Here's some backstory. For those who are patient enough to read, thanks in advance! And if you don't want to respond something constructively, please don't respond at all. This is a pretty serious situation in my life, and I would really like some honest, thought provoking answers.

I am an Indian born American, brought to this country at the age of 7 by my parents. During that time, I have grown more and more distant with my family in India and my roots. About 3 years ago, I started dating a Palestinian man. It's good to note here that although he's Palestinian, neither him nor his family adhere to the religion of Islam-- this will come into play later on in my story.

Recently, 3 days ago, my parents found out about my relationship with him, and gave me the ultimate choice.. him, or them. Their reasoning for this is that he is a Muslim (he's not) and he will not gel well with my family back in India (whom I do not see or talk to, at all). My mother has even gone so far as to say that she will cut all ties with me should I choose to stay with him, and that we are as good as dead to each other-- she believes that me being with him will ruin her reputation, both with Indian families here and my family in India.

He is one of the most amazing men in the world, and he is one in a million. The way he treats me and looks after me is rivaled by no other relationship I've ever encountered within my family or friends, and I don't wish to lose that kind of a relationship. I believe that even if I search for the rest of my life, I may only be half as lucky to find someone as loving and caring as he is.

Now, the question I pose to you, and your understanding, eloquent audience is this-- what choice do I make? Do I simply give up the person who might as well be the LOVE OF MY LIFE for the sake of my family's integrity? Or do I stay with him in the hopes that my parents will come around to the relationship in the future? Will they come around? What are the chances of that?

10/4/2013 2:40:56 PM

I realize this thread is about Indians and Muslims dating.... which I have not. Hear me out, maybe I can offer some insight.

I am in outside sales, which is currently salary+commission, but will move into straight commission starting at the beginning of July 2010. I have been in this position since July 2009. I have competition from several direct manufacturing sales reps, large distributors, and local distributors. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each:

Direct Advantages: Immediate knowledge of new technology, no middle man mark up, one shipping bill (paid by manufacturer or buyer of goods), access to larger range of non-commodity items, control inventory, have access to many distributors that can effectively sell their goods which increases market share, and set prices of commodity they manufacture.

Direct disadvantages: Typically have 1-3 sales reps per region (i.e. southeast, mid-atlantic, northeast, etc.) limiting the number of accounts they can successfully manage/cold-call, lack physical customer service or physical technical service available to or affordable for smaller users or altogether, are sometimes not trustworthy because they will go in behind their distributors that sell their commodity to one account in large quantities (i.e. they missed a big account, and have found out about it through a distributor selling their particular product) which leads to the distributor not selling their product anymore, have too many distributors selling the product ultimately driving the set price down through deviations, possibly rely on distributors to actually sell the product, and competition from other direct sources.

Large distributor advantages: have access to other commodities that go hand in hand with other manufacturers (poor example- grocery stores sell milk as well as cereal), get direct pricing, many locations regionally or nationally easing the shipping burden of buyers with multiple locations, personal service either customer or technical, many sales reps that are able to cover a broader territory, access to multiple manufacturers of the same commodity allowing to keep prices in check, service programs that smaller companies can't offer and direct providers can't match in price or value, and experts of many many commodities as opposed to one or a few.

Large distributor disadvantages: smaller local distributors creating price wars (think Michael Scott Paper Co vs Dunder-Mifflin), direct mfg's going in behind and stealing business, limited access to all of the mfg's (you won't find Harris Teeter name brands in Food Lion and visa versa), can't truly set prices because it's based on both supply and demand, territory management, and tough growth prospects in slower economies (this is true for direct as well really)

Local distributor advantages: Typically a good ol' boy setting where the seller and the buyer know each other for years (this does happen at all levels, but mostly at the local level), local folks are right down the street and can be used in emergencies, if the local guy buys at high enough volumes then there is no shipping charge to the end user, and access to both direct mfg's and large distributors.

Local distributor disadvantages: easily beaten in price, array of commodities, array of technology, lack of trained staff, low cash flow, etc etc etc.

