Social Media and Casual Video Gaming

After my last blog entry, the question came up whether it is “that easy” to evolve from purely a casual game download company to a social gaming company.  The answer is NO and I am sorry if I implied it is easy.  Casual game download companies have many competitive advantages when moving into social media space but it won’t be easy and success is not guaranteed. 

First, the mindset must change.  We are no longer creating a discrete product but really providing an on-going service.  It’s not about developing a great game, testing it, testing it some more and shipping it to your on-line and retail distribution partners.  Although we are still creating a game, it is (hopefully) never finished.  The product that initially hits the market must constantly evolve, both to keep the player engaged over weeks, months and years and also to allow you to monetize the end user, as you no longer making one discrete sale and then done with it.  Development resources must stay focused on the video game.  Your team can’t just pack up on move on to the next project.  The shift from creating a product to providing a service has huge implications on your product pipeline and resource needs.

Second, the training wheels are off with social media.  You won’t be able to fall back on portals or distributors to handle the transactions, customer and tech support, hosting, localization, marketing and general hand holding.  It’s up to you to create a robust solution around your games that keeps your customers coming back and continually generates revenue from them.  The upside is you will now have direct interaction with your customers.   You will know what they like, what they hate, and who they are.  You will be able to cross sell them other games and build up a relationship that right now you are ceding to your distribution partners.  Oh yeah, and you will keep a much larger share of the revenue.  Rather then ending up with 25-40 percent of the gross revenue from sales of your game, you will get between 80-95+ percent of the gross revenue (which you must subtract your marketing and server expenses), which on a profitable game can be a big difference.

Third, marketing.  Although already touched upon in the previous point, you no longer will have a partner that can generate interest in your video game.  Some developers in the social media space are already spending $1 million plus per title on marketing.  In the casual download space, you can get buy spending virtually nothing and relying on the portals marketing to attract interest in your games.  Now you probably don’t have to spend $1 million per game per month (we are not planning on it).  There are a lot of creative and innovative ways to generate interest and build a fan base (after all, the beauty of social media is its viral marketing) without taking the brute force approach of just throwing ad dollars around.  Remember though…it’s never free and will take a lot of time.

I could probably list ten other points, but I have always considered three a lucky number so I want to throw out these key points as issues any casual game company should consider before trying the social media space.

Lloyd Melnick,
Merscom Chief Customer Officer

The @DreamWorthy Twitter Manifesto

Huh?  What is a Twitter Manifesto and why do we have one?  That, gentle reader, is a question will we answer in this post.

You probably found your way here because you follow us and want to see what we’re all about. We now guide our prospective or new followers to this post to learn about us, and how we participate on Twitter.  Or, you’ve followed us for awhile, saw the link we tweeted on Twitter, and came here to see what this is all about.

Either way, hopefully you’ll leave with a clearer sense of who we are and what it will be like to follow us on Twitter.

THE @DREAMWORTHY TWITTER MANIFESTO

About Us

Folks, we’re a business.  Well, we’re people, actually, two of them…  Kali and Mike Kunkle. But we run a small online business, DreamWorthy Gifts, which is a webstore featuring bath & body care products like shower gels, lotions, soaps, bath salts, bath sprays, bubble bath, and bath gift sets – and also offering thousands of gifts for all occasions, home decor furnishings, gift cards and more.

Here’s what we say on our website About Us:

“We are dedicated to providing a safe, productive and enjoyable online shopping experience for everyone with a computer, an Internet connection, and a need to shop for something for someone for some reason (including themselves, and hey, even if the reason is “just because!”).  Shopping should be fun and easy. You have fun – we’ll make it easy!  (Jammies and bunny slippers are optional.)

Despite our fun-loving, friendly approach to business and life, the DreamWorthy Gifts team is serious about running a business built on a foundation of ethics and common sense. Our founders have over 30 years of highly successful business experience with over 7 years of e-commerce experience.

But we are much more than business people behind a computer monitor. We’re also family members, Moms, Dads, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, co-workers, neighbors, and everyday real people. We pay too much in taxes, are far too busy with work and life, and sometimes don’t know what to get that special someone, when it’s time to show we care.

That’s why we started DreamWorthy Gifts LLC. We want to help regular people like us find the right gift, at the right time, at the right price… but also without a few things, too… without driving around wasting gas, without the hassle of crowded stores and long lines, and without losing so much of your precious time. That’s our commitment to our customers.”

Our Focus on Service

You can learn more about us at our other blog, ShopWorthy and specifically our post on Why You Should Shop at DreamWorthy Gifts.  The one thing we’d like to repeat here, is that we stand behind our products and will do everything possible to ensure customers are completely satisfied with them, and with us. Yes, we have company policies, but we also apply reasonable logic, listen with empathy, use common sense, act with integrity, and make decisions on a case-by-case basis. Occasionally, we break our own policies to ensure a customer is satisfied. We take service seriously.

Segue to Twitter

So, as small business owners who joined Twitter to market through social media, we make no apologies for marketing our business on Twitter and for trying to maximize the positive power of social media networking and marketing. We’re certainly still learning on a daily basis and Twitter is certainly still evolving. Overall, though, it seems to be working and it certainly is fun.

By fun, we mean sending tweets, often almost in a chatting fashion, to talk to our followers, joke, tease, and laugh and smile together. We have met some wonderful people that we never would have otherwise, and this is by far the most enjoyable part of Twitter. 

We do, however, also send out what we call “Marketing Tweets.”  These tweets are aimed at educating and advertising our followers about our business, products and services. In these tweets, there are links to our ecommerce website.  We drive a good amount of traffic to our website via Twitter, and it is a valuable business and marketing tool. We have earned trust from many followers who have become customers, as well.  We are very grateful for these relationships, and only wish we had even more time to cultivate them and get to know our customers (and other followers) even better.

What’s a Marketing Tweet?

Here are just two examples:

SAVE ON SHIPPING with our shipping promo! Spend $25 get 25% off shipping ~ Spend $50 get 50% off shipping! See promos: http://tr.im/DWGPromo

DreamWorthy Bath Gift Sets: ORANGE GROVE BATH BASKET SET ~ http://tr.im/CufW ~ shower gel, body lotion, body scrub, body butter & more!

Some facts about our marketing efforts on Twitter:

• On our “Marketing Days” we might send out tweets like these hourly, every 30 minutes, or sometimes even as often as every 15 minutes (at the maximum).
• Usually these tweets will go out over a 12-hour period.
• We run these marketing days periodically… but usually no more than 3 days a week (often less, frankly).
• We use a service to send these messages… SocialOomph.com (formerly known as TweetLater).
• Usually we schedule these marketing tweets for when we are not able to be on Twitter personally, although sometimes we are there, tweeting personally with our followers at the same time.

For the record, our use of Twitter does NOT constitute SPAM, as we do not use auto-DMs or @replies to send marketing tweets to individuals or lists, and as far as we can tell, our approach is completely compliant with the Twitter Terms of Service and Definition of SPAM.  We do, however, eat SPAM, especially with scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese.

So why are we telling you all this? We’ve noticed that when we take a break from our Marketing Days, and then restart, we always have a flurry of people “unfollowing” us. We respect this, as it is completely the individual’s choice.  However, we do wish that some might try to engage with us first, before judging that we are spamming, or only interested in sending out marketing messages about our offerings.

Our Twitter Follow-Back Philosophy

Will we follow you back?  Well, probably, but “it depends.”  We try to follow most people or accounts who follow us,  but we don’t follow everyone.  As you’ll see below, we don’t follow porn and will block those accounts and report them, if appropriate. If you DM us consistently with unsolicited advertising messages or affiliate links, or even send @replies to us consistently with unwanted links, we will not follow you, unfollow you, and/or report you as SPAM. You can send advertising or marketing tweets all day long without being blocked… but we may not follow you back if that’s ALL that you do. We obviously respect the marketing tweets, but we also look for people like us who try to also engage and talk with those who want to talk back. (At this writing, we have almost 7,000 followers… we obviously can’t tweet routinely with everyone… but we do reply to everyone who addresses us with a @reply.)  And while we do have some wonderful international friends and will probably always follow them, we are a domestic, U.S.-based business with no international expansion plans in the foreseeable future. So, if you live outside the United States, we may not follow you unless we know you personally.

By the way, if we do not follow you back, we also completely understand if you choose to unfollow us.  No harm, no foul, no hurt feelings.  Unless we make a conscious decision to follow someone or some company’s highly interesting tweets regardless of whether they follow us, we normally expect people (those whom we specifically select to follow) to follow us back.  If you do not, we will eventually unfollow you.

Here’s one better.  Nothing aggravates us more than people trying to just build raw follower numbers.  If you follow us, and then wait until we follow you back to unfollow us, we’ll dump you as soon as we figure it out (and we will, because we check).

• Our Target Twitter Follower: It probably makes just as much sense to tell you who we love to follow back.
  • We prefer to follow adult individuals (and couples) or other businesses who engage with their followers, or some subset of their followers.
  • Other than “adult,” age is unimportant.
  • Religion doesn’t matter, unless you’re a Satanist. We have an unsually wide berth of tolerance for beliefs different than our own, but we stop a few steps short of tolerance for worshipping Satan or Hitler or anything hateful. We’d fight to defend your right to believe what you want and live in freedom, we just don’t want to be associated with you, personally.
  • We love to follow people who are generally kind, thoughtful, and respectful, with a good sense of humor.
  • Moms, dads, and animal lovers (and animals) are especially welcome, because we identify with you, but don’t misread or read between the lines… others are still completely welcome.
  • Funny (within our behavior guidelines, listed below) is wonderful. Teasing is okay… we can certainly dish it out, and we can take it with a smile.
  • We prefer to follow people who are at least “generally positive.” Hey, everyone has bad days and times, real life is tough sometimes, and that’s what friends are for.  We certainly have “our moments.”  But a positive outlook is a preference.
  • As said elsewhere, we prefer people who live in the United States, only because we are a domestic-only business.

