Fun and Games Dept

I have a love-hate relationship with Facebook. On the one hand, I think it’s a brilliant software platform that has allowed nearly a billion people to keep in contact with one another. Like millions of others, I have reestablished connections with old high school friends, maintained better contact with family members that are flung all over the country and I have maintained online friendships with folks that I have met, or would really like to meet, in person to build and/or continue a friendship outside of Facebook. When you think about it, it’s all pretty cool that we have the technology to do this. Imagine trying to accomplish all of this with dial up! It would have been a nightmare.

On the other hand, as an avid Facebook user (at least this week), I am fully cognizant of the fact that as the user I am not the customer. My life is a product of Facebook’s. My personal details are sorted, analyzed, computed, mitigated and possibly even spindled and then sold off to marketing agencies and the like so that they know how to market their precisely to me. In a way this bothers me, but my ego isn’t so large that I think that they know exactly who I am but rather they know of my type of existence and there are probably thousands out there that are just as quirky as I am. The cranky side of me hopes I through their algorithms into a tailspin.

So while I process these things in my head and go back and forth with this love-hate relationship, it usually boils down to wanting to like Facebook more than not like it. Personally, I think the good outweighs the bad. I keep hearing how Google wants to wipe out Facebook with Google+, but I think that’s a different animal with different intentions (other than the marketing data mining).

This all being said, I can decree right now that I’m liking Facebook. It tends to be my PG-13 playspace in the online world and I welcome the interaction with friends and family alike. I see Facebook as the family friendly venue and that’s the approach I take with it. I don’t have the need for dual identities on Facebook, I have that elsewhere where I need it and I’m perfectly content with the arrangement. The only thing that one needs to keep in mind is that you need to keep it all in perspective and you need to keep your privacy and app settings up to date. Then you’ll find you love it more than you hate it, just like I do.

I think I rambled.

This has been the nearly perfect weekend. I rode nearly 60 miles on the bike and survived to tell the tale. We grilled on the back patio, went for rides in the Jeep with the top off and I indulged in my geek ways along the way.

I feel relaxed and ready to go for the week. It’s a short week for us; Earl and I meet up in Buffalo Thursday night to fly to Chicago on Friday. Next weekend is BearPride weekend, and that’s always a good time.

I want the cookie. I can easily imagine myself walking up to the counter and asking for an oatmeal raisin cookie and then paying $1.07 and walking away with refined sugar goodness. It’s easy to imagine this, I’ve done it hundreds of times.

And yes I know, refined sugar isn’t good for you. I think it has to be better than the High Fructose Corn Syrup that’s usually present and come to think of it, present in my cookie.

It’s because of stress. I don’t like eating chocolate when I’m stressed. I usually head for pistachios or something else nutty. But the cookie is calling out to me.

I am strong. I shall not eat the cookie. I won’t even order the cookie. I have turned the page in the script and have moved on in this play of life.

I’ll just lick my desk when I get back to work and enjoy some dust. It’s low cal.

I just read on Twitter (and then in the news) that disco diva Donna Summer passed on this morning at age 63. Her passing is after a battle with cancer.

I am very sad.

An amazing singer, her life path had some bumps here and there but one thing was certain, she had an amazing gift with her voice and she brought happiness to millions of people through her music.

RIP, LaDonna. We will miss you very much.

So thus far I have spent much of my lunch hour arguing with the Verizon 3G signal that permeates this fine little city I work in. I keep losing my 3G signal and getting ramped back to the old 1ZPTT (I think that’s what it’s called) data signal that is much like the old dialup days of Prodigy, CompuServe and AOL.

This is not the 21st century way of doing things.

Instead of getting worked up about it, though, I have decided to (after this blog entry) just turn off the gadgets and enjoy the sunshine for the rest of my lunch hour. That will put me back at peace on an otherwise good day.

Some days you just have to grin and bear it. Thank the gods that Monday is almost to a close.

So Earl and I went on a drive on Saturday. Because we both drive the Thruway on a daily basis, it was our mission to travel the Empire State without driving on “New York’s Main Street”. I’m not a fan of the Thruway. It’s not very scenic.

