month or more [not including other bills], so there is no way that individual could afford that loan. However, the greed and avarice of these financial capitalists based on the core values of capitalism such as making/accumulating money, investing, owning property/businesses, etc, is what causes these individuals to distribute these loans to low or no income individuals. These financial capitalists had so much money and was driven by the desire of making more money, they knew that the borrowers were not eligible of paying off the debt, but they gave these subprime mortgages that would have low interest rates that these borrowers could probably pay off for a few years, but would later default on their loans when mortgage rates skyrockets a few years later.

The financial capitalists believed that the value of the borrower’s home would increase and once the borrower defaulted on the loan, the financial capitalists would issue a new mortgage for the same house, but with increased rates and give it to another individual and the cycle would be continuous. However, since housing prices drastically decreased a few years later, these financial capitalists began losing money and the borrowers were stuck with these mortgage rates that after a few years increased two, three, four or more times than their original rates. As a result, many individuals lost their homes and could not afford another place to live.

This would be an example of a negative externality because the actions of some of these financial capitalists and other individuals who had avarice and greed caused a negative impact on “innocent bystanders”, in this case, the borrowers of these subprime mortgages.

This is why I think that the core values of capitalism is what caused the current economic crises because although capitalism gives individuals freedom to accumulate wealth and own property, having too much of anything can actually be a bad thing. For instance, drinking too much water causes water intoxication, consuming too much sodium increases blood pressure levels, consuming too much saturated fats causes obesity, and in this case, having too many core values in Capitalism causes greed and avarice in a free market economy, which could cause potential economic failure.

Currently, “uncertainty” is what is keeping the economy from really moving forward and decreasing unemployment rates. The alleged increase in taxes from the Obama administration is keeping small and large businesses from hiring many or any individuals because they don’t know the effects the taxes will have on their business or the status of the health care plan that’s being proposed by the Administration. Banks are not really lending to many individuals and companies because of the uncertainty that they will receive their money back along with any accrued interest on a loan or borrowed money.

“Nice Guys Finish Last?” Real or an “Excuse” Statement?

2010-11-14T20:15:00.000-08:00

I used to believe the statement that “Nice Guys Finish Last” when pertaining to relationships and dating; NOT ANYMORE!!! Now, I believe that “Nice Guys” only finish last because they have ALLOWED themselves to finish last. Once or twice a week, I hear some guy(s) always saying, “yeah, we nice guys finish last. Women play too many games with men to a point where the man doesn’t know if the woman is serious or not because they want to use men“. Sounds familiar? I’m sure it does.

Now, I’m going to give some input on what I think about this “Nice Guys Finish Last” statement and everything I’m saying is only my opinion. I am not bringing down any “nice guys” out there, but again, this is only opinion based:

I think the “Nice guys finish last” statement should become the males’ national anthem because it is thrown around entirely too much. I agree that there are some women who play games with men, but on the other hand, there are some men who play games with women as well. There’s always two sides to a story people. Some men will also tell women what they wanna hear to get what they want, not just women alone. It is a complete fabrication for anyone to say that all women or all men play games because it is impossible to have a relationship with every person in the world, so no one can say that all men or all women are that way.
It’s not the fact that females do not like nice guys because they like to be around nice guys but on occasions, some of them are not really “attracted” to some “nice guys” because there’s a such thing as being “too nice”.

Before anyone jumps out of their chair, I will explain what I mean by being “too nice”. Example(s) of being too nice would be for instance: a male going on dates and then trying to buy her the most expensive gift(s) and dinner(s) on each date, which can be a huge turnoff for a lot of women, especially on the first date, calling/texting her every 10 minutes of the day and having a fit if she doesn’t txt back, being around her 24/7 (figure of speech) not giving her any breathing room or space, giving way too many compliments on her looks. These are just a few things to name. Most, if not all females just want to be treated like regular human beings, not objects or trophy prizes.

In addition, there are some “nice guys” who lack the confidence that women are attracted to because females are attracted to confident guys. Most of these guys out there who other people categorize as “jerks” or “dogs” that have girlfriend(s) are the ones who don’t care about what people think of them and most of them, although arrogant and cocky mostly, are very confident. They don’t shower women with expensive gifts every day and they won’t have a heart attack if the woman doesn’t text or call them back the same day or cancel her plans with them. Some nice guys are looked upon as being “needy”, clingy, “submissive”, and as pushovers while also being looked upon as needing the females approval on everything they do. And they practically do “EVERYTHING” the woman wants him to do as if the guy is too afraid to take an initiative to do anything, which also looks as if the guy is just that desperate to be with a female. Most females want a man who they can RESPECT, not a man who they can control as if she were his mother.