Our Twitter Behavior Guidelines:

Here are some general (but not always concrete) guidelines that we apply.  Some of this will also give you an indication of whether we’ll follow you back.

• Sex: We are cautious about the expression of sexuality on Twitter. We will not, under any circumstances, knowingly follow any accounts associated with pornography. At the same time, we do follow @Dr_MiaRose (formerly “TheBetterSexDoc”)  as one example, who does not blatantly use sexual terminology in her tweets. If you visit her website, however, be prepared for appropriately detailed “educational articles.”  I’m sure this is a fine line that will confuse some folks who see things as “black or white,” and we understand that. But we see a difference between a trained psychologist/counselor trying to help consenting adults express their natural sexual nature, and allowing those folks to “opt in” to following her and her messages, versus porn.  But we do tend to shy away from sexually-oriented Tweeters, so the ones we do follow, like Mia the sex doc, are few and far between.
• Discrimination/Hatefulness: There’s a little bit too much of both in our world for our taste. You won’t see this from us, and if you see something that we typed quickly or it’s hard to interpret in 140, trust that neither of these are ever intended. Well, except that we hate haters. Either of these behaviors will get you unfollowed quickly. We respect freedom of speech, we just don’t have to subject ourselves or our followers to it. That’s our freedom of choice.
• Vulgarity: *#&%#, I hate this topic. Just kidding… that is a vulgar as you will ever see. We do our level best to steer clear of vulgarity. You may see an occasional mention of that place far south of Heaven, or a reference to poop, which is something we have to stop tweeting and take our dog outside to do.  But you can buy an educational and funny book for kids called “Everyone Poops,” so we feel we’re in good company.  In general, if we see too much vulgarity from you, we will unfollow you. Depending on the severity or tone and intent, we forgive everyone an occasional “moment,” so we judge based on consistency.
• Humor: Another thin grey line…. humor. This one is tough for us, because humor is a real outlet for us, and we find things funny in jokes that we do not find funny in real life.  We know this confuses reasonable, normal people, therefore, as a business account, we find that we need to temper ourselves.  We do better at this sometimes than others.  We will use some PG-13 humor and teasing innuendo from time to time — and occasionally tweet something that we didn’t intend, which “came out wrong,” too, which is a difficult thing about communicating in 140 characters.  But generally we try to keep it cleaner and more respectful than prime time TV programming will ever be again. Our aim is generally to be funny and make someone laugh. We enjoy that. We never intend to belittle, hurt, discriminate or offend. We’d actually appreciate that you’d tell us, if you ever think we do.
• Politics: We vote. That’s our expression of politics. We might participate in a humorous discussion of political events or topics, but you won’t see us spouting our political beliefs, stumping, or using Twitter as a bully pulpit (like we have any clout on Twitter anyway). We do follow some folks who are heavily political, and have some very nice #TCOT friends (who have their own Twitter hashtag, which still makes me grin), but we don’t endorse one thing over another. I’m not saying we don’t have our personal views… we certainly do. It’s just not normally like us to be espousing them on Twitter.

Our Twitter Unfollow Philosophy

If you don’t follow us back, it’s likely that we will unfollow you. If you consistently cross over one of our thin grey lines that we’ve written about here. We’ll unfollow you. If you are porn, hateful, offensive, or SPAM, we’ll unfollow you and likely report you.

Our Twitter Pay-It-Forward Philosophy

If you check out some of the other posts on this blog, you’ll pick up our philosophy quickly. We intended to do more with this blog, and will someday, but real life (work, family, home, small business) intervened, and it didn’t go as far as we intended as fast as we wanted. Nonetheless, we are pay it forward kind of people. We try to help others, albeit only in small ways sometimes, but we like to do it.

• RTs: When we see things we like on Twitter, we try to ReTweet them. We tend to RT great quotes, inspirational things, and downright funny things, as we come across them.
• Tweets to help our followers (bloggers, businesses, charities, etc.):  We especially like to send traffic to followers’ blogs, give their business a shout-out, help a cause, push along a marketing Tweet, or forward on an affiliate link that we think followers might find interesting or helpful. It’s like a little random act of kindness, and we like doing it.
• #FollowFriday: It can be exhausting for us, but we love Follow Friday! You can see a post on this blog here that lists many of our favorite followers. We try to tweet out this list every Friday night, as well. Occasionally we can’t, and on those weeks, we direct people to the blog post instead. You’ll find a good number of really great people on this list, and we’re lucky to count them as friends. Please also note that we try to say something about many of them individually, but yes, we do still have some that we send out in a group.  This doesn’t diminish them as recommendations… it’s simply a matter of time and tweet limits. They’re all worthy (perhaps we could even say “dreamworthy”). In fact, this list could easily grow to be too large to manage. There are plenty of other great people that we just don’t always have time to recommend, so sometimes the list changes. Watch on Twitter or check back here from time to time.

Well, my friends, I believe that wraps up our @DreamWorthy Twitter Manifesto for now. Perhaps we’ll add something later or you will think of something to add and write to us or make a comment.

Thank you for reading. We hope you found this helpful in some way, and better understand what we’re about and what we are trying to accomplish.

Tweet ya later…

Kali & Mike Kunkle
_____________________
DreamWorthy Gifts LLC
Shop at: http://www.DreamWorthyGifts.com
Read our Shopping Blog: http://tinyurl.com/ShopWorthy
Read our Networking Blog: http://tinyurl.com/DreamWorthyFriends

Refer-A-Friend Promotion: Refer friends and they each get a coupon for 25% off. When they buy, you get a coupon for 40% off!  There is no limit to the number of friends you can refer or the number of 40% coupons you can collect. See the Refer-A-Friend banner at http://www.dreamworthygifts.com/ to participate.

JOIN US AT:
http://www.twitter.com/DreamWorthy – Follow us!
http://www.tinyurl.com/KaliOnFacebook
http://www.tinyurl.com/MikeOnFacebook
http://www.tinyurl.com/DreamWorthyOnFacebook – Become a fan!
http://www.linkedin.com/in/DreamWorthyGifts

The Redemptive Value of Facebook

Mike Pohlman Executive Editor, The Gospel Coalition

Can Facebook be redemptive? In other words, can this social networking phenomenon be a means of helping Christians grow in grace? Can it be spiritually edifying? Can it promote godliness?

Yes.

My “yes,” of course, is not without qualification. I realize Facebook can be used for banal, unhelpful purposes. (Carl Trueman, for example, offers a good critique of our Web 2.0 world.) But today God’s grace was extended to me through the Internet; today Facebook was a blessing. Let me explain.

I was tagged in a friend’s list of “25 Random Things About Me.”* While I have yet to fill out one of these lists, I have enjoyed reading them. It is a good (and efficient) way to learn interesting things about a person. And these lists are all the more intriguing when you haven’t kept up with someone for, say, twenty years.

The particular list opened with this amazing declaration: “I would change nothing about my life!”

How many people can say that about their life? It’s one thing to say, “I love my life.” Or, “I have a great life.” Or, “I’m living the good life.” But to say, “I would change nothing about my life”? That got my attention.

The list of “random” things proceeded with unmistakable joy.

24. “I am very happy.”
18. “I am thrilled that I have gotten in touch with so many family members and friends on facebook.”
14. “I have two dogs and a cat. I am not big on pets, so having them is a testament to how much I love my children.”
13. “I don’t feel that I could have a more wonderful husband.”
12. “I have four children and wish I had more…..6 would have been nice!”
7. “A perfect day for me is spent with my husband and children.”

Reading these things was inspiring as they spoke to my friend’s deep love for her family. I smiled as I recalled how I used to play little league baseball and Pop Warner football with her husband. Now we both had four kids. More importantly, I found myself thinking about my wife and children and what a blessing they are to me. But then, as I continued down the list, I ran into these sobering statements:

6. “It is a good thing that my life will never be the way it was before I was diagnosed with cancer.”
5. “My life will never be the way it was before I was diagnosed with cancer.”

I didn’t know my friend had been diagnosed with cancer. I paused to let it sink in. Cancer. That word has a way of arresting our attention like no other. And rarely, it seems, is gratitude accompanied with it. But here in a list of “25 Random Things” was the phrase, “It is a good thing….” How could my friend preface any mention of cancer with “It is a good thing”?

The answer came at the end of the list:

1. “The LORD is always #1.”

This is the “thing” that makes all the difference in the universe. When the Lord is first in our lives then everything takes on new meaning–our marriages, parenthood, jobs, ministries, leisure time, and, yes, even cancer. We realize that nothing is truly “random.” When we see our heavenly Father in His providence orchestrating all our days then we can say radical things like, “It is a good thing that my life will never be the way it was before I was diagnosed with cancer.” In other words, God used cancer to help me.

In Matthew 5:16 Jesus says, “In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.” Tami’s light is shining brightly today and I’m giving glory to God for it.

[*All references to my friend’s “25 Random Things” used with permission.]