We ended up driving along Lake Ontario between the port city of Oswego and the bigger city of Rochester. I tried following Old Route 104 for a while…

… (U S 104 hasn’t existed since 1972 or so) but I got distracted and ended up driving Route 14 to Sodus Point, which I didn’t even know existed. From there, we drove along the Lake Ontario shoreline along the appropriately named Lake Road. What a pretty drive! I was so busy driving that I didn’t take any photos.

We hit the always popular Eastview Mall to stretch our legs and grab an iced tea at Starbucks. It was busy with a bunch of young girls making clucking and clattering noises.

I don’t particularly enjoy the clucking and clattering. After the iced tea and walking the mall, we ended up at Dinosaur BBQ in downtown Rochester, where we were repeatedly asked where the hostess stand was while we waited for our turn to be seated.

Once we were seated and we met the lovely server named Jennifer (she completely rocked), Earl and I looked over the menu. Earl needed an assist…

… yay for the flashlight app on his iPhone!

On the way out of the restaurant I took a photo of the Genesee River simply because I could.

And from there we headed home the back way. There was much rejoicing.

The next day, Earl made a “small salad” for lunch…

… and then later in the day we visited with my Mom for Mother’s Day, which was a wonderful experience.

and then on the way home I took a picture of a set of powerlines because I’ve stared at these powerlines along Interstate 81 since I was a very young tyke. And besides, I’m geeky enough to take photos of powerlines on a regular basis, now that we don’t have to pay for film and all.

Right before I woke up this morning I was dreaming about climbing a mountain so I could catch a spectacular shot of a gorgeous sunset with my iPhone. I couldn’t get the picture I wanted from wherever I was standing, so I climbed up on a cliff, where there were a lots of people waiting to get the same shot. I remember thinking the sunset was beautiful. I woke up smiling.

This weekend’s mission is to climb up on a mountain or cliff and grab a beautiful photo of the sunset with my iPhone. I’ll be sure to share with the class when the mission is accomplished.

So the other night Earl approached me with a slightly panicked look in his eyes. This is rather unusual for him because he’s the grounded, calm one of the bunch (thank god) so I knew something was a little off.

“I can’t turn off the television.”

This was instantly troubling to me because our television is less than two years old and it cost a lot of money. It’s a 47-inch, high def, super high Hz with built in Yahoo widgets (who the hell uses Yahoo on their television) and quite frankly, it shouldn’t be having an issue at it’s young age. It’s not like we use it not stop or anything.

The batteries in the remote had gone dead from Earl holding down the fast forward button while trying to stomach an episode of American Idol. Thank god we don’t have to pay for videotape anymore.

Since the batteries in the remote were dead, pressing the “power” button on the remote accomplished nothing. This would normally be the way we turn off the television, so we were left to ponder as to how to turn the television off without the availability of a remote control. We did something we rarely do: we walked up to the television and touched it.

Now back in the day this would be something that we would do on a semi-hourly basis; to change the channel, you had to walk up to the television and turn a knob. To change the volume you had to do the same. I got really good at giving the dial a good hearty spin to get from channel 3 to channel 9 without having to stop at 4-8, though it did result in a broken knob. Don’t tell anyone because I never did.

As we approached the television, a quick assessment indicated that there were no buttons on the front or top of the television. I shimmied around the side and saw nothing. There was a brief moment of hope when I spotted something that looked like a knob or button but it turned out to be the one screw that holds the whole mess together. The blue light continued to pulse. A friendly message bounced around on the screen telling us that there was “no signal detected.” I considered pulling the power plug but that would involve two people hauling this massive piece of entertainment equipment out of the entertainment center. I did have a brief consideration of just turning the power off to the house but that would have disrupted too many things.

Thankfully, Earl found AAA batteries in the surround sound receiver remote. We put them in the television remote, said a little prayer and pressed the button.

The bouncing message disappeared and the blue light went off.

Crisis averted.

Now we have to get up to change the volume of the surround sound until we find more batteries. The horror.

It’s one of those days where I need to take a nap during my lunch hour, so I am about to do that. It would be more fun if it was raining and I could enjoy the pitter pat of raindrops on the Jeep roof, but I have an app for that now. What would be really cool would be a thunderstorm with lots of thunder and lightning and wind and tornado sirens. But then again, that’s kind of odd as I wouldn’t be able to get any sleep with the sirens going off.