Brittny's Personal Playground
In: Uncategorized
18 Jan 2012Since I blacked out my site today in protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills in congress right now, and spent a good amount of time today linking to related pages on the subject, I figured I ought to write my own thoughts as well. Also to give a bit of an explanation of *what* it is about these bills that is so terrible as to cause as much upheaval as it has.
First of all I feel that the most important thing for me to note is that I am VERY anti-piracy. It is my opinion that if you wouldn’t take it off the shelf at Best Buy and hide it in your backpack, you shouldn’t be pirating your friend’s copy or bit-torrenting non-free software/videos/games/music etc. I know that is an unpopular stance among my peers, but just because something is in a digital format and it is easy to steal doesn’t make it any more right to steal it.
However, even while I believe that intellectual property rights do need to be protected and that piracy needs to be addressed, the SOPA and PIPA bills that are in Congress right now are totally the wrong way to address these problems. I hope you’ll indulge me while I illustrate my oppositions with two major scenarios that this bill would make possible that should not be a reality in a free country.
Scenario 1
Suppose on an international-domain website I were to be selling t-shirts and I had a competitor t-shirt seller that had decided I was taking away too much of their business and wanted to get some of that business back. Under the laws that are being considered, all my competitor would have to do is file for an injunction that I had copyrighted material on my website that did not belong to me. Whether or not that claim was true, or even if the material in question was put up there by me (as opposed to a commenter on my website or some other 3rd party) the granted injunction would go to all US-based search engines and payment processors who would immediately be forced to sever all connections to my website completely. No chance to clear up the misunderstanding or warning to me. Now my website is down until I can go through the process of disputing that claim. This means no one can easily access my site or buy my t-shirts and my competitor is stealing all of my business. My credibility would be ruined among my customer base and my whole business is sunk. For a claim that wasn’t difficult to place, and might not even have any veracity.
Scenario 2
Sometimes I like to use Google Talk to have a video call with my parents. It’s a nice way to show off the kids and enjoy feeling close to family even though they’re 704 miles away (yes, I did just check :) ). If I were to have some music playing in the background while on this call and someone were to report me for it I could face felony charges and a 5-year prison sentence. Not a misdemeanor or a speeding ticket-esque fine, felony charges. You know, like they hand out for rape, murder, grand theft auto? Somehow forgetting to turn of your stereo just doesn’t seem worthy of those consequences (even if my mom didn’t like the music I was listening to :P ).
Now, the writers of these bills would say “that’s not the intention of these bills” or “nothing like that would ever happen”. Which is a nice thought, but if that’s not their intention then they need to write better legislation. The whole point of laws is that they’re a contract between citizens and government that outlines the expected behavior and the consequences of not living up to that behavior. If the contract doesn’t include internet censorship, or felony charges for minor infractions, then the contract needs to be written up differently. Like I said, I’m all for intellectual property protection, but they need to do it correctly, and not by putting people in harm’s way who don’t deserve the harm.
If you agree with these sentiments and haven’t already taken action please go to http://americancensorship.org/ and contact your congress people and let them know that you do NOT support SOPA/PIPA legislation. I’d also recommend reading Eric’s post on the subject.
In: Uncategorized
10 Jan 2012So there you have it. Nothing real fancy but those are the things I would most like to accomplish this year in terms of things that are quantifiable and achievable. Ready, set, GO!
In: Uncategorized
9 Jan 2012Today was our ward’s fast and testimony meeting. As I was standing bouncing our baby during the sacrament I decided that I would like to get up and bear my testimony today. However, before the sacrament ended I had to take that baby out to feed him and the line on the stand never dwindled enough for me to feel like I ought to get up. So I promised myself that I would at least come home and share my thoughts here.
December 31st marked a major milestone for me. It marked the end of the first year since 2002 that I had began and finished in the same ward. Over the previous 8 years I had been in 10.5 wards (I’m counting Eric’s BYU singles’ ward as a half since the semester we were engaged I attended with him more frequently than not, even though my records remained in my geographic ward). For me that was a very difficult thing. I like to think of myself as a friendly person, but the truth is that I am seriously shy and it takes me awhile to adjust to new situations. During those 8 years it would take me about 6 months to start to settle into a new ward. which we were then in for about 3-6 months longer before moving on again.
As I was standing in our ward’s chapel bouncing our baby I was able to look around and I realized that I actually *knew* most of the people in our ward. Not only that, but they are people that I like and feel privileged to be around. They’re the same people that I see at the park and in joy school or at the grocery store. I’ve served with them in nursery or primary or at least served with their children there. I can honestly say that I love our ward and can’t think of any place I’d rather be.
I feel so blessed to know that our Heavenly Father loves us and is watching out for what we need, and what will make us happy. When Eric and I were engaged we decided that we could live anywhere, but we really didn’t want to end up in Utah. Five years later Utah is (of course) exactly where we are and we don’t have any intention of leaving (except to go to China for awhile if the opportunity should arise :) . I thought about some of the other plans we’ve made that I’m so glad didn’t work out for us. Growing up I was adamant that I was going to the University of Utah – but going to BYU was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. When Eric and I got married we said we were going to wait 3 years before we started to think about having children – 8 months later we’d changed our minds and less than two years later we had Sam. As we were getting ready to settle down we tried desperately to get out of Utah. When we realized we were staying we set the criteria for our house that we wanted to be close to everything – if you’ve been in our neighborhood you know that we’re far away from just about everything.