From Facebook to Faithbook

Dan Johnson

HomeWord

Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ‘Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?’ They came out of the town and made their way toward him.
John 4:28-30

Do you have a Facebook page? It’s a well-known website that allows people to upload photos, biography and contact information to network with other people. Mark Zuckerberg founded this social utility site while attending Harvard in 2004. Website membership was initially limited to Harvard students, but continued to expand to other colleges. Now students and non-students around the world connect to each other daily. Facebook had over 70 million visits to its site in April of 2008.

I couldn’t help but notice how friendships are rekindled and created on social networking sites and wondered if Christ followers might not learn something from this. Technology relies on the same old human behaviors to succeed. But having faith requires divine intervention for us to understand our need for God, and being faithful isn’t always easy in the offline world. Our faith spreads the old-fashioned way, one person reaching out to one person at a time.

There are similarities between our online lives and our “real” ones. To make friends online, we have to reach out. It’s as simple as clicking a button and requesting that someone be our “friend.” When we make new friends online, we get exposed to their ideas about life, their likes and dislikes; we get to know them. What’s really amazing is that we get to view their other friends who are listed there.

The real question is who is on our “Friends” list? Does it include all kinds of people or just folks who look, act and talk like us? I’ve been wondering lately what Jesus’ Facebook page would look like. We read about how He talked to women in a culture where open social contact with the opposite sex wasn’t allowed. He hung out with leaders who became His followers. He called common people to greatness. There was diversity in His crowd of followers and then unity in mission.

 

Today is a great day to look down the street and reconnect with some local friends and neighbors. It may also be the time to search out a forgotten friend. There’s a whole world out there waiting to be invited as a friend.

Perhaps consider doing an inventory of your friends. Are there some friends you need to reconnect with? Are there some new people you’d like to have over for dinner or talk to over a cup of coffee?

Instead of feeling anxiety or guilt about evangelism, is there a simple way you could reach out to someone and then see where God takes it from there?

Further Reading

Matthew 9:37-38; Matthew 28:18-20

Dan Johnson is the Lead Pastor of Next Church in Tacoma, Washington and CEO of the Next Leadership Association.

***Facebook users: Be sure to check out the Christianity.com Devotionals application! Get access to all of the devotionals you enjoy on Crosswalk.com and Christianity.com right on your profile page. Just type “Christianity.com Devotionals” into the Search function on Facebook to get started. Let your friends know!

life after Facebook.

Last week I quit Facebook. And Twitter.

It was a decision that I didn’t even think twice about and now I am super glad I did it. I can honestly say that I do not miss it.

The reason I quit is because both Twitter and Facebook had become a vacuum in my life. I was wasting too many hours every day on pointless stuff. There’s a lot of pointless stuff out there, especially on Facebook.

I have decided to “re-brand” things I say with my mouth to life after facebook.

I will share with all of you lovely people the things I did instead of sitting on Facebook for two hours…things that aren’t so…pointless.

Today I ran 3 miles with my wife, and it was awesome.

How much time did you spend on Facebook?

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Facebook's a Cockblocker!

I’ve had an online presence for about a decade.  I’ll even admit it: I was on HotorNot.  Friendster.  FacetheJury.  They got old.  These days it’s on to Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and a blog.  Well, it was Facebook.  But as of this morning, they’re mad at me.  So, rather than throw up a half-assed new one, I’m dipping out.  (To my 768 friends, I still love you!)

It’s almost like God is giving me a bunch of extra time to work on my projects.  Funny thought though, because the farther you go down that road, the more you’ll find it leading back to you.  I posted those pictures.  I pushed the line.  This was all coming, all in due time.

That’s how I feel about this crazy video project too.  It’s something we had to do.  We couldn’t have planned this!

Saturday started with the 5th Annual Zombie Walk.  Of course Vinny and I went, camera’s rolling.  We shot the hell out of it!  The day before, I’d put an ad on Craigslist to help entice zombie killers to show up.  They came in a huge black bus with fake riot gear, gas masks and guns, but their imaginary ammo was no match for thousands of zombies marching and groaning through downtown Portland.  At the end, the zombies convened in Pioneer Square, where they performed their rendition of Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.  It was incredible!

As if that wasn’t enough fun for one day, Vinny and I headed home to clean the blood splatters off and have a quick wardrobe change: him into his usual suit and tie, me into my usual jeans, tank top with a sweater and running shoes.  Then we rolled down to the 5th Annual Distiller’s Festival at Bossanova.

Always looking for a back entrance, I ducked up a narrow walkway around the side of the building.  It ended at an unlocked gate to a little patio.  Vinny followed me in.  Oops!

This was not where we wanted to be.  Camera rolling, I led us into the tiny building, down a long hallway, through a dining area, the kitchen and another dining area until we came out the front door.  We’d gone in a circle!  After our little detour, we opted to go in via Bossanova’s main entrance.

“Lets do this the old fashioned way,” I said.  “We’ll ask nicely.”

The lady in the booth was pleasant and perfectly compliant.  We went upstairs.  Vinny and I split up to do our thing.  We managed to taste everything in the room: bacon vodka, chili-pepper vodka, absinthe, lots of bourbon and more.  But I had a half-marathon to run in the morning, so I had to take it easy.

I pulled out my list.  There was still so much to do!  And it was early.  We decided to push through.  Next stop was the 350 climate change awareness party.

Beer was free and entertainment was top notch.  The Sprockettes performed a few of their choreographed dance routines to local indie rock music, complete with tiny bikes!  I was telling them we should make a pro-bike video…  Naturally, I volunteered Vinny as cameraman.

It was right about then that an adorable little chick caught my eye, with a magnificent paper blossom on her head.  Her name was Gwen.  I just had to photograph her!

Gwen told us about how she made the accessory that I so admired.  It was modified from a Chinese lantern.  What a creative lady!  She explained that she recently moved to Portland to work as a PA in the film industry and she’d love an opportunity to be a part of our project.  (Isn’t that cute?!  She must not realize how low/no budget it is.)  Moments later, Vinny announced that he’d just got word of a bus full of naked people preparing to streak around Portland with pumpkins on their heads.  It was leaving in ten minutes.

“I don’t believe it,” I said, “but if it’s true, we have to get on that bus.”

Vinny agreed enthusiastically, “we have to get on that bus!”

Suddenly my hopes of running a half-marathon the next morning were dashed.  (Needless to say, the sacrifice was worth it.)

Vinny looked around frantically for a pumpkin, Gwen and I observing.  Was this really happening?  Vinny spotted a big one on a nearby shelf.

“Maybe I should steal it,” he wondered aloud, “the pumpkin is mandatory.”

“Well,” said Gwen, “I carved it.  How about I just let you have it?”

“That works!”  Vinny grabbed the pumpkin, quickly carved a hole in the bottom and ran for the bus.  I was already there.

According to the rules, everyone except for camera people had to have a pumpkin for their head and be completely naked.  (Turns out, the definition of “completely” does vary, depending on accessories.)  We’d be hitting several populated areas around Portland, streaking through a bunch of bars along the way.  What a hoot!

Before too long, the line between photographer and participant disappeared.  The other camera man and myself found our clothes being removed.  A lovely lady wearing only purple paint took care of my shirt and bra for me.  My pants stayed on.

Predictably, the police showed up.  The naked people weren’t even the problem – it was the flaming pumpkin on top of the bus.  Go figure.  I threw my shirt back on to film the lecture.

“This is purely an artistic endeavor,” explained our nearly naked leader, Gustav, “We know there’s a fine line between nude and lewd and we intend not to cross it.”  We do love pushing boundaries, don’t we?

The police man, visibly straining to contain his amusement, pulled out his notepad, asking our comrade’s name.

“Here, let me give you my card,” Gus said, one-upping.  (Where he had cards stashed remains a mystery.)  He reassured the police officer that no one was being sexual in any way.  Without further delay, the fire truck pulled away and the cops returned to duty.  Back on the bus, Gus shouted a warning:

“They’re letting us continue as long as we remain decent.  No jiggling your junk at anybody!”

“Vinny,” I said, “that means you.”

It was getting late.  The tour ended back where it began and everyone migrated inside to party.  Dudes were hilarious.

“I work for a member of congress,” said one of my fellow naked bus-riders, “Guess which one.”  I refused to guess – I didn’t care which!  My internal homing beacon began firing.  It was time to go.

I left the party on foot.  Within a minute or two, I heard someone following me.  He was trashed.

“Are you trying to give me a ride?”  I asked, “Because you look too drunk to drive.”  I laughed at myself.  “Which one of us is being more creepy right now?!”  He was so wasted – he couldn’t even reply.  “Give me your keys,” I said.  “I’ll drive.”

Poor guy.

He let me drive myself home, despite the fact that I couldn’t bring him inside.  I had to be up in two hours to take Mom to the airport.  Plus, Dad would flip.  The guy said he’d just sleep in his car.  Fine by me!  I went to bed.

At 4am, I was up again, still feeling buzzed on our way to the airport.  Mom asked me about the night, so I told her everything.  I was relieved that she laughed – considering her current situation (on her way to Memphis to see her ailing mother) she needed a laugh.

Back home, I returned to bed.  I woke up later with a phone full of messages, including a devastating one from Vinny:  The camera is gone.

WHAT?!

Vinny lost the camera.  I was going to kill him!  My heart palpitated a little while I wondered, “Is this how it ends?”  I instinctively readied myself for a quick reconnaissance mission.  I was going to find that damn thing.