This is what I have noticed in my six months, I am sure there are plenty more that need mentioning. The way I am setting myself apart as a sales person is this: I go after the big accounts right now while I am new. The big accounts, if I land them, will take care of me while I am new and building a customer base. The money made off of those allows me to focus free time on smaller accounts that get me higher margins. I build up big accounts, I would like to have 5-10 of these, then get 20-30 medium accounts. If I lose 1 or 2 big accounts, the 20-30 medium accounts keep me afloat while I go after new big accounts. I don't really waste time on small accounts simply because they basically pay for breakfast or something really small.

I will say this, if you can't get a big account in the first 6-8 months (assuming you have cash flow that you can ride this long) you could be in a world of trouble. If you can get one, it will really make going after the others a lot more enjoyable and less stressful. It's simply just very exhausting wasting any time on anything other than big accounts in the very beginning. You work just as hard on the medium sized accounts and see 1/3 to 1/36 of the money in my situation.

If you have any other questions, you can PM me. I hope this helps in the slightest!

10/4/2013 2:43:46 PM

1) How old are you?

2) Sounds like your parents are douches, regardless of their intentions.

10/4/2013 2:49:29 PM

Oh wow. This should be fun. Where to begin...

Quote :

"you're either a shill or a troll because the only other possibility is that for the last 5 or so years I've been streaming media to my TV, I've just had other bad products off the line repeatedly"

Or another possibility could be that I've tried out more than just a video game console and a defective Apple TV before deciding that the only other thing that half-assed worked must be the best thing evar by default.

Quote :

"first i had a ps3 and I had to either make sure video files were formatted correctly or were native in the proper format for it to play"

The PS3 is a video game console first, a blu-ray player second, and a media streaming device a far distant third. You won't get any argument from me that it's a steaming pile of shit.

Quote :

"second i got an apple tv with the sole intention of jailbreaking it so it could run as a media center only to have the wifi drop out continuously or run sluggishly whenever fast forwarding or rewinding."

You obviously had a bad Apple TV, and should have returned it. I've had 2 ATVs for myself, 2 for my parents, and one for my sister, jailbroke them all, and never experienced anything like what you described.

Quote :

"the roku's usb functionality is basic? it plays everything you throw at it! I never have to format even 1080p bluray rips. I can have the idea "I want to watch x..." and 2 seconds later I can be watching it on the Roku and through PS3 and aTV, there was an entire process and/or other hardware involved."

Off the top of my head, here's a list of things wrong with the Roku's USB playback:

*The UI for the file selection is horrible. You can only see, I think, 4 items at a time, and only the first ~20 characters of the file name are displayed. So if you have a folder with Showname.720p.s01e01, Showname.720p.s01e02, etc, it cuts them all off to Showname.720p.s01... and makes it impossible to determine which episode you want to select.

*Speaking of the UI, it's just ugly. There's no customization, there's no view options, and there's certainly nothing even close to fancy features like scraping metadata and show/movie information off the internet and displaying dvd covers/movie posters for saved files. Like I said, it's just very basic.

*It doesn't mark the content that you've watched in any way.

*It doesn't allow you to delete files from the USB stick when you're done watching them.

*There's no resume feature when playing back a movie you've watched a portion of.

*There's no way to see the file when you're fast forwarding. Seriously, every media device made since the dawn of time lets you see things going in fast forward or rewind, but the Roku just throws up a black screen, and a timeline at the bottom. That wouldn't be so horrible if you know that you want to fast forward to 22 minutes in a movie, but if you just want to scan something quickly to look for a particular scene, it's impossible.

*There's also no way to jump large amounts of time. If you're watching a movie that's 2 hours and 30 minutes, and you even bothered to remember that you stopped it at 1 hour 45 minutes, there's still no way to get to that spot again unless you fast forward 3x to that point, which takes a good 30 seconds or more. There's no reason why they couldn't make one of the buttons jump forward 10 minutes at a time.

*Nitpicky, but I get annoyed that over half the buttons on the Roku remote will stop playback of a file. Seriously, hitting a direction on the d-pad stops the video for some reason. If you have a small child that likes to play with remotes, or you accidentally lay the remote on the couch and sit on it, it's FAR too easy to accidentally stop a movie from playing. Combined with the previous 3 items, this gets annoying far too often.

