2018.04.23 13.15
100928
three songs
100920
small towns
100919
best dollar stores
100918
KW day two
100917
Waterloo via Galt
100914
Facebook Humbug
100908a
Portraits at Forest Hill
100908
new family member
100907
bears raccoons
100906
frightened, bikes gone
100812
tug of war
100803
monday at centrepoint mall
100802
sunday with my folks
100300
march 2010
091200
december 2009
090800
august 2009
090600
june 2009
090400
april 2009
090300
march 2009
index2006
back to 2005-2006
index2004
back to 2003-2004
archive
unmodified old essays and pix
|
100914 Facebook Humbug
0130 | After a long time avoiding it, I
have decided to give Facebook a try. Everyone else I know is
on it, and I have so many reservations about it. I suppose my
biggest fear about doing this was how popular it is. Friendster,
MySpace and even Yahoo are all trying to get people doing the
same things. Facebook's primary sin is just how they are the defacto
place to be.
|
0145 | I am on step 2. I have only just given
them my name, my city, and the password and email I hope to use
for the service. Already it is suggesting to me all of the people
I happen to know in person. I feel ill. The system has already shown it knows too
much about me, and I haven't said a thing.
|
0200 | Ok, I cannot stop the servers from learning
about me through third parties, but I can try to minimize the damage.
I locate the privacy settings, and turning off each one so that it
doesn't work is difficult. They make it a custom setting. But I've
set my wall to "me only" which makes it impossible for people to
kibbitz me on my own space. I still can't prevent them from talking
about me on other pages, but that seems rare. I'll be watching for
that. If people manage to talk about me publicly on this thing,
and still keep it so it attributes the facts to my name, then
I will remove my account from it.
|
0300 | Gawd. I'm still at it. This Facebook thing is clearly about
coaxing people to discard their privacy. They make it fun, but people who use it
tell their Facebook status every last thing they do and think, and it faithfully
records this, and lets friends, strangers and stalkers alike comment on it.
|
1600 | Doctor's appointment. Weight is still high. Blood pressure
is high too. I thought I had early prostrate trouble, but Dr B says my prostrate gland
is not enlarged, and that my bladder issues have another source. I truly hate blood
work, but I will get it done. Urine analysis is fine with me. And for the next visit
they want GF to attend, as my problems and hers are likely related.
|
1730 | The internet has failed! I wanted the name of the
chicken and ribs place a couple of blocks west of Bloor and Christie, but cannot
get the name out of GoogleMaps. They have a rack of ribs for $12, a bbq chicken
$10. They offer dinners that include drinks and salads which really inflate the
final price, but I remember seeing raw ribs selling for more than $12 at Dominion,
so I got a rack. Amazing good, and prepared in the Portugese style. I had only a
couple of bones, and put the rest away for later.
|
1800 | Across the street, on the south side of Bloor W, it
looks like every other store is some kind of hair place. Hair 1010, Cinderella,
and many more. I went into one which had only a Korean Name (maybe I'll find the
receipt later, and amend this post). The lady was standing at the door, just
gazing out, wishing for her day without customers to end. I waved, and it didn't
actually wake her up. I smiled too brightly and waved again. She blinked and opened
the door for me. I like my hair done a simple way: I want a big shield on the electric
thing, and to get it all even. This way it will not only be curly, but evenly curly
when it grows out, probably four months from now. I'll get two months of the hair
I like, before I cut it next March 14. After she finished, I got a surprise: she
washed my new hair. So I didn't have it raining down rough trim all evening long.
What a good thing!
|
1830 | I said hi to Steve at Above All, and spent some time in
the Bakery and Cafe near Bathurst. Wow! They have a Yamaha piano there now! I practiced
english dance tunes for a while (as my own electronic Korg Trinity is just used to hold
stuff at home. I should change that). A coffee with a toasted bagel (that they baked
themselves this morning) is $2.09 with tax. I went here thinking I would use their
complementary internet. I was happy playing.
|
1945 | I'm a bit late for helping my friend get his
computer issues fixed, but I'm started. I thought "skype will be easy", but for some
reason, skype makes his system work at 100%, and gets useless. I ran Comodo System
Cleaner, and it's better, but still has trouble doing any kind of work. It browses
internet fine, but something (maybe the audio) makes it slow. I hope I find the answer.
Doing a web search for "my windows XP SP3 computer is slow" will get me perhaps a million
posts back, all unrelated to my problem. Maybe the solution will come to me in a dream.
It often does. Then when I return to the customer, I seem like some kind of brilliant
computer wizard. Maybe I am, but from my perspective it feels like magic or something.
Wizard, magic: they're related words.
|
2230 | GF has picked me up. That's nice. Too bad it has changed
from warm outside to cold. We wander home, and get in the door around an hour later.
I wanted to spend more time outside, but I'm just so chilly now.
|
0030 next day | I look at Facebook again, and see how it begs
for attention, for me to look into the activities of the Facebook Friends, and how
it wants me to share the things I've written here on to their network. I'd rather
it stay here. Their servers seem smart, and would actually learn about me from the
things I said, or did not say. People would be able to comment on things I shared,
and the details I tried to skip over quickly or miss would be caught. I see an old
friend getting cajoled for not using his Facebook enough. He has a birthday coming
up too. Should I like Facebook for reminding me about this, or continue to be terrified
about Big Brother like their service has become? I've heard people rag on about
government lotteries the same way, how they can't get people to pay more taxes, but
if they can make the lottery look interesting, they can raise plenty of extra funds
for things.
In the future I'll try to like Facebook. For now, though, I'll try to not hate it, and might
learn to like it eventually.
|
|