Fortunately, Vinny beat me to it.  He went back to the party venue, where people were still chillin’ and sure enough, the camera had been found.

There was no time to spare.  I immediately switched gears, showered and got laced up for double-header kickball games.  Mud Muckers won ‘em both!  I was ecstatic.  By the end of the night I’d put 75 colorful pics from the weekend on Facebook in an album titled: ONE CRAZY ASS DAY.

They were awesome pics!  Yeah, so there were a few penises in there.  There were also lots of boobies!  No harm in that… Right?

Wrong!

When I got home from fitness conditioning today, my Facebook page was gone.  My account has been disabled.  Who knows if it’s permanent or for how long?  Oh well.  In the meantime, I’ll get lots of work done.

Stay tuned for the movie!

New York Jay Park Fans Plan Another Post-It Rally

The New York offices of JYPE have been covered in a rainbow of Post-It notes, but the sticker extravaganza was not to vandalize or to deface the building. The Post-its were left by fans of the boy band 2pm’s ex-lead-member Jay Park.  Jay resigned on September 7th of this year when he was the focus of a humiliating story in the media. 5 years ago Jay had made negative general statements towards Korean people on his personal Myspace.  During that time the singer was JYPE trainee and a teenager.  Instead of a massive outpouring of understanding a great percentage of the Korean public felt he was out of line and quickly called for him to quit the very succesful boy band.

The fans who are mostly female understood right away that it is part of life that human beings can and will get frustrated by others.  It is these very fans of the super talented star that rallied together and planned various events to protest Jays departure and to ask him to return.  The Post-It note event was planned and asked fellow fans to write messages for Jay in support and left on the building for the media to focus on.

Again these localized groups are coming together as a whole on Oct 27th, 28th and 29th to organize another event of Post-It messages for Jay and More.

For more information on This event and how you can help or be a part of it check out this Link

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161471416811

Saturday Summary

Hi! Welcome to the Saturday Summary, my weekly link-dump of all things interesting. Again, I’m posting through Posterous so I can share with all my blogs. As always, you can see my links on Delicious and Diigo. Enjoy:

Eli Bendersky’s website » Blog Archive » The C++ bashing season is back
“It seems there is a lot of dislike and hate for C++ out there. This isn’t new – it has always been like this.”
Actually, C++ is my first programming language. I can’t really bash it myself.

The Hero Is In Your Pocket « Blog « WordPress.com
“Today we’re launching a couple of mobile themes that will automatically be displayed when your blog is accessed with a compatible mobile phone.”
10 Useful WordPress Coding Techniques « Smashing Magazine

“In this article, we have compiled 10 useful WordPress code snippets, hacks and tips to help you create a WordPress theme that stands out from the crowd.”

Essential Blogging – Google Preview – O’Reilly Media
“Essential Blogging — An O’Reilly manual.”
I’ve never been too keen on O’Reilly books, but this one seems suited for me. =)

BREAKING: Google Announces Search Deal With Twitter
“While we’re still digesting the news of Bing adding Twitter to its search engine, Google has some news of their own: they’re about to do the same exact thing.”
Job market lands more grads back at home
“They feel like failures. Disillusioned, like a runner who trips out of the starting gate. But many college graduates who’ve been forced by the worst job market in decades to move back home with Mom and Dad say they also feel, to their surprise, fortunate.”

This hits close to home…but I don’t have the ability to move back in with my parents. =(51 Web Apps for Web Designers and Developers – Web.AppStorm
“Here are 51 web apps to make web designer’s and developer’s lives easier than ever and crank up their capabilities.”

IdeaPaint: Turn Your Entire Office Into a Whiteboard | Design & Innovation | Fast Company
“With just one coat, IdeaPaint turns any surface into a dry-erase board.”
I’m going to do this when we buy a house.

Rape Victim’s Choice: Risk AIDS or Health Insurance?
“Christina Turner feared that she might have been sexually assaulted after two men slipped her a knockout drug. She thought she was taking proper precautions when her doctor prescribed a month’s worth of anti-AIDS medicine…Only later did she learn that she had made herself all but uninsurable.”
This is just sick. I’m showing this to all my anti socialized medicine friends.

Blogs.mu – DIY Blog Networks and Communities
“Blogs.mu is a site that allows you to setup your own WordPress based blog community or network – with the minimum of fuss. Set up blogs yourself or let users come to you.”

Facebook launches new homepage feed.
“The default News Feed that users will see is becoming “Today’s Top News,” which Facebook’s Peter Deng says will have the “most relevant information” when users get to the site. “The spirit of the change is that you’ll see a summary of stuff you missed while you were gone,” Deng says.”
Free Programming Classes : Learn How to Program
“A comprehensive real-time course on programming for everyone from total beginner to experienced programmer.”

Fonts for Designers Series Issue no. 1
“Fonts for Designers is a new series of posts that proposes every week a selection of the best free fonts for web designers. Each new issue will present five interesting fonts you can use on your web projects.”
Ooh, fonts! I’m going to love this series!

“Friendfeed is not dead. It’s transforming” says Friendfeed Co-Founder
“What is fact, is that Friendfeed as a tool and social medium, ranks above virtually every social networking stream based application currently available – yes, including Twitter with lists. To see it essentially fade into a ghost town would be a huge waste, particularly since the site still maintains an incredibly loyal userbase, whose limits have unfortunately been pushed of late.”
Poor FriendFeed. I’m going to miss it when it finally goes. But I’m going to use it until it does.

Clip it! Capture Any Web Page Into a Single Image
“Clip It! is a free Mac application that quickly captures and saves web pages into images for easy preview and presentation.”

PRS’s Latest Trick: Demanding Money From Shop Assistant Who Was Singing At Work
“[The PRS] threatened a shop assistant for singing out loud (public performance!) while stacking the grocery shelves, demanding she pay £1,000 for the privilege. Of course, why was she singing? Because PRS had already threatened the owner for having a radio — so he got rid of the radio.”

Flickr finally implements the tagging of friend, family and foe
“At long last, after what seems like an eternity compared to the usually-rapid pace that most social networks evolve at, Flickr has implemented people-tagging.”

Lifestreaming Service Storytlr to Shut Down and Go Open Source
“In a blog post on October 10th the team at Storytlr let users know that they will be shutting down the service at the end of this year. It’s just another casualty in a long list of Lifestreaming services that have shut down over the last year.”
More bad news. But at least it’s going open source. That’s good news at least.

Stop Overreacting: Hulu Not Ditching Free Yet
“So… this is really no different than what was said a few months back, when News Corp’s Jon Miller started saying that Hulu should add subscription offerings. It’s the official News Corp. position, ever since Rupert Murdoch suddenly flip flopped and decided free content online is evil. All News Corp. execs have now been making noise about trying to charge for content.”

Billionaire Offers $75 Million to End Pet Overpopulation
“Every year, six to eight million unwanted cats and dogs enter shelters in the U.S., and three to four million are euthanized according to the animal welfare organization Found Animals.”

Disney Censors Talent's Twitters

According to The Hollywood Reporter, a recent contract issued by Disney forbade confidentiality breaches via ‘interactive media such as Facebook, Twitter or any other interactive social network or personal blog’.

At DreamWorks, writers have been told not to jump the gun on studio press releases via ‘a social networking site, blog or other internet-type site’. An entertainment lawyer told THR: ‘This is just the beginning. Hollywood has a long history of controlling what talent says in the media. This is just a new area of media that hasn’t been controlled yet.’

Do you think Disney should be able to censor their client’s social networking pages?

The Social Media Revolution

A quick sumup of key points:

• 1 of 8couples in the US meet via social media
• Facebook added 100 Million new users in 9 months, it took radio 38years to reach that audience
• If Facebook was a country, it would be the worlds 4th largest
• Ashton Kutcher has more followers on Twitter than the entire population of Ireland, or Norway
• 25% of search results for the world’s largest brands are links to user generated content
• We no longer search for news or products, they find us through social media
• More than 1.5 billion items are shared on Facebook – per day!
• ‘Its a people driven economy’ — Erik Qualman, 2009
• The new paradigm: “Listening first, selling second”

CCM Felt Hat Fan Club Moves to Facebook

For as long as I’ve been making and selling my warm felt hats, I’ve been asking Happy Hat Folks to send me photos in their hats.

Denali Park Ranger, Carmen Adamyk wears her felt hat on mushing patrol at Wonder Lake, Alaska, March 2008

The idea was that I’d post your photos to the Fan Club section of this site, so that others could see how great these hats look on all sorts of people.

The only glitch: I’m sometimes glacially slow to post the lovely photos I’ve received.

No more! Now you can upload photos directly to the Facebook Fan Page for my felt hats.

How about it? Do you have a fun photo of yourself wearing your CCM felt hat?

I’d be delighted if you’d be willing share it!

Η Microsoft συμμαχεί με Twitter και Facebook

Η Microsoft συμμαχεί με Twitter και Facebook « Productivity

ι τρεις εταιρείες θα συνεργαστούν ώστε η πρώτη (Microsoft) να μπορεί να ενσωματώσει τα updates των μελλών των άλλων δυο (Twitter και Facebook) στη μηχανή αναζήτησης της, Bing. Σύμφωνα με το All Things Digital, η Microsoft θα ανακοινώσει λίαν συντόμως τη συνεργασία.[next]

Expertise and Energy

The other day, on Facebook, a friend asked if I ever just sat around and did nothing. To which, of course, I had to reply, “Yes, but why would I ever post about it?”

