Family Friendly Netbook from Disney

For those of you with young children and looking to pick up one of those priced right for the picking netbooks which have taken the market by storm, Disney’s new Netpal netbook just starting taking Pre-orders yesterday. For those who don’t know, the specs look like this:

* 8.9-inch screen
* Intel Atom N270 CPU
* 1GB RAM
* 16GB SSD
* WiFi
* 3 USB ports
* 0.3 MP webcam

The best spec of this laptop is that Disney has put their own child friendly, parent approved shell on top of Windows XP, allowing parents control of the apps which are allowed to run, the times of day they can be run, a web browser which allows you white-list websites and an email client which will do the same. It’s very customizable and best of all it can run any MS apps such as Word or Powerpoint for your young one’s class projects. As stated, pre-orders are up at Toys R Us.

For more details and a great video demo of the product, check out Engadget.

[via Slashgear]

Beauty In Age

beauty in age

today we live in a society which worships youth above all,
men and women think they can raise their esteem by fixing the parts that fall.
these lost men look upon and do not respect their wives,
in their hearts desiring something younger, fresher, to validate their lives.
and women go chasing the fountain of youth which really does exist,
its the streams of living water from God, what they look for
evaporates like mist.
i know you think i charm and say things because they sound “right”
but God has given me a heart to see the truth of beauty,
i see the world and i see His light.
He has shaped and formed you from head to toe,
every wrinkle, curve or mole.
it just seems to me that erasing His work would make us seem less whole.
so i honor and cherish the history your beautiful form speaks,
because there are memories in our scars,
and life lived in each dimple and peak.

Resurrection

When did you realize that your dreams had passed?

Smashed and stashed in the trash,

the wealth you thought you’d amass cuz you graduated top of your class.

The lives you thought you’d be effecting,

the films you knew you’d be directing.

The sweet scented flower that was your hopes has blossomed,

petals outstretched, basking in the warmth of youthful exuberance soon wilted

only having partially bloomed.

but out of death, springs forth life,

the nectar of your apparent defeat becoming the seeds that breathed new life into those old sepia tone dreams.

And now the theater of your mind is back…projecting,

brimming,

bursting forth in vibrant color,

a new cinematic masterpiece to replace those deceased old things which needed to be relesed.

It’s the cycle of life,

the cycle of pride,

you thought you might be dead inside,

though when you died you found you were alive.

Inspiration…

Sorry. Haven’t posted in a while…it’s been busy.

So, I’ve been inspired to start writing poetry again. Youth can be so inspiring and in it we sometimes are reminded of parts of our adult selves that the hardships of life have attempted to quiet. Thanks Jess!

I don’t know what this one’s called yet and it’s my first in quite some time. Hope you love it/hate it….either way, I hope it makes you think.

the other day i sat,
pondering.

wandering through the parent ‘hood,
i thought i’d see what’s good.
but all i seem to see are these tweetle dumbs and tweetle dees,
speaking these circular soliloquies,
telling the world “i gotta live for me.”

angrier and angrier, there i sat,
wont to correct their ‘tude with a bat.
just then it struck me,
empathy….
…and i realized that free love wasn’t free.

you see, it began 50 some odd years ago,
with bell bottom jeans and bros with ‘fros.
everybody wanted to express,
their sense of self with cess and sex.
they wanted to exhale and dispell the notion,
set by their parents who sewed commitment and devotion…
“respect authority, commit to one wife for life,
the man is the head, don’t walk out when there’s strife.”
Instead they said, “let’s redefine.
we need a new motto, a new paradigm.”
free love! peace! down with the man!
i can’t say i blame ’em change WAS needed in the land.
the problem as always is the way people and times evolve.
we went from one extreme to the other, no balance was involved.

flash forward to the seventies, there still was no care.
i love the night life, there’s got to be a disco or party somewhere.
Oh and as a hold out from the previous,
this contribution should be no shock,
we were told not to spank ’em by my man Dr. Spock.

jump again to the eighties,
the “me” generation,
which was naught more than the adults who were part of that hippie situation.
They’ve grown up now,
and realized they’ve got to labor,
but brought along the ideals of the hippie,
now selfishness was the flavor.

i know some are thinking, “why the history lesson?”
it’s so that when you look around at the family’s decay,
you now have no excuse to be guessing.

“Where are the fathers?”
they learned from their dads,
that free love is the greatest thing,
and from feminist mothers, that a woman doesn’t need a man.
So, no longer needed, no longer shown to hold fast to their bonds,
you all became MILFs and if you’re lucky they’d take care of their spawn.
“why is crime so high between three and six?”
well, the men are gone and mom’s out “gettin’ hers,”
and if two parents are there their both still gone,
no direction in the home…”what could go wrong?”
teen pregnancy, hiv, and herpes epidemic,
drugs are rampant, thugs are rampant, and anger’s an epidemic.

yeah, i know it’s deeper than this,
there are many more dynamics,
but i stand atop the forest and see the trees for what’s been planted.
self-centeredness, ego, ignorance now reign,
we all work so hard for empty gain,
the cost is our children’s spirits slain,
and now the cycle’s complete, our society dripping,
drizzling, slowly down the drain.