Randomness

[Alelou]

Interesting essay "in defense of" anonymous commenting:

http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2010/ ... commenting

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

I succumbed to peer pressure today and activated my facebook account, and suddenly have 40+ friends. Browsing around I find it a tad overwhelming. When do people have the time to do all this stuff? Causes, fan pages, quizes, games, posts, etc. Whew!

Anyone here active? Not that I'd add or anything, since I go by my real name and have no intention to confuse my real life persona with my KTR one. There's no way I'd advertise to the world that I hang out at some Trek boards, writing episode reviews and drooling over Jolene Blalock. Hm, maybe I should create a "Kevin Thomas Riley" account..

[Alelou]

I have Facebook, but I can't keep up with it either, and I'm just there passively myself. I tried to switch the email notification to my real email, but it keeps sending it to the old one I don't use anymore, which is really fine since I can't believe how much crap it puts in your inbox. I had 1,800-plus emails in there from not paying attention for a couple of months, mostly marketing and lists I should have unsubbed from, but 270 of them were Facebook notifications, half of which were annoying in nature. No, niece, I do not want to know that you are upset with yet another boyfriend, or why. No, friend's husband, I do not want to see you complain bitterly about your ex-wife and alimony, especially since your kids are on Facebook too. And no, friend with all the good causes, I really do not want to join them. I also do not appreciate people asking me to do aps or join groups or hug them in Spanish or whatever, quite a lot of which I don't even understand since half the family is Spanish-speaking.

For professional purposes, LinkedIn is much more useful and less dangerous.

For all that, I do find Facebook useful to peek in on the friends and family who do use it.

[Alelou]

Double post: before I got distracted by the desire to complain about Facebook, I was just going to say I saw the movie "Outsourced" tonight and really liked it.

It made interesting use of the whole arranged marriage thing. Perhaps a little implausible, and perhaps a bit morally questionable, but fun.

It's definitely an American movie, though. They kissed!

[aadarshinah]

Fb is the only way I can keep up with people from High School, who are scattered all over the world, but even then I can't do it actively. I have notifications for everyone turned off and when - and only when - I feel like looking people up do I actually see what they've been up to. Mostly I end up playing time-wasting games on it for lack of anything better to do.

My mom joined up about a yr ago - just created an account, because all techies have to have one, apparently, or they don't get hired, as employers assume you're not as techie as you claim - and, ever since, it's been kina annoying. I mean, she never checks it but, when she does... because, occassionally, you do just need to vent about what she's done and you can't because she'll see it. It's like big brother, but worse because her office is right next to my room...

But mostly I hate status updates.

[WarpGirl]

My mom and I share an account. I use it to talk to my best friend when the IM screws up and keep track of people I rarely get to see. Other than that... I don't find it all that interesting. I do like to be able to see pics of the people I cannot keep in touch with in person more than once every few years.

KTR Are you ashamed of being seen with us? just kidding. I don't go around telling people I'm WarpGirl either.

[Alelou]

Aardarshinah, you can actually custom-block certain people (like your mom) from various aspects of your account. It tells you how here:

http://www.nytimes.com/external/readwri ... anted=1&em

Speaking of bizarre things you can learn via Facebook:

http://www.rr.com/news/topic/article/rr ... nd_wedding

[Aquarius]

I have. FB account under my real name, for friends and hair stuff. People from here have friended me and I them, and I've found that the fannish stuff doesn't creep in much, because they are likewise using it to keep up with Real Life stuff.

[Alelou]

Anyone who has ever suffered through a transatlantic flight will likely enjoy this visual blog:

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0 ... ef=general

[honeybee]

Hilarious. Awesome!

I think I spend 40% of transatlantic flight time staring at the little map dealing that shows where the plane is. I feel victorious when we reach the half way point, so we'd have to land in Shannon rather than Gander during an emergency. This became a deal on my last flight to London, since the Flight Attendant made one of those "Is there a doctor onboard?" announcements.

Thankfully, it was a woman in a diabetic coma, not a heart attack. So, the RN on the flight helped her enough so that we could get to London. I had a friend who was on a flight where a guy had a heart attack and they had to turn around and land in Gander, Nova Scotia.

[enterprikayak]

Last time I was on a big plane (to the trek con actually!) there was NO LITTLE SCREEN. I was very mad.

But "big" planes are quite infrequent in my personal space time continuum. Mostly I've only ever taken the little 16 person DeHavilland DHC-3 Turbine Single Otter that flies around Vancouver and the Lwr Mainland. Then I grab a seat right behind the cockpit (which has no door) and watch on the pilots' tiny little GPS screen.


The children have just been whisked away by their Dad who is dropping them off for 2 days with Grandma on his way to work.

The house

..........................is

........................................eeerily

...........................................................s i l e n t

[justTripn]

Well, I am too overwhelmed to know whether I am happy or sad, but here is why I've been kind of quiet this past week: My whole house is being torn up and remodelled YIKES!; my new foreign exchange student arrives next Thursday (Her room is a construction site, but should be done in time); my whole extended family is in town for my parents 50th wedding anniversary; I'm helping plan a club picnic for the same day as the anniversary party (so I won't even be able to attent the picnic); . . . Oh my oldest son is coming home tomorrow for the 50th anniversary and we have no place for him to sleep; . . . wish me luck.

[Alelou]

Enjoy!

I'm heading off to Philly with my son for a convergence of old X-Files fanfic friends (one of whom has a son who has become his friend). Then I drop son off with stepdaughter for a week. We'll have almost a week without a teenager in the house.

Come to think of it, he's never been away from us that long, ever. This is not a kid who usually appreciates any changes in his routine. I hope we don't get a call at midweek.

[Kevin Thomas Riley]

KTR Are you ashamed of being seen with us? just kidding. I don't go around telling people I'm WarpGirl either.

To be honest, yes! Not because of you but because of the stigma attached to Trek in the "real world".

Anyone who has ever suffered through a transatlantic flight will likely enjoy this visual blog:

http://niemann.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/0 ... ef=general

Haha! That's so true! I experienced something similar in May! But I had a decent airline whose seats weren't that cramped.

This became a deal on my last flight to London, since the Flight Attendant made one of those "Is there a doctor onboard?" announcements.

Thankfully, it was a woman in a diabetic coma, not a heart attack.

This happened to me on the way back from the States. The brother of the woman sitting beside me collapsed and he was rather unruly when he woke up. But everything turned out OK.

[panyasan]

I am back behind my own computer after a nice relaxing holiday/vacation about 330 km/205 miles from my home town. Very close to France - so close that it would take us a walk of 10 minutes to walk into France. North of France is nice - we were almost tempting to keep on driving and sneek out to Paris (another 205 miles and more traffic). If you ever have seen Band of brothers scenes in the country side - it looked exactly the same. On the way to our destination it took us 6 hours and I almost got sick because of the traffic at Antwerp and on the way back it took us 7,5 hours - mostly traffic jams as usual in my own country. I am living in one of the most populated countries in the world - and we all have cars. Besides the traffic jams I had a really good time (slept a lot! - that's rare, but I really needed it). I did miss the site! BTW, I found out that my 6 year old daughter want to be an astronaut, visiting Mars or a prinsess. Or both.