A few years back, a buddy of mine and I were in the habit of driving a few hours down the highway to visit our tai chi and pentjack silat instructor, Steve Barnes. Steve got us doing a kicking exercise. It was pretty repetitive, so I got into the rhythm of it. I was a little surprised when Steve suggested I take a break. Then my legs stiffened up in the car.

The truth is, I don’t think about being energetic. I just do what I need to get done. I try to find some fun in all of it, but sometimes I just have to think about something else – you know, like everybody does when doing something they’d rather not. I never thought of myself as “energetic,” but then I started working younger people into the ground at our church’s 10,000 Villages sale and when the physical parts of my job.

Similarly, I don’t think I’m an expert in everything. Just look at that tag cloud. Look at all the topics about which I write. Those are just things that interest me. Granted, expertise is a matter of perspective. To the average person on the street, I might seem like an expert in some of those topics, but I certainly don’t possess advanced degrees or thousands of hours of training in all of them.

If I can borrow from Yoda, “There is no try. There is only do.” I don’t try to do all the things I do, I just do them. Try it. The more you do, the fitter you get, the more energy you have, and the more you can do. Voila.

Fotojornalista retrata colegas em ação

Todo mundo tem curiosidade de ver jornalistas e fotógrafos em ação, inclusive nós mesmos. O clique de um momento importante de uma entrevista ou de uma pauta difícil gera sempre a lembrança do que aquele instante representou nas nossas histórias profissional e pessoal e, claro, no resultado da apuração jornalística.

André Dusek, fotógrafo do Estado de S. Paulo em Brasília, lançou o site fotocoleguinhas, onde publica fotos e histórias dos colegas, na sua maioria, em Brasília.

Há fotos descontraídas, sérias, estressantes e engraçadas. Vale a pena conferir.

Obsessed

Is anyone else sickeningly obsessed with the Facebook games? I know they are stupid, but damn! I can’t help myself. I keep checking my Cafe World to see if my turkey is finished cooking, or going to Mafia Wars to rob someone or do a job, or head over to Farmville to cultivate my crops and buy shit. Ack! I like doing that more than talking to the freaks I used to know 7 years ago in high school. Or that girl I hated who friended me and I only check out her page to see if she is failing in life so I can laugh and laugh and laugh.

New Facebook Page!

We’ve long had a group on Facebook, but the funny thing about groups is that they are a real dead-end on Facebook, feature-wise. You can’t add applications like you can on your own profile, and there’s really not a lot you can do with them. The new cool on Facebook for the sort of thing that we really want to do is to create a page. We actually did that a while back also, but never really spent time on how or why to use them as opposed to groups. Not to mention that for some brilliant reason, you can’t convert a group to a page, so that means we have to start over.

Anyway, what’s done is done. We’ve got a real page now, and we hope that you’ll show your support by “becoming a fan”.

Just one of the benefits of using a page is that we can have the blog posts show up there, so if you happen to live on Facebook then it will be even easier for you to see what we have going on. I’m sure there’s lots of other cool stuff we can do as well.

This means the group is dead now, so please become a fan of our new page instead.

Link to PowerScripting Podcast page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/PowerScripting-Podcast/47431141277

Todos los trucos para Farmville

Farmville es un famoso juego de Facebook que consiste en tener una granja y cultivar y criar animales y así ganar el máximo de dinero y poder tener más que nuestros contactos.

Para esto te traigo algunos trucos para farmville, como:

Los 10 mejores cultivos de Farmville para ganar dinero o monedas:

1. Tomates (Tomatoes)
2. Girasoles (Sunflowers)
3. Café (Coffee)
4. Arándanos (Blueberries)
5. Brócoli (Broccoli)
6. Frambuesas (Raspberries)
7. Pimientos (Peppers)
8. Maíz (Corn)
9. Arroz (Rice)
10. Calabaza (Pumpkin)

Ahora ya podrás conseguir más dinero más rápidamente y poder cultivar y plantar todo lo que tu quieras en tu granja personal.

In Finlandia la Rete diventa un diritto, secondo Fede un demone da sconfiggere.

Come mai in Finlandia diventa un diritto avere il collegamento Internet?

Mentre in Europa si guarda avanti, gentaglia come Emilio Fede ne partorisce una delle sue.

Chiudere Facebook, addirittura col 78% del volere degli Italiani ….

Ma le statistiche dove le prendono? Ah, si, su un campione di 2600 telefonate. Cioè su 2600 persone il 78% di telespettatori di Rete4 bombardati dalle Informazioni di Regime che ha partecipato telefonando per votare viene riportato dal “giornalista” Emilio Fede come il volere del 78% degli Italiani? ……

Se questa non è pura follia …. di Regime!

Facebook Books Another Scammer

This incident just proves again that most crime perps are idiots:

‘Fugitives of the world, take note: If you’re having the time of your life hanging out in Cancun, you probably shouldn’t brag about it on Facebook. And you definitely shouldn’t add an ex-Justice Department official as a friend. Take it from Maxi Sopo, a 26-year-old who had spent the last seven months on the lamb after allegedly helping to mastermind a bank fraud scheme.

‘Sopo was living in an apartment in Cancun, working at a hotel, and posting updates saying he was “living in paradise” and “loving it.” A Secret Service agent found the Facebook page, but it was open only to friends. So he scanned Sopo’s friend list, and discovered one person listed an affiliation with the Justice Department. When an assistant US attorney contacted him, he swiftly turned over his new “friend” upon learning of his background.’ —Kevin Spak Source: Guardian (UK)

I Declare

Must I declare a disclaimer over everything that I post in my life?

According to some, I should.

This was brought to my attention after I shared a conversation with a fellow classmate who follows me on Facebook.  His advice to me:  You should really be careful about what you post on your Facebook status.

Excuse me?  Why should he care?  More importantly, why would he take me that seriously?

I’m sorry, but at times I tend to be a little tongue-in-cheek.  It’s okay.  My friends are aware of this and they usually laugh it off.   The reason behind all of this is that I aspire to be a writer.  I try different things.  I try different types of humor.

So after this particular classmate left the biology lab this morning, I shared with my professor (who also follows me on Facebook) what this classmate said.  Her comment was that my Facebook comments make her laugh.  She finds them funny.  {see, my true intention!}

Hello?  Alot of people find what I write about funny.  I’m sorry if your life is to the point that you are so anal retentive that you take everything seriously.  Life is too short to take life so seriously.  If you cannot laugh at yourself, your life, or your situations, then you are going to live a very short and anxious life.

It is like the entire challenge of adding the phrase “spontaneous combustion” to every single post that I write, or how I tried to add Tony Stewart’s name to every single post.  It is something that I do.  If you honestly think that I’m out to jump Tony Stewart’s bones just because I posted something like that in blog post, you need to seriously get a life.  If you think that my children actually tied our cats to the ceiling fan so that they could get flying practice in, you need to get a life.  If you think that I have rats in my attic that actually talk…  you see where this is headed?

I write about things that are serious, but I also write about things that humorous.  Sometimes, I take creative liberties and I make things up (i.e. the intervention story, the Jacques Rat story where the rat is planning revenge, the game show on waiting story, and my alter egos of Fat Girl and Inner Skinny Chick).

Enjoy my blog for what it is:  entertainment.  Do not try to read so much into everything.  Because I promise if you do stress over what I write about then you may stress your brain to the point where it may just combust spontaneously as all the cells within your brain go entirely haywire and release all of their stored ATP at one time.

Ha!

Facebook de-friending policy

So many folks only read news that’s fed to them via social networks. For them, this policy would be a bad idea. You’d be shielding yourself from other communities.

For me, who gathers news for a living, it’s different. When I dip into my online social network, it’s for recreation, for keeping up with friends.

When those friends or their friends beat me up for my views and particular take on what defines a sense of humor, I dis ‘em. Usually, I’ll just hide someone for a while if they get on a boring soapbox. If there is venom, deleteorama. That’s the policy. I didn’t run it through legal, but don’t think I have much to worry about.

You are, as generations before mine have wisely noted, a reflection of your friends. I carry that forth to Facebook. If your friends suck, e-mail or phone call will have to do. Be picky about your friends … Another policy.

Cheers,

Svend

The End of the Email Era - WSJ.com

First and foremost, I’m looking for the next big thing in communication. Twitter and FaceBook are not it though. Anyone who tell you otherwise is full of shit. I’ve had my own experience with Twitter and FaceBook and both are barely adequate when it comes to true communication.

As of Tuesday of last week Twitter suspended me. Why? Good question. I don’t know either. According to their rules and regulations, I have not violated a single one. But I’m suspended all the same. And from their automated response , their almost non-existent customer support, I don’t think they know either. But I’m not alone. Apparently, there are a couple of thousand of us in limbo while Twitter not only doesn’t respond to our pleas but they haven’t put out any release as to why there are so many of us who were suspended around the same time. So from a company that just received $100-million in financing last month, I say fuck’em. They haven’t a clue what they are doing.

Twitter is just cb-radio with 140-characters.

Oh, and why for the love of god is anyone talking to any executive  from the antiquated, bloated AOL. No one who had an ounce of grey-matter ever took AOL seriously. Unless you were an executive from Time-Warner that was about to have a huge pay day. But of course, where are they today?

FaceBook. Really? As pleased as I am to be re-acquainted with grade school and high school friends, the site is very intrusive. And is FaceBook the answer to our communication wants and needs? With all their bullshit games, and soul-sucking applications I’m surprised that GameFly isn’t endorsing them. And do we all need a dose of ginko biloba to recall all the times someone has hacked into their system.