*If by "everything you throw at it" you mean "only H.264 mp4s or mkvs" then you might be right. Everything else is a crap shoot. Up until not too long ago, the most popular file format for sharing movies was divx/xvid avis. The Roku simply won't play those. One of the shows I watch is still only uploaded to the internet in divx format, so I have to convert it if I want to watch it on the Roku. And hey, lets just completely forget that WMV, MOV, MPG, FLV, or ASF files exist, right?

*It only does passthrough of AC3 audio. Which means unless your TV can handle decoding AC3(most don't), or you're hooked up to a receiver/soundbar, you won't get any sound coming from those blu-ray rips of yours. Which might be fine if you DO have a receiver that does AC3/DTS, but if you want to take your Roku over to a friends house and all he has is a normal TV, you're going to be having silent movie night.

So yes. I'd consider that basic. If I'm being nice. You can get one particular format of movies you've got stored on a USB drive to show up on your TV most of the time, and that's about it. Sometimes they even have audio too, so I suppose that's a bonus. Pretty much the definition of the word basic though.

Quote :

"Maybe YOU have no idea what you're talking about and you're thinking of previous experiences with earlier rokus but the new Roku 3 is simply the greatest wave of relief I've experienced in my media center setup in years."

That confirms my suspicions then. You've tried to get a game console to do something it wasn't designed to do, had bad luck with an Apple TV when you tried to get it to do what it wasn't supposed to do, and then you've stumbled onto a Roku and it looks like a shining diamond in comparison.

Me? My first media streamer was a modded original xbox running XBMC. It wouldn't play HD content (not that there was much to be had back then anyway) but the UI was excellent. Once you've experienced that, just about everything else is going to be a letdown in comparison.

Then about 5 years ago I replaced it with a Popcorn Hour A-110 NMT. It really will play absolutely everything imaginable that you throw at it from USB or a SMB share on the network. As far as local media playback is concerned, it is definitively better than the Roku is in every way imaginable, and if mine hadn't been struck by lightning 2 years back, I would still be using it to this day as my primary Media Center device. It has none of the drawbacks of the Roku I listed above even though it is now 5+ years old. It doesn't do any sort of Netflix or Youtube or really hardly any internet streaming, but that's simply not what it was designed for. I think newer versions of the PCH have added such features.

Also about 5 years back I bought a WD TV HD for my bedroom. It's very basic as well, but again, at 5 years old it plays back files from USB better than the Roku could ever dream of today. It also doesn't have any of the negatives I listed above, with the exception of not doing metadata/movie posters. I bought a new WD TV last year for $59 that is completely redesigned, and does to the movie poster/show info thing as well. It also has an HDMI port as well as standard RCA cable output, meaning when I took it on the family vacation this summer I was able to hook it up to the old TV in the rental house we stayed in and have Netflix for the kids as well as movies for the adults on a USB stick. There's two separate reasons why that wouldn't have worked with a Roku 3.

My point is, there are tons of other devices out there, many for far less money, that do so much more than the Roku. It all depends on what you want to do with it, and what features are important to you. The Roku has name recognition and ease of use going for it, and that's just about it. Everything else about it, if you took the time to actually educate yourself on the topic, is really subpar.

10/4/2013 2:58:05 PM

lol, no wonder this shithole is dead

10/4/2013 2:58:58 PM

It's an alias who's reposting some shit from a rando advice site. Don't be so gullible.

10/4/2013 2:59:35 PM

- The one time I was not going to be a dick

[Edited on October 4, 2013 at 3:02 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2013 3:01:45 PM

http://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=457873

10/4/2013 3:05:05 PM

I'm 21, will be 22 in about 2 months. I was able to keep this from them for three years because I did not live at home after the age of 19. I just recently moved back home at my mother's insistence but will be moving out again in December/January when I graduate college.

10/4/2013 3:06:06 PM

i lol'd.

10/4/2013 3:06:50 PM

Maybe this an appropriate thread to discuss the psychology of being an alias troll.

