Tag Archives: Connecticut

Tragedy in Connecticut – The Possible Effects of Self-Absorbed Social Media

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While I am not condoning the behavior of what happened in the Connecticut Elementary School shooting at the Sandy Hook school in Newtown; I still wonder what would cause someone to snap.
Some blame the gun control and how lax it is.
Some blame the security of the schools, which in the Newtown event, they were above proactive, the problem was the gunman shot the glass door.
Some would question the mental health system in this country
Some would say that we have gotten too politically correct by not saying that someone who is jerk instead of he’s got issues.
gf2Some even would say that the school systems lowering standards, and giving awards to all people, and saying that “you’re special” and how when they finish school, the world doesn’t treat everyone as “special”
Some have questioned if social media is causing animals like this gunman to do what he did…
…my point would be is it really social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter to make everyone else less aware of their surroundings, is causing them to be self-absorbed, or even causing them to act like celebrities, and other narcissistic-enabling behavior?
Is social media or networking sites confirming a point that many “normal” people the ones that are really the jerks, and causing a person to be so angry because of his quirks and being left out because he wasn’t in the “clique”?
This alleged anger might had been dating from his high school days. He was born in Kingston, NH and then moved to Connecticut with his single mother when he was young and did grow up in Newtown. Was the snobbish/jerky behavior of his peers caused him to snap?
We do know he was high honors and was in some peer groups like LAN parties (gaming online – no not trying to socialize with NetWare, Nextstep or NT servers…in my dreams that would be my ideal “LAN party!”) and those stories came out by the end of the weekend.
But what about the ones who wouldn’t take innocent lives, but have some form of frustration after spending most of ones childhood in school? What if someone who has social or relationship problems who see the self-absorbed behavior around him, how can he (or she mind you) is going to react or get those words out properly?
But now after this tragedy, the autism world had initially been painted with a bad brush, and even when it has been debunked, there is still going to be ignorance!
I called this out Friday night, society will still be overly cautious on some loner, and quiet individuals as domestic criminals. There are surveillance technologies that can detect such behavior and send red flags on the “tape”. As fucked up as it is, I hate to say it is what it is. One too many massacres, and people become scared and overly cautious.  And the people like me are the ones that will be targeted for a period of time until another disasters happens.
I want to make this clear – I am in no means defending this guy, I’m only playing devils advocate. Sometimes its necessary to see the other side.

Newtown Tragedy – Perspective

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It has been 2 days since the gunman killed almost 2 dozen children and 5 women in a “little town” in a Connecticut Elementary school. I would like to take a few minutes to break some things down.

  • This morning, details about the “mother” of the gunman killed in one of the classrooms turns out she didn’t work for that school. Yesterday, it was believed  that she was a temp employee. So now knowing that he didn’t kill his mother; what made him go there?
  • The medical examination believes that the children had died on impact given how little they were and how one bullet or so could take them out entirely
  • And this gunman had blown the glass on the door to get in since the school was locked shut unless you have a key card, or you don’t look like that dude when you appear on the CCTV camera.

These sorts of questions are a big mystery, and since he killed himself, it makes the investigation a little more difficult.
RELATED: Original thoughts on the Tragedy in Connecticut.
 
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What made him kill? What was so wrong at home for him to blow peoples heads off? Why did he pull triggers instead of doing a hostage situation, which could had been less life threatening?
What is worse is schools will have to ether make their buildings more bullet-proof (translation: becoming corrections facilities). The SWAT teams wouldn’t work because he already killed tons of  people prior to their arrival.
The acts against the most youngest people in society is just sad.
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Not to minimize this story, but I do doubt about how the media has described this “small town” in the New York Tristate area. Since most of the media is from New York, apparently their scalability of communities is much different than my perception. Newtown has 27,000 or so people. That is same (or similar) for towns like North Andover, Massachusetts;  Londonderry, New Hampshire and Attleboro, Massachusetts.  Such towns typically (at least the one I’ve mentioned)  have a significant school aged population and/or is a “bedroom community” as the media have described about  Newtown.  I’ve heard descriptions such as “everyone knew by name”. But this “tight-knit” might be describing how the entire town knew the principal at Sandy Hook Elementary instead of knowing their neighbors or socializing in the local stores, etc.
The “small town” part should be taken with skepticism.
The definition of the “small town” has gone away sadly to say at least around here. When I was growing up, I was under the impression the “small town.” I was living in was what my family described, and it turns out I was mislead. It was in the past, not in the present! I love the ideal of a “small town”, a community that isn’t so judgmental, or they at least talk to you, and they don’t mind their business and they know you by name. Where I live, the neighbors around me are much older, and grew up in the town that was once a real “small town”. Today it has changed, I won’t go into details since it would be improper, but it will give me an idea to write in the future.

Newtown Tragedy

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I try to not be a journalist on this blog, but today makes me get my inner-reporter to kick in and have a mini-editorial. It does however focus on relationships.
My heart goes out to the victims of the elementary school shooting in Newtown Connecticut. The shooting was the second largest massacre in US history. There was more victims than Virginia Tech and Columbine and unlike those who perished, these were young kids! The school was a kindergarten to 4th grade school. most of these children were under the age of 10, young and innocent like it should be. Parents had expected their kids to start school on a normal day on Friday with the weather nice and sunny and a teensy mild for the area.
No parent was expecting a reversed 9-1-1 call today from the local emergency communications bureau to give them the OK to show up to a staging area to see if their kid would arrive unscathed physically or emotionally.
No parent should have been in New York (or even Bridgeport) and going back home  to the longest drive in their lives to see if their “baby” was still alive. Remember, these dead were kindergardeners – 5 years old!
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Hurricane Sandy – Update

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The preparations have been completed to the things I noted earlier. I was going to shut down the computer systems at 9:00 the earliest tomorrow morning, but I’ve decided to shut all systems down earlier than planned. I have 4 servers, 2 NT based ones for file/print sharing, and another one for the active directory, and a third running as a lab app server (trying to implement SharePoint) and a little Lacie network drive that attaches to my LAN. I did it remotely via my Remote Desktop Connection upstairs in my living room writing the story on my laptop and watching all local stations.
This is coming at the worst time of the year, one just another disaster to deal with, secondly we are approaching the holiday season. Veterans Day (a bank holiday – i.e. kids out of school), the Thanksgiving mini vacation, then the shopping seasons from mid November to just after New Years, and just the hustle and bustle and the ambient anxiety. This storm is just making the ambient rush just accelerate.  Maybe it would be best if I move to a new town, to a more quieter area or just people that don’t rush around.
As I am realizing my area isn’t going to get hit as I had thought of earlier, New York, D.C. and Southern New England are my concerns. From Mystic, Connecticut to D.C. from Battery Park City to Providence are somewhat troubling for me. I can’t imagine what these urban areas are going to go through. The suburban and rural and smaller communities have been a target by Mother Nature for the last few years. I’ll be monitoring the world south of me as long as I have power.
I think its best to not visit Southern New England or New York City later this year. My mother and I were planning to visit NYC the first week of September, and we have gone to the  LEGO KidsFest in Hartford the last 3 years and we visited Mystic, 3 weeks prior to last years Noreaster a year ago exactly to this day,
Its going to be somewhat troubling to witness this storm. It’s simply an understatement to even say that.