Is there something out there that’ll save time while improving, or just delivering communication better? Or just suck up more of it?

Since I operate on a Mac I’m not familiar with Microsoft’s SharePoint, but if it does what Mr. Teper claims then I know for damn sure the company my wife works for, that is so heavily dependent on email,  could utilize it.

adult facebook friends

I put this quote from David Sedaris as my Facebook status a couple weeks ago:

“When shit brings you down, just say ‘Fuck it!’ and eat yourself some motherfucking candy.”

I just thought it was funny, seriously, words to live by. And of course meant to be light-hearted. There are plenty of worst things I could put on Facebook. I wasn’t insulting or defaming anyone’s character; I was just sharing a funny quote.

Well, on Monday I was talking to my mom, and she told me that one of her friends had called her shocked about my status. Her friend said that it was very offending. Her husband even chimed in, telling my mom that I wasn’t going to be able to get a job because of it. They just couldn’t believe that I would do such a thing .

You know it is not like my profile picture is me in a bikini on a beach doing a beer bong. This was completely innocent. I am not friends with future employers but if I were 1. I would put special privacy settings on my completely innocent page. 2 be mindful. You have to be friends with me to view my page so it is not like they could spy anyway. I was kind of hurt that this lady tattled on me. I felt kind of judged. She is way too old to have not have sworn in her life or over drink. Shame shame shame lady, you are not mature enough to be my Facebook enough. If it is wrong to say “fuck” once in a while then I don’t want to be right.

Net Nation: Is Facebook Copying Other Sites?

Now, I realize at this point that all my net-themed posts have been about facebook, and believe, it’s not intentional. I guess more ideas hit me since I spend more time there than most other sites. In the future, however, I’ll be bringing to light some cool websites to be checked out.

Anyway, recently (say, in the last few months) facebook introduced some new features. Namely, usernames (for quick access to profiles and for easy login) and status tagging (I’ll call it that). In case you weren’t aware, the run down is this:

1. Now you can have your own personalized username (say, talking.pyjamas) for use for logging in (rather than use your email address), or for pointing people to your profile (ex: www.facebook.com/talking.pyjamas).

2. You can now also tag people in your statuses, by typing @, followed by their name.

Those of you familiar with these tubes we call the internets might recognize the last one, in particular. Yeah. Twitter. Twitter, the self-coined “micro-blogging” site, where people can post short, little messages about what they’re doing during the day, uses the exact same method for tagging (in this case it’s not called tagging nor is it exactly the same, but it’s got a very similar purpose). In your message, you type @NameHere. But I’ll get back to this later.

The other feature they announced (before the status tagging) was usernames. And guess what? Myspace has had this for years! Now, I’m no Myspace guy. Don’t have one, don’t know much about it, and probably visit a Myspace page once a year. But I know that they have usernames, and are used for the exact same purpose. Now when I heard this, I thought huh.

When I heard the status announcement, I spit out my drink.

The thing that’s amazing here is not only the copying of other sites, but the absolute flagrancy with which facebook is doing it. They didn’t even make an attempt at changing the way the tagging works! The just simple-as-that copy and pasted it into their set of features.

So now this raises many interesting questions. Why is facebook doing this? Can they get away with this? Will they lose users?

I think Mark Zuckerberg has let all his money get to his head, and let himself become a flat-out idiot. Facebook has become the fat guy in McDonald’s, eating everything in sight. And… well, the analogy’s a little lacking. But facebook has become this giant, bloated “thing” (for lack of a better word), with so much junk attached to it it’s almost impossible to use. It really should be replaced by a better site. But it’s not. Because of the facebook effect.

The facebook effect states, that once a certain something has enough fans, it can increase crappiness levels and decrease quality levels without seeing any decrease in fandom.

This is caused by a slightly less teen-horrific version of peer pressure. I wouldn’t quit facebook. Why? Because I’d be missing out on all my friends talking. They’re not going to switch. It’s the same scenario for a lot of other people. The party may suck, but everyone’s there!

The other thing, of course, is the small issue of having TOO MUCH MONEY FOR ONE’S OWN GOOD. Mark Zuckerberg, and facebook, has gotten to the point where he/it can do whatever, without seeing any (or virtually any) loss in profit. They’re trying to add every single damn thing to their site, thinking that it’s a good thing. And they don’t know any better!

It’s slightly annoying.

So this answers the other questions. Can they get away with it? Probably. It’s not like there are patents (paternets?) or lawyers for these situations. Will they lose users? Why don’t we consult with out good friend, the facebook effect:

HA. Fat chance.

So. Is this OK. What’s your opinion? Is this just the way the world is? The story of life? C’est la vie? Or… is it not. I’m running out of energy.

Personally, I’m still undecided. I know one thing for sure, though: I’m patenting the facebook effect. Happy plagiarism!

Re: Obama's Nobel Peace Prize (A Facebook Status Update Debate)

Tommy S. If you can’t understand why Obama won the Nobel Prize, you’re just not paying attention. 3 hours ago • Comment • Like 6 people like this. Paul C. I thought I was paying attention but I must have missed something. They voted months ago for it. Hmmmm. 3 hours ago Christine D. Yup apparentlly I wasn’t paying attention either. 3 hours ago L.L. ya’ll remember election night when the whole world had a party? when people gained some hope and trust about what was possible? repeat: the whole world had a party on election night, just by getting into office, obama created a shift n folks outlook. he’s actually had a bigger impact than most peace prize winners, just on election night. 2 hours ago Roni Weiss I dunno… I think there is a legitimate argument for others over him. I don’t agree with the rationale of giving someone an award so they continue what they are doing. about an hour ago • Delete Suzan E. Per our conversation last night, I now agree with you… It’s a high level peace… But I believe that, by your rationale, it is the American voters who, ultimately, should have been awarded the prize. about an hour ago L.L. peace prizes are only given to people so they can continue doing what they are doing, unless given posthumously about an hour ago Roni Weiss Ok, make sure Mandela keeps working on that apartheid thing. about an hour ago • Delete Roni Weiss And there is a vast different between rewarding someone with something they would like to do and something they have actually done. about an hour ago • Delete L.L. actually mandela continued to work for his country even after apartheid officially ended. and obama really did get elected, inspiring billions of people of color, who’s history has been shaped by the forces of imperialism and colonization, that the biggest most powerful country in the world elected someone more like them and less like the ones who impoverished them. and yes, he has and will continue to speak in an inclusive, human and rational way across borders… 36 minutes ago L.L. According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” the middle one he’s still got some work on, but he’s done the other two in a huge way. 35 minutes ago Roni Weiss My main disagreement has been with their explanation as to why they gave it to him. It feels anticipatory as opposed to based on actual efforts and accomplishments. 32 minutes ago • Delete Roni Weiss And in the end, I disagree with the idea that all that needs to be done to get a Peace Prize is to make speeches, as opposed to concrete steps. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan continue. Israel and Palestine are still in an unending problem. Carbon reduction hasn’t been agreed upon. North Korea and Iran are still potential nuclear states… I don’t disagree with that he could earn it, but I think it’s premature…. Read More 24 minutes ago • Delete L.L. roni, dude, it’s easier for you to travel internationally. thus you are experiencing and observing Peace. despite your own experience and observations, you choose to see obama getting a peace prize as a point of contention. you are a Fox news wet dream. 12 minutes ago Roni Weiss 2006: People bitching about Bush. 2009: People not bitching about Bush. I don’t see that being a peace issue. 10 minutes ago • Delete L.L. ok roni, you’re right. the world is no better now than in 2006. have a nice day. 3 minutes ago Roni Weiss ~shrugs~ You’ve misconstrued my comments and have gone out of your way to insult me for pretty much no good reason, I think the discussion is over. about a minute ago • Delete

Tommy S. If you can’t understand why Obama won the Nobel Prize, you’re just not paying attention.

3 hours ago • Comment • Like

6 people like this.

Paul C.

I thought I was paying attention but I must have missed something. They voted months ago for it. Hmmmm.

3 hours ago

Christine D.

Yup apparentlly I wasn’t paying attention either.

3 hours ago

L.L.

ya’ll remember election night when the whole world had a party? when people gained some hope and trust about what was possible? repeat: the whole world had a party on election night, just by getting into office, obama created a shift n folks outlook. he’s actually had a bigger impact than most peace prize winners, just on election night.

2 hours ago

Roni Weiss

I dunno… I think there is a legitimate argument for others over him. I don’t agree with the rationale of giving someone an award so they continue what they are doing.

about an hour ago • Delete

Suzan E.

Per our conversation last night, I now agree with you… It’s a high level peace… But I believe that, by your rationale, it is the American voters who, ultimately, should have been awarded the prize.

about an hour ago

L.L.

peace prizes are only given to people so they can continue doing what they are doing, unless given posthumously

about an hour ago

Roni Weiss

Ok, make sure Mandela keeps working on that apartheid thing.

about an hour ago • Delete

Roni Weiss

And there is a vast different between rewarding someone with something they would like to do and something they have actually done.

about an hour ago • Delete

L.L.

actually mandela continued to work for his country even after apartheid officially ended. and obama really did get elected, inspiring billions of people of color, who’s history has been shaped by the forces of imperialism and colonization, that the biggest most powerful country in the world elected someone more like them and less like the ones who impoverished them. and yes, he has and will continue to speak in an inclusive, human and rational way across borders…

36 minutes ago

L.L.