Why do people do it? What kind of person would think it was fun to do this sort of thing? Is it a mental disorder? Is it just an ego-trip? Does it give them a sense of self-worth? What?

10/4/2013 3:07:40 PM

How is it an alias? They use the same username on every other forum.

10/4/2013 3:08:32 PM

So why do people think this is a troll? Just because it has been re-posted from another forum? Can't it be the same person?

10/4/2013 3:09:42 PM

Quote :

"How is it an alias? They use the same username on every other forum."

Quote :

"So why do people think this is a troll? Just because it has been re-posted from another forum? Can't it be the same person?"

Quote :

"lol, no wonder this shithole is dead"

10/4/2013 3:12:07 PM

madeinindia, if this is serious, post this in the Lounge. Assholes can't derail the thread there by bombing it like in Chit Chat. And if it is serious, I have a serious response to give as well, which I have typed out but won't post here in Chit Chat as the thread is ruined. Please repost in the Lounge.

10/4/2013 3:13:09 PM

if it is a true post, the answer's pretty simple:

unfortunately, your parents suck. screw them.


[Edited on October 4, 2013 at 3:44 PM. Reason : ]

10/4/2013 3:21:15 PM

^ and probably the dumbest of cunts if she think she's met the man of her dreams

10/4/2013 3:24:12 PM

http://www.enotalone.com/forum/showthread.php?t=457873
http://www.loveshack.org/forums/familial/family/415945-how-can-i-choose-between-my-best-friend-my-family
http://www.peoplesproblems.org/showtopic/2938/Parents-Dont-Approve-Of-My-Romantic-Relationship.

10/4/2013 3:36:17 PM

And she came to TWW for for "honest, thought provoking answers". That's a good one.

10/4/2013 3:47:19 PM

All those links prove or disprove nothing.

So what exactly are you saying?

1) the posts on those other message boards are real, and that some tww user has read them, and decided to create the same user name as an alias and posted the same story here? If so, what benefit does this tww user get?

Or

2) the posts on the other message boards are real, and that some person has decided to post here... but as a joke? If so, why would they post here as a joke if the story is true?

Or

3) the posts on the other message boards are not real, and they are made by a troll(s) for the purpose of....? And that same troll(s) or maybe a tww user has decided to post the same fictional situation here for the purpose of....?

10/4/2013 3:56:02 PM

10/4/2013 3:57:43 PM

LOOK HOW BAD I WANT TO ARGUE ABOUT THIS

10/4/2013 4:03:58 PM

im pretty happing being the OP that spawned two lengthy tww copy/pastas

10/4/2013 4:09:43 PM

just an fyi, the enotalone post is definitely mine too. lol, i don't just look for advice from one source.. i essentially did copy paste that same story, because i didn't want to type everything else out again and miss it. i promise.

10/4/2013 4:28:29 PM

guess i will take some advice and repost it in the lounge.

10/4/2013 4:30:19 PM

I think you can find a better man via TWW, who will be acceptable by your parents. I think we have some dating threads, go use the search tool.

Quote :

"So why do people think this is a troll? Just because it has been re-posted from another forum? Can't it be the same person?"

wow. That sounds pretty doubtful.

[Edited on October 4, 2013 at 4:32 PM. Reason : ]

[Edited on October 4, 2013 at 4:33 PM. Reason : I will not post in the lounge thread. I will not post in the lounge thread.]

10/4/2013 4:31:17 PM

If for real..., if your parents aren't rich, then you have no real incentive to give a fuck what they think. They'll get over it, or they won't, but who gives a rats ass, you'll be happy.

10/4/2013 4:35:06 PM

Quote :

"I'm 21, will be 22 in about 2 months. - August 9, 2013"

Quote :

"I'm 22 - August 12, 2013"

Quote :

"Recently, 3 days ago, my parents found out about my relationship with him - August 9, 2013, August 12, 2013, October 4, 2013"

seems legit

10/4/2013 6:18:10 PM

10/4/2013 6:37:37 PM

^ this

10/4/2013 8:23:02 PM

Quote :

"So what exactly are you saying?"

nothing.

