Author: Carl Page 37 of 152

Man on motorcycle about to kiss blonde woman

Facebook Boyfriend

On July 16, 2018

I was an active and avid Facebook user for a very long time. I got an account with a .edu address before it was open to the rest of the public. I would check but I deactivated my account last September. And today I requested it be deleted. In 14 days it will be gone (assuming we believe Facebook ever truly deletes anything).

Merlin and John had an interesting exchange about Facebook at the end of episode 75 of Reconcilable Differences about the Facebook Boyfriend.

Audio Clip

Merlin: After Friendster and MySpace, Facebook came along and it’s so pretty and freshly scrubbed and it was like the boyfriend with the good job who brought flowers.

John: And dressed nice and combed his hair.

Merlin: Believed in event dining and having friends over and asking how your day went. And you had a pretty good boyfriend in Facebook and then at some point it became less

John: He started doing meth.

Merlin: Hang on. Hang on. Now we’re in a relationship. He still picks up his socks. But maybe he doesn’t always put the seat down. And then you get two years into it and you’re suddenly realizing things are stable? It feels stable. It feels like things are mostly ok. I have a lot of friends that are getting divorced and that’s really sad. But this is OK right? This is good… right?

Merlin: And now you’re 10 years into it and you’re still going, This is good, right? Because it’s familiar. But yeah. Maybe he’s doing meth and you haven’t figured it out yet.

Merlin: But would you walk into Facebook today as a new experience? Would you walk into that ecosystem today knowing the risks, benefits, ups, downs and what you’re actually going to put on the line?

Merlin: It really is going to be an ex-boyfriend in 6 months. He’s mean to other people but he’s nice to me.

This mirrors my experience with the service. It was a breath of fresh air from Myspace. Myspace was the wild west of media. It was Geocities with the same glitz and glam gifs. I used to leave comments with a 1000px wide transparent gif embedded in it for the spam sites. It would completely break the site of the spammers.

Facebook was uniform. It was fresh and clean and legible. It was the good boyfriend. It was a place to hang out and meet other people in college. There were no companies on it. No parents. No other people outside of schools. I still think the defining moment is when it opened up to companies and advertising.

Though that may be the least of it given where Facebook has gone since. Between the data leaks, privacy destroying bugs and general negligence the trade offs are too great.

I turned off my account last year because I wasn’t enjoying it anymore. It was so desperate to show me content, it would pull things from people I never knew and don’t care about.

The sister of your old co-worker’s boss had a baby.

Cool.

A friend posted in a group you aren’t interested in.

Neat.

Long ago Facebook stopped being about people and started being about sharing (mis)information.

I want to see how my friends and family are doing. Where did you go? What did you eat? What’s going in in your life?

Posting the same news stories repeatedly with a comment isn’t the same.

The few people I kept up with on the site were fun. But the rest of the site is a mess and I didn’t enjoy being there. I was in a couple of groups. So I used the Facebook Groups app.

Until they killed it.

It was time to make a decision. Was Facebook worth it? And that answer was no.

I deactivated my account on September 27, 2017. I wanted to make sure nothing broke when I did. I used the “login with Facebook” for a few things and wanted to make sure they didn’t fail.

They didn’t.

I also wanted to see if I could stop using the site. Did I miss anyone? Did anyone miss me?

Maybe? But just this last weekend one of sister-in-laws asked if I had seen something on Facebook she posted.

Nope.

I decided it was time to delete my account entirely after the latest in a long line of data breaches.

Facebook is gone from my life.

Photo by Asdrubal luna on Unsplash

Swipes

By Carl

On July 13, 2018

In Apps

I can finally start using the Android Gmail app. For the past few years I used Bluemail primarily for one option.

Swipe right to delete. Swipe left to archive.

For years the Gmail app would let you select either delete or archive. But not both. And I don’t want to triage email by opening it and clicking delete or archive. I want to swipe left or right and not have to look at them. Especially good for sales email where I am not tempted if I don’t open the message.

The latest update contained those magic words.

WHAT’S NEW
• You can now customize left and right swipe actions to more efficiently manage your inbox.

Bun Alert

By Carl

On July 12, 2018

In Introspection

I enjoy the creatures in my yard. Ever since we bought the house and I have windows on every side I love looking out of them and seeing what’s in my yard today.