According to Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize should be awarded “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” the middle one he’s still got some work on, but he’s done the other two in a huge way.

35 minutes ago

Roni Weiss

My main disagreement has been with their explanation as to why they gave it to him. It feels anticipatory as opposed to based on actual efforts and accomplishments.

32 minutes ago • Delete

Roni Weiss

And in the end, I disagree with the idea that all that needs to be done to get a Peace Prize is to make speeches, as opposed to concrete steps.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan continue. Israel and Palestine are still in an unending problem. Carbon reduction hasn’t been agreed upon. North Korea and Iran are still potential nuclear states…

I don’t disagree with that he could earn it, but I think it’s premature…. Read More

24 minutes ago • Delete

L.L.

roni, dude, it’s easier for you to travel internationally. thus you are experiencing and observing Peace. despite your own experience and observations, you choose to see obama getting a peace prize as a point of contention. you are a Fox news wet dream.

12 minutes ago

Roni Weiss

2006: People bitching about Bush.

2009: People not bitching about Bush.

I don’t see that being a peace issue.

10 minutes ago • Delete

L.L.

ok roni, you’re right. the world is no better now than in 2006. have a nice day.

3 minutes ago

Roni Weiss

~shrugs~ You’ve misconstrued my comments and have gone out of your way to insult me for pretty much no good reason, I think the discussion is over.

about a minute ago • Delete

Facebook Minded Firefox - Enjoying the Online Life.

Surfing…Browsing.. Feacebook-ing… paling enak pake >MozillaFirefox. Bukan apa-apa, browser ini selain gratis..tis..tis.., cepat, juga didukung ratusan bahkan mungkin ribuan Add-on (aplikasi tambahan) untuk penambahan fungsi yang beragam, dari yang hanya untuk kesenangann/happy browsing sampe yang serius semacam hacking atau cracking.

Facebook Toolbar
Untuk yg lagi kena demam FB, tersedia berbagai macam add-on untuk memudahkan anda ber-Socialize dalam Network. Sebut saja Facebook Toolbar (lihat Gambar) yang akan menampilkan status anda pada toolbar. Andapun dapat melihat New Poked (Colekan), New Friend Requests (Permintaan Teman), New Messages (pesan), New Event Invitations (undangan acara) ataupun Group Invitations (undangan grup), share dan photo upload pada toolbar bersangkutan tanpa harus membuka halaman facebook. Jadi anda bebas browsing/surfing kemana-mana tetapi tetap dapat memonitor segala kegiatan/kejadian pada facebook. Ini benar2 untuk facebook mania.
Selain itu, toolbar ini dapat menampilkan Side Bar yang memuat semua status teman anda saat ini. sekali lagi tanpa harus membuka halaman facebook. Setiap ada event facebook yg harus anda ketahui, akan muncul notifikasi berupa baloon di dasar monitor anda. Pokoke anda tak akan lepas dari facebook kemanapun anda surfing. Dan jangan lupakan juga pada toolbar ini terdapat Facebook Search untuk melakukan pencarian di facebook. Jadi anda dapat melakukan pencarian dari manapun.
Untuk mendownload Facebook Toolbar, selain dari website add-on firefox, anda dapat langsung mendownload dari website facebook developer

Boost For Facebook

Seperti namanya, add-on ini untuk mempercepat (operasi) halaman facecbook. Option menarik dari Boost for Facebook antara kain terdapat Auto Login untuk meng-otomatis-asi Login anda pada facebook, kemudian Rollover All Pics, fitur ini akan menampilkan foto dalam ukuran besar saat kursor mouse berada pada thumbnail foto (rollover), jadi anda tidak perlu membuka foto tersebut untuk melihat dengan jelas. Fitur lainnya yang menarik adalah FB Video Downloader. Bagi anda yg senang men-download video2 pada Facebook fitur ini tentu sangat membantu. Fitur-fitur selanjutnya berhubungan dengan otomatisasi beberapa task serta menyembunyikan/menghilangkan hal-hal yg menggangu semacam Ads (iklan-iklan). Skin pun difasilitasi walau hanya mengganti warna saja. Untuk selengkapnya tentu anda dapat mengeksploit sendiri semua fitur yg disediakan apabila sudah menginstall addon-nya.

FoxTab
Add-on ketiga yg ingin saya ketengahkan untuk kenyamanan browsing anda adalah FoxTab. Add-on ini berfungsi sebagai Tab switching dengan style 3D (lihat gambar). Dengan add-on ini tampilan browser anda terlihat cantik ketika memindahkan/memilih tab yang ingin anda aktifkan. Anda dapat menyetel berbagai macam cara setiap tab ditampilkan.
Semuanya dengan style 3D yang cantik. Secara default anda dapat memilih tab dengan Right Click + Scroll mouse gesture. tetapi semuanya dapat anda atur sesuai dengan kenyamanana anda.

Add-on lain, tentu masih sangat banyak, dan itu disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan anda. beberapa yang sering saya gunakan seperti sxipper, XMarks, AddBloc Plus (wajib), Flashgot, (the best) greasemonkey, FEBE, FireFTP, FoxyProxy, FoxyTune (Ini harus anda coba), gTransalate, WOT, TwitterBar, FlagFox, dan lain-lain, dapat anda install jika anda membutuhkannya. Atau silahkan coba, jika lebih nyaman biarkan dia disitu, jika tidak… Zap!
Semua add-on firefox bisa anda dapatkan disini.

Segitu!… jika anda ingin berbagi, please post Comment atau apapun. Coz this world is for everyone!

The Big Experiment

As I was sitting in my armchair, with my faithful laptop on my lap, Facebook open in one tab and CNN in the other tab, I realized that I wanted more control over what I put on the internet, more control over what I do.

So my great solution to this was….wait for it….create a blog. Yes, another sinkhole to dump time into.

My plan is to post interesting tidbits on life in Alaska, my observations on people and human behaviour, and the occasional witty comment if one ever comes to me (I’m still waiting for one).

So, I guess there’s nothing to do but see how the “Great Experiment” works out.

McDonald's Glass Twister Challenge

In case you haven’t heard, McDonald’s recently launched a promo in-store where you can get a colourful limited edition Coke glasses with your meal. The trouble is, they do not allocate one colour per week, they are selling one colour til they run out of stock and then start with another colour. So you would not be able to ensure you get to collect all the colours unless you visit McDonald’s frequently to check.

A shortcut to collecting ALL the 7 limited edition coke glasses will be to play the McDonald’s Glass Twister Challenge on Facebook , a 3 minute game similar to Bejewelled where you will need to align coke bottles in rows of 3 and above. So far, there seems to be no ways to cheat the game, and my chances are pretty slim since some of the other people’s scores have reached 120k ++ while mine hovers below their halfway line.

I have tried playing slowly to think out the best ways to align the bottles (more points), I have tried playing faster but without thinking my moves through, I have even tried to use a touch screen cause a good friend of mine is convinced it will speed things up, but somehow none of them increased my score by a lot…. if you have any tips, please do leave me a message

The contest period starts on the 23rd Sept – 13 Oct… fingers crossed, hope i’ll break the high score by then!

Play on Facebook here

Polisens ingripande ledde till döden för Johan Liljeqvist

Nu kan Radions ekot avslöja det vi alla nog redan visste …Ännu en skandal för vårt svenska rättsväsende som dag för dag förlorar sin trovärdighet med allas goda minne och inget görs.Som sagt man krafsar lite på ytan medans rötäggen får arbeta kvar.

“Trots att den rättsmedicinska undersökningen visade att Johans död har samband med polisens ingripande, åtalades inga poliser.Flera poliser, som höll fast Johan i ett dokumenterat farligt grepp, har överhuvudtaget inte förhörts. En av poliserna namngavs till och med av sina kollegor.Åklagare Bo Lindgren medger nu efter Ekots granskning att viktiga uppgifter slarvats bort och att hans tidigare påståenden om att alla poliser förhörts inte stämmer. Där kan jag väl medge att jag kan ha hamnat galet, säger Bo Lindgren.”

I'm Not Crazy...

I’m just a little unwell.

So, a big shot-out to my mother… well, to my family in general. It is a little crazy to think that this is the closest I’ve been to them (distance wise) since I graduated high school. Honestly, they are my biggest support group and have always had my back. However, being closer than ever to them has been fantastic!

I mean, my Dad’s been super generous and a great tech-guy, my mom is a financial guru (which is good because I am rubbish with numbers), and my lil’ sis with the big heart is my bestest friend (sorry Mia and Schelly, she called ‘dibs’). I’m really very blessed.

So, bad news… no choir for me. I can’t afford it… and that really sucks, because music and singing are a big part of my life, and a creative outlet that really helps me cope with stress. Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to hope my neighbors don’t mind me belting something out every now and then; as long as it’s not after quiet hours I should be fine. My biggest concern, however, is that because I don’t have an activity that is more or less purely social, I’ll have a real difficulty finding friends. I saw some pictures posted on FB today of a recent little-get-together in my own old SLO house… and surprisingly, it felt like a little dirk had been poked under my ribs. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Cal Poly peeps, and most of my memories from college are happy ones… but I don’t want to look back with a heavy sigh and murmur “Those were the days–” because they really weren’t, and I’m guilty of romanticizing them.

Patience is a virtue… and darn if it isn’t one I lack in regards to this new chapter in my life. By the way, that is really ironic for those of you who understand just how insanely-patient I am was with some individuals who shall remain nameless (but acknowledged).