10/4/2013 8:32:49 PM

I just want to start off by saying if you want an answer at the end, prepare to be disappointed. There just isn't one.

I was an intern at Nickelodeon Studios for a year in 2005 for my degree in animation. It wasn't paid of course, most internships aren't, but it did have some perks beyond education. To adults it might not seem like a big one, but most kids at the time would go crazy over it.

Now, since I worked directly with the editors and animators, I got to view the new episodes days before they aired. I'll get right to it without giving too many unnecessary details. They had very recently made the SpongeBob movie and the entire staff was somewhat sapped of creativity so it took them longer to start up the season. But the delay lasted longer for more upsetting reasons. There was a problem with the series 4 premiere that set everyone and everything back for several months.

Me and two other interns were in the editing room along with the lead animators and sound editors for the final cut. We received the copy that was supposed to be "Fear of a Krabby Patty" and gathered around the screen to watch. Now, given that it isn't final yet animators often put up a mock title card, sort of an inside joke for us, with phony, often times lewd titles, such as "How sex doesn't work" instead of "Rock-a-bye-Bivalve" when SpongeBob and Patrick adopt a sea scallop. Nothing particularly funny but work related chuckles. So when we saw the title card "Squidward's Suicide" we didn't think it more than a morbid joke.

One of the interns did a small throat laugh at it. The happy-go-lucky music plays as is normal. The story began with Squidward practicing his clarinet, hitting a few sour notes like normal. We hear SpongeBob laughing outside and Squidward stops, yelling at him to keep it down as he has a concert that night and needs to practice. SpongeBob says okay and goes to see Sandy with Patrick. The bubbles splash screen comes up and we see the ending of Squidward's concert. This is when things began to seem off.

While playing, a few frames repeat themselves, but the sound doesn't (at this point sound is synced up with animation, so, yes, that's not common) but when he stops playing, the sound finishes as if the skip never happened. There is slight murmuring in the crowd before they begin to boo him. Not normal cartoon booing that is common in the show, but you could very clearly hear malice in it. Squidward's in full frame and looks visibly afraid. The shot goes to the crowd, with SpongeBob in center frame, and he too is booing, very much unlike him. That isn't the oddest thing, though. What is odd is everyone had hyper realistic eyes. Very detailed. Clearly not shots of real people's eyes, but something a bit more real than CGI. The pupils were red. Some of us looked at each other, obviously confused, but since we weren't the writers, we didn't question its appeal to children yet.

The shot goes to Squidward sitting on the edge of his bed, looking very forlorn. The view out of his porthole window is of a night sky so it isn't very long after the concert. The unsettling part is at this point there is no sound. Literally no sound. Not even the feedback from the speakers in the room. It's as if the speakers were turned off, though their status showed them working perfectly. He just sat there, blinking, in this silence for about 30 seconds, then he started to sob softly. He put his hands (tentacles) over his eyes and cried quietly for a full minute more, all the while a sound in the background very slowly growing from nothing to barely audible. It sounded like a slight breeze through a forest.

The screen slowly begins to zoom in on his face. By slow I mean it's only noticeable if you look at shots 10 seconds apart side by side. His sobbing gets louder, more full of hurt and anger. The screen then twitches a bit, as if it twists in on itself, for a split second then back to normal. The wind-through-the-trees sound gets slowly louder and more severe, as if a storm is brewing somewhere. The eerie part is this sound, and Squidward's sobbing, sounded real, as if the sound wasn't coming from the speakers but as if the speakers were holes the sound was coming through from the other side. As good as sound as the studio likes to have, they don't purchase the equipment to be that good to produce sound of that quality.

Below the sound of the wind and sobbing, very faint, something sounded like laughing. It came at odd intervals and never lasted more than a second so you had a hard time pinning it (we watched this show twice, so pardon me if things sound too specific but I've had time to think about them). After 30 seconds of this, the screen blurred and twitched violently and something flashed over the screen, as if a single frame was replaced.