I’m not saying it’s wrong to be nice, but some guys overdo the nice guy role by a thousand miles. There is nothing wrong with being a gentleman and there is a difference between a gentleman and a nice guy. A gentleman is one who is confident and courteous & do things like hold and open doors, pull out chairs, etc and who has a set of values and beliefs and who is RESPECTFUL. A nice guy is someone who can do some of these things, but still gets walked over because of being too needy or clingy and lacking self-confidence. There is nothing more of a turn OFF to most women than a man who lacks self-confidence; a man who is submissive and weak emotionally, and looks for the woman to control everything and needs her approval on everything.

I know it may not seem like it at times, but surprisingly there are a lot of females who really don’t care as much about a guy’s looks, height, clothes they wear, the car they drive, or how rich they are, etc, as much as males think they do. Yeah sure, they don’t want someone who looks like a slob or who only showers once a month, but can you blame them? It took me years to realize that, but if you are confident and you “be yourself” and not pretend to be someone else you’re not and using these whack pick up lines that NEVER WORK, women will pick up on that and females will be attracted to that. Yeah sure, you’re not going to attract all females and that’s common because you can’t always determine what a female wants based on the choices of a another female. Not all females are the same and they do NOT all think and feel the same way.

Another curveball I will throw out is the fact that most if not all women like a challenge and they like to be challenged by men and for the most part, a lot of “nice guys” simply cannot provide that challenge they are looking for and this is another reason why some females are not attracted to “nice guys”.

Men also have to understand that women and men think completely different. They do not think in the same way. Typically, most men tend to make decisions logically while most women tend to base their decisions on emotions/feelings, however, as time goes along, this psychological theory of men and women seems to be fading each day. In regarding attraction, females and even some men for that matter simply cannot control whom they are attracted to, no matter how hard they try.
Now, I’m sure a lot of people are ready to jump out of their windows but again, this is only opinion based and I’m always open to expressing opinion based topics.

Gaming on the Intel X3100 Video Card – Compatible Games Part I

2010-11-14T19:58:00.000-08:00

As many computer savvy people already know, the intel video cards are not made for hardcome pc games like GTA IV or Crysis Warhead, especially when playing in HD Resolution (1280 x 720) or higher. After purchasing an Acer Aspire 5920 in early 2007 from Wal-Mart, I discovered a few days later that it was not the same as the Acer Aspire 5920G with the dedicated ATI or Nvidia graphics card. At first I thought that I had just wasted $599.00 on a computer that would not meet my expectations, however, the X3100 video can run quite a few good games at low to mid resolutions (640 x 480 – 1024 x 768). For example, Street Fighter IV for the PC runs between 55 to 60 FPS during in-gameplay. Most of the settings are on low or medium with the exception of the background quality which is set on high. The frame rate is set to “fixed” of course, but the only problem is that some of the character’s fireballs & projectiles (Ryu, Ken, Dan, etc) are invisible unless the model quality is set on high. The second problem is that the X3100 will greatly bottleneck the performance if the graphic settings for SF IV is set on high because the X3100 is not capable of running the game on high settings at a constant 55-60 FPS due to the fact that:

1) It has only 128MB of video RAM, up to 358MB of shared system memory. Only 128MB is actually dedicated.
2) The game requires a minimum of 256MB of Video Ram (“dedicated” graphics of course).
3) As a result, the game will decrease from an average of 58 FPS to about an average of 30-40 FPS; it is still playable although quite sluggish and about 33%-50% slower than normal.

Overall, having the Intel X3100 Video Card is not a complete nightmare though, especially if you have a dual core processor. I prefer Intel Core 2 Duo Models, however, I prefer AMD Quad-Core models over Intel Quad and Core i models. The following games I have tested below are playable on the X3100 Video Card…If you have a Core 2 Duo at 2.0GHz or better, you will be able to enjoy playing these games on your PC:

1. Street Fighter IV (Settings: off-low-medium; Background Quality = high; Frame Rate: “fixed” )
2. Area 51 (uncheck high detailed textures)
3. Grand Theft Auto III (default settings)
4. GTA San Andreas (up to 1280 x 720, graphics quality = low)
5. GTA Vice City (default settings)
6. Hitman Blood Money (Turn settings down to the lowest)
7. Max Payne 2 The Fall of Max Payne (up to 1280 x 720 with no problem; Textures = Medium)
8. Need For Speed Most Wanted (640 x 480 OR 800 x 600 Resolution)
9. Need For Speed Underground 1 (1024 x 768 – Medium Settings)
10. Sonic Adventure DX (default settings)

All of these games I’ve tested on my computer and as long as you have a Core 2 Duo @ 2.0GHz and the X3100 video card or something better hopefully, you should be fine with these 10 games.
Thanks for reading!! All feedback is appreciated. There will be more to come