Anywho, I guess I just don’t want to live a life of routine and checked-off-To-Do lists. I mean, sure, I’m getting work done, but it still kinda feels like my life is as unbalanced as Dorothy Parker (for those who don’t get the reference, she was a brilliant writer, with a sharp wit, and a love of hooch). Ultimately, I’m worried life will end up distinguished, perhaps even entertaining, but empty. Ah well, that’s what happens when you’re one of a species of creatures that are social by necessity. Speaking of which, check out this awesome new anthropological find!

Yes, that’s how this post is going to conclude, and I’m aware that any basic writing course would give it an “F” for Fabulous.

Toodles

never 26

i don’t know why but i’m constantly surprised when i do my monthly facebook log-in to accept friends and delete requests – *gasps* people are still so involved with facebook?!?!

sometimes i really wonder am i really 26.

how come i never did fancy friendster, facebook or twitter?

i can fully appreciate blogging though.

i guess i am just not the sociable sort. haha.

Farmville.

In the past few months I was into gaming online and one of the famous site today is facebook wherein I am playing games. Facebook has become popular because it is an interactive site unlike other sites. Facebook is a Social Networking Site that comes in a package. It has almost everything that is needed in a Social Networking Site.

One of the mostly played game in Facebook is Farmville. It is mostly preferred by facebook users because the images are of good quality, pleasant to the eye and navigation is very easy.

Farmville Cheats and Hacks Using Cheat Engine

Lately, I was bored playing the game because harvesting and planting takes a lot of my time. SoI made an experiment on the farm, thinking ofRichie Rich the famous rich young cartoon character or the Harry Potter movie, the “mazed” field came into my mind. I was thinking to clone their “mazed” yard. After creating the maze, I had a flash of a genius wherein I realized that when you trap your character it will speed up the process. The time when the character is walking from one field to the other is saved.
clear a section in your field of plots, you need to create a nice section of land, which only grass on it.

Clear nine spots in a formation. Now ‘walk’ your person in the middle of this section.

Go to the market, purchase the cheapest fences, and set the fences around the person. After you have set four fences down you will need to turn two of them. You can click on the fence when it is placed and turn it sideways. This effectively blocks in the person and now you can plow and plant much quicker.

This fence trick is super handy if you have a large amount of area to plow or plant. Currently this is the only cheat I have found which works.

If you use other items to block in your person, he or she will walk around the perimeter and proceed to plant or plow.

Farmville cheats to increase your coins and how to become a master farmer

Instead of buying animals and trees from the Market Place, you only need to add neighbours and these neighbours can send these items as gift to you for free. But you also need to return back the same by sending one also. And when your animals counter reaches 100% you can now collect eggs, milk, wool and other items which you can sell for coins. Harvest your trees to gain additional coins. When your trees counter also reaches 100% then you can also collect various types of fruits that can also be sell for coins. Make sure also to visit your neighbors regularly and assisting your neighbors will their daily chores will give you a valuable experience points and coins.

Redes Sociais: é possível gerenciar todas?Por Beatriz Portella Smaal

A cada dia surge uma nova rede social para que as pessoas possam interagir pela internet. Mas estamos dando conta de nossa vida digital com tantas opções assim?

Você já acessou sua rede social hoje? Qual delas? Caso você tenha parado para pensar na segunda pergunta, é possível que você já esteja dominado pelo poder da web 2.0. Isso quer dizer que você conta com perfis nas principais redes de relacionamento que circulam por aí, como o Twitter, Orkut, Facebook e outros.

Mas será que conseguimos gerenciar nossas contas de forma satisfatórias?
Quando era apenas o Orkut, tudo bem, pois as atualizações eram constantes e as pessoas estavam sempre lá para receber mensagens e comentar suas fotos.
Mas e agora? Como você faz para atualizar todas as páginas que utiliza?

A vida com redes sociais

Agora pense na cena (e se identifique): você foi convidado para uma
formatura. E lá vai você com seu celular e máquina fotográfica se divertir.
Já tuitou na entrada dos formandos pelo celular e, no dia seguinte, é hora de atualizar as páginas.

[image: Aproveite e festa e depois poste nos sites]

Você irá colocar as imagens no Facebook (e no Orkut) dos melhores momentos, fazer um post no blog sobre “10 festas para lembrar” e ainda tuitar que não cansa de ouvir a música
YMCAque rolou (ah, que você também está ouvindo pela
Last.FM ). Resultado?
Perde o dia todo na frente do computador apenas acessando cada uma das páginas.

Percebeu o problema? E olha que citamos apenas cinco sites nesta pequena historinha. Isso quer dizer que você passou boa parte do seu dia na internet, uma vez que seu tempo livre acabou gasto com as redes sociais (ao invés de ir com a turma toda no barzinho, para comentar a festa do dia anterior – algo que você fica sabendo horas depois, pelo Twitter).

[image: O início da febre]O que é possível reparar é que o gerenciamento das redes sociais está cada vez mais fazendo parte da nossa vida, uma vez que existe uma quantidade exorbitante de novos sites para gerenciar. Se tomar conta do Orkut já era uma tarefa que demandava tempo, imagine agora com 10 redes diferentes para você acessar todos os dias!

Mudando o foco

[image: Para as redes sociais, o acesso é fundamental]

Devido à impossibilidade de atualizar várias redes ao mesmo tempo (ok, você deu conta de todas, mas não sem sacrificar um tempo precioso), a tendência de comportamento de muitos é focar em apenas algumas redes e cometer “suicídio de perfil” em outras. Quem prefere Facebook para imagens, por exemplo, deleta a conta do Orkut, pois não vale a pena manter dois sites para compartilhar fotos.

Sites são criados e somem na velocidade da internet, e muito se especula sobre o porquê algumas redes perpetuam e outras não. O que parece ser um padrão, no Brasil, é que sites contam com ideias boas, nem que executadas de forma simples, estarão entre sites com um bom número de participantes. Mas isso não é regra, e muitos sites legais somem por falta de acesso.

Outra tendência é a migração para outras redes dos que se consideram
veteranos em um site específico. Aqueles que estão em grandes sites desde o primórdio já enjoaram daquelas ferramentas e procuram novas opções. Estes irão à caça de novos sites, fazendo que novas redes sociais de qualidade sejam descobertas, e o ciclo seja reiniciado.

Integração

Um fenômeno que se percebe é a quantidade de sites que estão em integração.
Quem tem uma conta do Google, por exemplo, agora pode entrar no
YouTubecom a mesma senha. Isso faz com que muitos sites fiquem ligados, e economiza bastante tempo na hora de acessar um ou outro (além da propaganda mútua do site na outra página, o que aumenta o número de acesso em ambas).

[image: Passa-se mais tempo usando a internet]

Cada vez mais é possível encontrar também programas que contam com botões para compartilhar informações diretamente nos sites de relacionamento. Com isso você é capaz de dividir imagens ou comentários mais rapidamente, deixando as páginas sempre integradas para espalhar seus interesses, um dos objetivos principais da web 2.0.

Gerencie seu tempo

Além disso, programas estão sendo criados para facilitar a vida do usuário que quer manter-se atualizado em todas as páginas, sem abrir mão de nenhuma rede social.

O Yoono,
por exemplo, conecta o usuário em várias redes de uma só vez, além de ser usado como mensageiro instantâneo para o MSN, Google Talk e Yahoo! Messenger de uma só vez. Com isso, o tempo pode ser economizado, e não é preciso abrir uma página de cada vez para ver as atualizações dos seus amigos.

Outros programas estão mais focados nos sites do momento no Brasil, ou seja, o Facebooke
o Twitter . Dessa forma, você posta ou acessa dois sites de uma só vez, o que facilita bastante na hora de gerenciar a vida virtual.

Conclusão

As redes sociais vieram para ficar, isso é um fato. Nem que algumas delas percam a força, outras surgem com novas ideias e o ciclo reinicia, com todas as polêmicas a que têm direito.

Mas a pergunta permanece: estamos dando conta de gerenciar nossa vida digital? A resposta parece ser sim, uma vez que estas não perdem força. O que acontece é um novo direcionamento desses interesses. As redes sociais estão se especializando, e cada um entra naquilo que mais lhe agrada.

[image: Compartilhe seus momentos também ao vivo e em cores]

Mas se esta prática está atrapalhando sua vida, é bom ficar de olho e mudar certos comportamentos pessoais, ou realmente diminuir a preocupação excessiva com este tipo de serviço. É legal mostrar as fotos pelo Facebook, mas pode ter certeza, muito mais legal é participar da festa para ter o que mostrar depois.

FONTE: http://www.baixaki.com.br

Eff me in the bee

I’ve been having a problem with Facebook chat ever since the new layout was unveiled.
But: it’s fixed! Now I can talk to everyone (except Blake. I did that on purpose). And now that I can chat with people on Facebook, I keep getting this message.

Some of the messages you sent may not have been received.

A pleasant reminder of why I like every other IM service so much better. Thanks for nothing Facebook.

You'd think I would know better

After getting a TON of work done last night, including planning for two weeks, I realized it was because I came home and did the work – no TV, no computer. I was just “in te mood”. I had also realized this on Friday when I was in the mood to grade tests, but didn’t, and so they’re still not done. So what did I do today instead of grading the tests that I really want to know how they did? I went farming on Facebook, ate dinner, and watched America’s Next Top Model.

Yee-hah.