The lead animation editor paused and rewound frame by frame. What we saw was horrible. It was a still photo of a dead child. He couldn't have been more than 6. The face was mangled and bloodied, one eye dangling over his upturned face, popped. He was naked down to his underwear, his stomach crudely cut open and his entrails laying beside him. He was laying on some pavement that was probably a road.

The most upsetting part was that there was a shadow of the photographer. There was no crime tape, no evidence tags or markers, and the angle was completely off for a shot designed to be evidence. It would seem the photographer was the person responsible for the child's death. We were of course mortified, but pressed on, hoping that it was just a sick joke.

The screen flipped back to Squidward, still sobbing, louder than before, and half body in frame. There was now what appeared to be blood running down his face from his eyes. The blood was also done in a hyper realistic style, looking as if you touched it you'd get blood on your fingers. The wind sounded now as if it were that of a gale blowing through the forest; there were even snapping sounds of branches. The laughing, a deep baritone, lasting at longer intervals and coming more frequently. After about 20 seconds, the screen again twisted and showed a single frame photo.

The editor was reluctant to go back, we all were, but he knew he had to. This time the photo was that of what appeared to be a little girl, no older than the first child. She was laying on her stomach, her barrettes in a pool of blood next to her. Her left eye was too popped out and popped, naked except for underpants. Her entrails were piled on top of her above another crude cut along her back. Again the body was on the street and the photographer's shadow was visible, very similar in size and shape to the first. I had to choke back vomit and one intern, the only female in the room, ran out. The show resumed.

About 5 seconds after this second photo played, Squidward went silent, as did all sound, like it was when this scene started. He put his tentacles down and his eyes were now done in hyper realism like the others were in the beginning of this episode. They were bleeding, bloodshot, and pulsating. He just stared at the screen, as if watching the viewer. After about 10 seconds, he started sobbing, this time not covering his eyes. The sound was piercing and loud, and most fear inducing of all is his sobbing was mixed with screams.

Tears and blood were dripping down his face at a heavy rate. The wind sound came back, and so did the deep voiced laughing, and this time the still photo lasted for a good 5 frames.

The animator was able to stop it on the 4th and backed up. This time the photo was of a boy, about the same age, but this time the scene was different. The entrails were just being pulled out from a stomach wound by a large hand, the right eye popped and dangling, blood trickling down it. The animator proceeded. It was hard to believe, but the next one was different but we couldn't tell what. He went on to the next, same thing. He want back to the first and played them quicker and I lost it. I vomited on the floor, the animating and sound editors gasping at the screen. The 5 frames were not as if they were 5 different photos, they were played out as if they were frames from a video. We saw the hand slowly lift out the guts, we saw the kid's eyes focus on it, we even saw two frames of the kid beginning to blink.

The lead sound editor told us to stop, he had to call in the creator to see this. Mr. Hillenburg arrived within about 15 minutes. He was confused as to why he was called down there, so the editor just continued the episode. Once the few frames were shown, all screaming, all sound again stopped. Squidward was just staring at the viewer, full frame of the face, for about 3 seconds. The shot quickly panned out and that deep voice said "DO IT" and we see in Squidward's hands a shotgun. He immediately puts the gun in his mouth and pulls the trigger. Realistic blood and brain matter splatters the wall behind him, and his bed, and he flies back with the force. The last 5 seconds of this episode show his body on the bed, on his side, one eye dangling on what's left of his head above the floor, staring blankly at it. Then the episode ends.

Mr. Hillenburg is obviously angry at this. He demanded to know what the heck was going on. Most people left the room at this point, so it was just a handful of us to watch it again. Viewing the episode twice only served to imprint the entirety of it in my mind and cause me horrible nightmares. I'm sorry I stayed.

10/4/2013 8:43:49 PM

Next time you go home you should wear a suicide vest and tell your family if they don't accept your relationship you'll pull the cord.

10/5/2013 8:50:13 AM

the way you guys trolled this thread was shameful

1/5/2014 8:33:31 PM

^^ lol

1/5/2014 8:41:11 PM

This thread made me belly laugh. Like I used to on a regular basis on this site. Thank you, OP, (alias or not)and all those who replied.

H.N.

1/5/2014 10:55:34 PM