I’m so grateful for personal revelation. I”m grateful that the Lord can help us know the things that will be best for us, and not just let us have the things that we want. I’m grateful for the wonderful place that we’ve ended up. Left to our own devices there’s no way we would have chosen the place we did, but we couldn’t be happier with it.
I know that our Heavenly Father loves us and is watching over us. I know that He hears and answers our prayers and that if we follow his guidance and commandments He will lead us to the best situations for us. I know that the gospel taught by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is true. I’m so grateful for it in my life. I write these things in the name of Jesus Christ Amen.
Today in Relief Society we had a lesson on Eternal Marriage. I love talking about this topic in the church because marriage is something that I think is often misconstrued in the media and the world. Our marriage relationships are of utmost importance and maintaining them is by far one of the most important things we will do in this life. I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, and not all of them necessarily connected to the lesson we had today. This post is actually one that I started back in April but I finally decided to get it posted today. I had some other thoughts that I’d like to put together on other marriage related topics, but I think for now this will suffice.
In last April General Conference I was listening to the Priesthood session and was struck by President Monson‘s talk. President Monson said that the saddest part of his week was reviewing the cancellations of temple marriages. His remark was that most of those marriages didn’t have to end that way. He had two thoughts that I thought were particularly poignant “Choose your love, love your choice” and “Committment in marriage is absolutely essential”.
For those of you who know the story of how Eric and I got together, you might be surprised to find out that neither of us believe in “the one”. Meaning, neither of us believe that there is that one and only person out there that you are destined to be with and can’t be happy with anyone else. Now, this might be surprising because the short version of our story is this – Eric asked me on a date on Sunday, we decided to start dating on Thursday, we went on that date on Friday (no I don’t have those two out of order), I met some of his family on Sunday, he met my dad on Friday, he asked me to marry him on Sunday, we were married 6 months later and we’ve been happily married now for 4+ years. So, the question that begs to be answered is how do you decide to marry someone after just 9 days of dating them without feeling like you have an unshakable conviction that they are “the one”? Easy, after 9 days we knew each other well enough to know that we loved each other and we were willing to do whatever it took to make it work.
If you watch Disney movies or any chick flicks you will see lots of examples of people having these “fairy tale” romances, where they find this perfect person and when the movie ends you are left to believe that “they all lived happily ever after.” While that’s a nice thought, I believe there’s no such thing as “happily ever after”. What comes in the “after” is lots of work. Good work, enjoyable times, love, laughter and LOTS of good things, but work. Marriage is not, nor was it ever meant to be, sunshine and rainbows and romance. What I’ve come to realize is that the most important element in a marriage is not that fluttery feeling when you look into each others eyes, but it’s the commitment that you made to weather any storm together that you made on your wedding day. Quite frankly, it doesn’t even matter if you don’t even like your spouse in a particular moment, the important thing is that you committed to one another that you would love them and work together with them no matter what. Love is an expression of caring for another person above yourself and you can do that even if you don’t like the person at the time. Of course, it is best if you can like your spouse as well, and a lot of that comes down to attitude. Obviously, there were lots of things you liked about your spouse when you married them, and it’s important to focus on those things that you do like rather than letting temporary annoyances get in the way.
I want to close this post with an awesome quote from Dallin H. Oaks’ talk from April 2007 conference. He says simply pretty much what I wanted to say:
“In all of this, we should realize that a good marriage does not require a perfect man or a perfect woman. It only requires a man and a woman committed to strive together toward perfection. President Spencer W. Kimball taught: ‘Two individuals approaching the marriage altar must realize that to attain the happy marriage which they hope for they must know that marriage . . . means sacrifice, sharing, and even a reduction of some personal liberties. It means long, hard economizing. It means children who bring with them financial burdens, service burdens, care and worry burdens; but also it means the deepest and sweetest emotions of all’ (Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Spencer W. Kimball [2006], 194).”
In: Personal
18 Oct 2011So I’m thinking of starting a project for a Christmas present for Daniel. I want to make him a quiet book for church. I’m thinking though to keep the project a little bit easier I would see if anyone else wanted to do it with me. If you’re interested here’s how I’m thinking it would work -
Each person will make two pages. I’ll buy fabric for each person’s pages this week and get it cut to the right dimensions and distributed to whoever is interested. Then each person duplicates their pages 16 times (assuming there are 16 people who want to participate) and returns their completed pages to me. I will then redistribute the pages so that each person gets 16 full spread pages, or 32 pages for their quiet book! Then all you need to do is sew a cover for your book, sew the pages together and sew the pages into it and you’re done!
I’ve even already found a bunch of great ideas for quiet book pages so you don’t have to come up with your own ideas, just make some pages! Here are some of the ideas I’ve found -
If I get enough people who are interested by this weekend then I can get the flannel while it’s on sale and it would only cost each person <$5 for the pages themselves plus whatever you spend on buttons, felt pieces etc to finish off your pages. Ideally I think I’d like to find 16 people who are interested since that makes the fabric buying easy. Here’s the guidelines I’ve come up with (although I’m open to suggestions depending on what people would like to do):