"Facebook parenting for troubled teen"

I planned on doing a separate long, detailed post on parent-off-spring responsibilities since I come from a troubled background myself and discuss the mistakes my parents made with me and vice versa. How I was a troubled kid with anti-social problems, but that won't be in this post.

This post is my response to the sentiments put forward by the parents in the above video. I just happened to be reading the paper today and found this story before looking it up online.

I'm mostly in favor of the father's points. I think his daughter needed to learn all the luxuries and income does not come without giving in return. And posting personal family matters online can have consequences which is why the father did the right thing by putting something of his online.

What goes around comes around. You slander somebody in front of so many people, you must face the consequences of it coming back at you.

What I did disagree with was him shooting up the laptop. Instead of shooting up an expensive piece of machinery and wasting resources, he should have publicly given it to someone who really needed it. He should have donated it to a school for poor children or something of that sort.

Additionally I think he should have also demonstrated to her how to do her chores on video to prove to her and the world how easy they are. This would have given his message the right meaning.

The father also was a bit too hard on his daughter. Just because he happened to leave his home, do two jobs, high school and collage (assuming he's not exaggerating or even making all this up) doesn't mean he should suddenly expect the same form his daughter, unless of course he plans on doing sending his daughter to live the same life he did at her age. I doubt most teenagers live the way he did. It's unfair for him to expect his daughter to suddenly be the same.

All he should have done was deprive her of her luxuries unless she earned them.

The shooting part might have been more dramatic and get more public attention to the video and the message in it, but it certainly gave a lot of supporters the wrong message.

What appears to be this trigger happy dad is what I mean:


The point wasn't to shoot up your daughter's favorite things, the point was to teach your kids a lesson depending on the situation. And in her situation I might have used a more basic approach by telling her that no chores means no luxuries.

But again, I'm no one to judge. These are my two cents on that whole video and drama. I'll cover more of my opinion on parent-off-spring relations and responsibilities in another post.

Don't sell heavy items on Amazon

If you are a seller on any of Amazon's branches, be careful of what you sell. Selling more heavy items like large books or DVD box sets could cost you a lot in shipping.

This is despite that Amazon giving you a rough estimate on how much the shipment will cost. I recently sold a six disc box set of Planet of the Apes on DVD and the shipping cost me over ten dollars of what the estimate of what Amazon gave.

I obviously tried to pursue it and when I managed to get a caller to contact me, he tried to justify the whole thing by claiming Amazon does not give the exact amount. I asked for an email or phone number to be able to pursue this. He ended up giving me an email that was not valid.

I couldn't bother pursuing the whole thing all over again. But it taught me a lesson not to sell anything large or heavy that will cost far more than the shipping price enlisted by Amazon. All sellers need to take this into consideration if they're planning on making their Amazon sales profitable.

Rude and dangerous people in customer service

People generally seem to know that customers can be rude and burdening to those who work in customer service. A lot of customers demand perfection and make excuses not to pay up. At other times instead of offering construction criticism, they resort to harassment.

I'm definitely not one of those people. My parents can be like that at times, but not me. I generally like to avoid arguments and fights. I also feel sympathetic towards such people who work hard for little pay.

But at the same time I don't like being picked on by people for no reason be it they are working class in the customer service or any individual. However, Canada or North America in general has no shortage of rude and hostile people including recent immigrants as I covered in this post.

While there may be no shortage of rude customers, there is no shortage of rude and dangerous people in customer service either. What do I mean by that?

I'm referring to people who can behave rudely or even violently without the slightest regard for the consequences they may face. Many have a strange impression that being put in a workplace somehow makes it theirs.

As an example I seriously hate the conduct of the public transport we have here in a city in Canada. Weather it is rudeness, inefficiency, arrogance and false authoritarianism, I just developed this hatred from nowhere.

What's more is they have all these warning signs on their buses, stations about legal consequences of threatening/assaulting a public transport employee and that it occurs on a daily basis. I don't advocate violence or anything of that sort, but I never sympathize with those who provoke it instead of those who were provoked into committing such acts.

Then about a year ago, I stumbled across a website with listed complaints by contributors and an entire forum. I had come across similar complaints in newspapers, but it did not compare to the experience I personally had.

Sure it was great to know I wasn't the only one who had these problems with the public transport, but some cases I read were quite extreme. One instance was of a bus driver listening to music and honking away through residential neighborhoods. At the end of the trip, a passenger pointed out to the driver there was no need to be honking the whole time and disturbing the passengers as well as residents.

The bus driver angrily replied "get of 'my' bus."
This is just a reflection of my experience with the rude waitress in the restaurant in the linked post when she told to get out of there following an argument we had.

Another case I read was of a girl who wasn't carrying a student card to validate her pass in which the bus driver abruptly snatched her card. She pleaded for him to return it but he laughed her off. When leaving the bus she cursed him by which he retaliated by shoving her hard.

To get to the point, these are the types of people who have jobs in customer service. Why do they behave like that?
They consist of people who have never finished or even been to school so they never learned how to respect others and authority in a social environment.