We came from a rental townhouse. Despite it being an end unit, it had no windows on the end. So I had windows to the front overlooking the parking lot and back overlooking the deck. But there was a big grassy area leading to a playground on the side. But no windows.

I make good use of my windows now. Even though we are in a city instead of the edge of one there are still animals that come to visit. Less deer. More chipmunks and rabbits. The occasional fox and raccoon.

And of course birds. Finches of all sorts. Doves waddling around plump and goofy. Bright red Cardinals flapping from fence to tree. Blue Jays hopping across the yard.

Titles comes courtesy of XKCD.
Bun Alert, XKCD Comic

Book Thief

By Carl

On July 11, 2018

In Introspection

I am a mighty builder. I make mountains out of mole hills. That’s how I treat problems in my life. The unknown. The inconvenient. The wastes of time. The points where failure has occurred somewhere and I need to correct it.

Recently, I returned two books to my local library. I dropped them off in a stack on the return counter as I have countless times before. The library staff collected and checked in one book. The other book escaped.

Once I realized what had happened, via an email from the library. I went in to take care of it in person. Unfortunately, I went on July 4th holiday (Independence Day) and found a closed library. Which made sense, I was off work for the holiday as well, why did I think the library would be open?

So I couldn’t take care of it. Then I forgot about it for a few days. Until I went to look up another book to see if it was available. The website reminded me I had a book overdue.

Filled with anxiety, I was ready to explain and re-explain what happened. Ready with dates and times and the titles of both books. And it was all for nothing.

I spoke to a woman and explained what happened. She cleared the book from my account and went about her day. She sounded hurried and busy. She was short but polite on the phone, and resolved my issue (and my anxiety) quickly and professionally.

I had worried about this exchange. I thought I wouldn’t be able to prove I did not have the book it would haunt me. I imagines building up a huge overdue fee as the days turned into weeks. And the weeks into months. Eventually having to give up all use of the public library after being branded a book thief.

After the fact, my wife told me this probably happens everyday and they’re used to it. Books get misplaced. Scanners malfunction. Computer systems have bugs. And I’m sure some percentage of books do walk away.

But I will not bear the brand of a book thief. A Bad Patron. I did my part. Something else didn’t happen as it should have. It’s not a big deal. It’s a small issue to fix. But those small issues loom large in my brain.

Caps Game 4 Watch Party

By Carl

On June 12, 2018

In Observations

The Capitals won the Stanley Cup. Annie and I have watched the playoffs obsessively and gasping, screaming and jumping up and down in agony and exultation through the entire post-season. We were rewarded with a victory and it didn’t even take 7 games or any overtime periods (in the last round).

My wife and I went to a watch party at Capital One Arena. We decided to go on Monday for Game 4 since the weather was nice and there wasn’t a chance they would clinch the series in that game. We wanted to enjoy the evening outside in DC with our 10,000+ closest friends, but I didn’t want to deal with the sea of humanity and possible insanity of a series win. So we watched the series winner from our couch at home.

But on Monday June 4, 2018 we took the Metro downtown (more successfully than T.J. Oshie). We wandered close enough to Fall Out Boy to hear them but we didn’t need to be right in front. We saw a group of people with chairs and blankets setup in front of one of the large screens on the side of the Arena and staked out our little plot of land for the night.

Claiming a spot.

We were ready for the game. We saw a lot of photographers and videographers running around and I’m sure we ended up in the background of some shots (or B-roll) from the game.

This guy and his inflatable Stanley Cup was interviewed right next to us.
Stanley Cup guy

The girl in the foreground had the amazing puck hat and she kept it on the entire game. That’s dedication!
Crowd interview and puck hat.

Selfie.
Rocking the Red!

The game went pretty well too with the Capitals beating the Vegas Golden Knights 6-2. (This was a replay, hence the subdued excitement.)

We made a dash for the Metro home with about 5 minutes left in the game and it took all of that to walk about two blocks through the sea of red.

The next game went even better (and looked to be about double the number of people downtown watching it). The cup was won. The city was (and still is) alive with Capitals gear and people excitedly talking about it.

We are meeting some friends downtown tomorrow for the parade. I’m excited to bask in the afterglow of the win. It’s been an exciting year and a thrilling playoff. I want to surround myself with a hundred thousand fans screaming and cheering the team. You only live once and it took 44 years to win the first one, so we may not get this chance again. So we’re going to take it.