Today, I made the mistake of checking who was using my star name widget on their web pages. There is a Russian social site where a hundred or so people use the code and there must be 30 people on a site called downlink using it. I saw a geocities site that was getting a few hits and I clicked on it to discover it was a memorial site for an 8 year old boy who died from complications of a heart transplant.

The mother made a memorial site to help her cope with the loss. It has lots of pictures and a frank discussion of the boy’s death. I feel just awful. I can’t close my eyes without seeing the kids picture and feeling his mother’s pain. I must never click through on any of the links again. Some of them are heart breaking. The whole FreeNameAStar.com thing feels like a scam, yet I’ve registered 25,000 free stars, and many of these offer real comfort to people who need it.