They have never faced consequences for actions that could get them into trouble with not only their employers but also the law. The examples mentioned earlier in this post prove my point.

While they have no regards for their social conduct or facing consequences to behave the way they do, people should start to wonder why so many incidents of threats and assaults occur against public transport employees.

As mentioned, I do not advocate violence or anything of that sort. However I do advocate punitive measures against such people. Because they did not learn to behave during childhood, it is important they learn it during adulthood. If you do come across a person in customer service who is senselessly rude or intimidating, never hesitate to lodge a formal complaint with their employees.

Standing up to such people is in your best interests because if you don't, you are likely to develop into an under confident, weak personality. It doesn't just stop at people in customer service, but with rude people in general. Once these people are taught a lesson that other people have feelings too, they will learn to control their behavior.

This post may have more added to it later on, but stops here for now.

What you need to know and do before adopting a pet

If you plan on adopting a pet, you must consider the following conditions:

-Responsibility. That's the most important thing. A pet is not a toy, but a living thing with feelings. It's not just about being able to feed the creature and meet it's physical needs, but also emotional needs.
When you give birth to a child or adopt one, are you not obliged to give the attention and meet their emotional needs? The same is true for a pet.

-Commitment. It's a different thing from responsibility. It's about holding on to that responsibility no matter what. Unless of course there is a list to you and your loved ones such as disease or aggressive behavior form the pet.

-Desire. Life teaches us you cannot succeed most of the time in things that you do not desire. If you do not desire to be a pianist, it is unlikely you will become a successful one.
Likewise if you do not enjoy always having the company of pets all the time, you must not even consider being a permanent pet owner/guardian.

Those are the most obvious points that most people would expect, but now I want to mention things that are not carefully considered in most cases.

If you have children who have regular "sibling wars" over new things that are meant to be shared by them such as toys or house gifts, beware of pet adoption. If both are fighting over a pet's attention and responsibility, it could be an extremely difficult situation for the pet to cope with.

Children in general also lack responsibility due to their young age. It is best children are not given the responsibility of a pet until an older age just before their teenage years begin.

It's also understandable that a pet with a diagnosed long-term illness is a burden to take care of; hence it is extremely important to ensure the pet does not have any diseases or illnesses if you do not wish to be burdened by it.

Also it is advisable to adopt and care for one pet before deciding to adopt another. Too many pets can result in over time consumption on caring for them. If your experience with one pet gives you assurance that you can care for another or a few more, only then should you opt for more pets.

Also if you wish the least responsibility with pet ownership, it is advisable to adopt a cat instead of a dog as cats are generally more independent and less social than dogs.

These are important thing you need to know when considering adopting one or more pets.

Get a shallow aquarium if you have small fish

Like humans, most fish have a limit to how deep underwater they can go without succumbing to water pressure.
That's why under the sea, most fish no matter what breed/species live close to the coastal areas of the Earth in relatively shallow waters.

Even to get vegetarian food they must swim deep to the ocean floor- again in shallow waters. The same applies to fish in an aquarium.

If you have fish that are small like goldfish, then place them in an aquarium not more than one foot or meter deep as they'll have difficulty reaching the bottom to search for dropped food.

An aquarium this size should be suitable with not too many fish:

Also avoid putting fish in a bowl as they have limited space to move around. An aquarium would be more desirable. There is also the concern of the aquarium being too small. If you have fish that are large such as those that people eat, then get a larger aquarium that is deep and spacious.

If I had the choice of living in any place in the world it would be...

ICELAND here's why:

1) Most sparsely populated country in Europe with comfy-looking homes in the countryside:

2) A large but pleasant metropolitan city/town with less traffic and noise which is a common annoyance in most capitals:



3) Cold weather enough to kill germs, but nevertheless pleasant and enjoyable compared to continental winters:



4) Open sea with hot summers:



5) Safety. Most of the crimes such as murder and theft are almost unheard of in Iceland with less than a thousand people working in law enforcement or so I read.

My only reason for not living there would be different language which an immigrant is most likely required to learn.
But regardless, the great conditions of Iceland are all made possible due to having a small and sustainable population, something the rest of the world can learn from.

With cheaper prices, always expect cheapest quality

With higher pay comes better quality of what you pay for. People who seek easy shortcuts and buy discounted items weather food or other items are better off not buying anything at all.

If you buy cheap fast food, you know it's not as healthy as buying expensive organic food. When you by a cheap electronic device, you're better off not buying one at all.
As an example, I once got a cheap discounted DVD player at Walmart for less than forty dollars. With it came a whole bunch of problems such as the picture quality deceasing and returning every few seconds. The DVD jamming and resuming also every few seconds. No sane person I can think of would want to watch a movie in happiness with such trash quality.

I was better off not getting it at all. The same goes for everything. I bought a PC desktop for only $100 because the other computers got stolen. But these cheap PCs weren't that good and had pirated copies of windows running on them.

People who look for ways to save money by buying such cheap products are actually wasting more money than saving.
Every dollar you spend on getting a decent quality item comes in the quality suitable for the consumer.