Cyberland or Stalkerland?

Paul and I watched Dateline the other night and got to see 19 adult men go to a house where they thought they were going to be able to engage in sexual acts with a 12-, 13-, or 14-year-old child (either male or female). You may ask how these men were inticed to the house. Let me tell you. It was through a group called Perverted-Justice.com that poses as young girls and boys in regional Internet chat rooms. The posers did not in any way solicit or approach the men, rather allowing them to initiate conversation and the sex talk. I added a link to the left if you want to check these guys out. They've worked with law enforcement and gotten 39 convictions out of their work. They are a group of volunteers from around the country that do this to help stamp out the evil perpetrated by pedophiles on the internet. So please, if you have children that in any way use the Internet-TALK TO THEM!!! Tell them about the dangers of chatting/IM-ing with strangers! Show them the Dateline if you can get a hold of it. There are many children from seriously dysfunctional families that these guys LOVE to get their hands on, but YOUR children do NOT have to be victims if you teach them how to be proactive and use extreme caution when on the internet, especially in chat rooms. Try it for yourself if you don't quite think it's that bad. Sign up for a Yahoo ID and pose as a 12-year-old. Go into any chat room and see how many men quickly IM you and start in with the sex talk. No parent wants their child to be exposed to this and you can go to Perverted Justice to get some tips about how to make your child's internet experience safe and fun. Okay, rant done.

Hope you all had a good weekend. I have a cold that finally decided to kick my ass all over the place. And let me tell you, I am not a good sick person. Poor Paulie had to put up with my supreme crankiness but he's a heck of a trooper. Even made me eat since I've had no appetite at all since the cold hit (yeah, that's only about 48 hours, maybe I'll lose a pound or two, lol). But did manage to get all my reading done for the rest of the class and the take home exam done. Didn't get my rough draft for a paper read yet, but I'll do that this week.

WARNING: Boring computer stuff below...feel free to skip and ignore. Did a software update on my desktop and it pretty much fried out my internet browsers. Spent a little while reading up on the issues in the Apple discussion forums and it turns out this update has been causing all sorts of problems. Did it on my laptop and no issues there, so I have to try to figure out what got flamed.

So, that was my fun and exciting weekend. Got to spend the time with kleenexes shoved in my nose and tossing and turning. Have taken heavy drugs (well...Nyquil, but I'm sure that's a near-illegal narcotic) for tonight so will sleep well (I hope). All for now and see ya soon!

Love,
B