Facebook Archives - Page 11 of 12

Making peace with Facebook

I realize that if other people are using Facebook, then I need to as well.

I didn’t “get” Facebook for a long time. I joined Facebook on May 7, 2007 – it’s on the timeline it’s forcing on everyone eventually, not that I’d committed the date to memory. In fact, I had forgotten I had an account (or forgot the password) and started ANOTHER profile, allegedly verboten in Zuckerland, and only recently deleted it.

Moreover, if I were required to give my Facebook password to my employer, as certain people think is OK, I’d delete the other one too, even though there is little on my page that isn’t already public.

I don’t become bent out of shape if someone unfriends me; I barely notice if someone unfollows me on Twitter, either. I’m slackjawed over how much some people obsess over it.

But Facebook is useful. Some blogs I visit make it easier to comment via Facebook. Also, I was away this past week. Did you miss me? Probably not. I blogged every day and had the posts appear on Facebook and Twitter automatically.

Moreover, I realize that if other people are using it, then I need to as well. Three examples from a 24-hour period late last month:
One niece: “Had a tooth infection last week, had to have micro-surgery on my gums… Getting the stitches taken out today!”
Another niece: “Why was someone ringing our doorbell at three in the morning and now there are 5 cop cars in the yard.” There was no follow-up, and I had to call her mother in the morning to make sure everyone was OK.
A co-worker: “I am having an allergic reaction to makeup I have worn dozens of times and my face looks like a tomato and feels like a burn. If you happen to see me, please don’t mention it. Thanks. :)” I DIDN’T, but I might have.

So, I guess, while I’m disappointed that a number of bloggers have quit writing on their blogs and have substituted Facebook, an inadequate tradeoff to my mind, I’ll follow along. It’s the only way I know how to reach quite a few people.

Military Losses

Here’s a weird thing. A friend of a friend of mine had a husband in the military. She (FoF) started making comments on her Facebook page that people should send pictures of her husband so that her children would have mementos by which they would be able to remember him. Oddly, she never actually wrote that he had died.

So I began searching. I discovered that the most comprehensive listing of those who were killed in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan I could find is provided by MilitaryTimes.com, “honoring those who fought and died in Operations Iraqi Freedom and Enduring Freedom.”

But, as it turned out, he didn’t die in battle. He was stateside and had committed suicide. Apparently, after a third tour of duty in Iraq or Afghanistan, it was just too much.

From this ABC NEWS story:

The increase in suicide deaths is one of the most distressing issues facing military leaders who want to reduce the rates among active-duty service members. More than 2,000 of them have killed themselves in the past decade [PDF], including 295 last year compared with 153 in 2001.

Despite their best suicide-prevention efforts, reducing the number of military suicides has been a frustrating challenge, military leaders acknowledged [in September 2011] at a congressional hearing in Washington, D.C. Recent efforts have included increasing at-risk service members’ access to mental health professionals, while reducing the stigma attached to mental health care. Internet outreach, including “video chats,” has also shown some promise.

The difficulty, however, is in identifying which initiatives work best and deciphering the multiple triggers that can lead to suicide within the armed services, which accounts for a small fraction of the total number of people who serve.

Despite my lack of understanding of the reasons for going to war, I feel real grief over the sheer despair these men and women must have been going through to take their own lives. Here’s hoping that the Telehealth programs now being used by the military can stem the tide of these horrible losses.

No, I won’t blog about THAT

if you choose not to participate, YOU ARE NOT HURTING MY FEELINGS. REALLY.

Almost everyone I know is aware of the fact that I blog. This doesn’t mean everyone READS my blogs, only the fact that they’re aware of them, or at least one of them. The local folk knows because my Times Union blog gets excerpted in the print “Best of the Blogs” section of the newspaper. It happened at least thrice in April.There is this situation that involves someone, not in my family, that is pretty dire; can’t tell you more than that. And when I had to blow off choir rehearsal one night because of said situation, someone said, “Well, I guess you can blog about it.” And the thing is: no, I can’t.

I think the problem is that because I’ll blog about EVERYTHING, topicwise, if it interests me, the thought is that I’ll blog about ANYTHING. And I guess I got a little irritable about that, I suppose.

But then again, it’s a great cover. If they think your life is an open book, they won’t snoop for secrets they are convinced don’t exist.
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Incidentally, recently I accidentally invited a whole bunch of people in one of my electronic address books to join LinkedIn – sorry about that – and a few people took me up on it. I expected a couple of people to be irritated, but no; they were apologetic that they just don’t do that online thing, that they’re just not working anymore so they don’t need to, or that they have no idea what LinkedIn is.

Let me say this about anything you might get from me from LinkedIn or Facebook or whatever; if you choose not to participate, YOU ARE NOT HURTING MY FEELINGS. REALLY. I’m on Facebook and I ignore stuff, or delete it as unread, all of the time, just as I do with certain e-mail. Especially Farmville-type stuff, which I have actually figured out how to block. Nothing personal, I’m just not interested. Whatever I send to you, intentionally, or possibly by accident, please ignore if it doesn’t suit you.

Picture from Flickr

March Ramblin’

For my birthday this year, I had come across this Facebook thing whereby people could contribute $10 in my name to the American Red Cross. I picked them specifically, not only because they do good things, but because they helped me possibly save a life. Back in May of 1995, I successfully performed the Heimlich maneuver on an older woman in my church at the time who was choking on some meat, without breaking her ribs. I learned that at a Red Cross training that I took in high school.

Anyway, some people did this, some people were confused by how to do it electronically and instead gave me checks. Hey, it’s all good.

And that was before the Japan earthquake, and aid organizations such as the Red Cross in whatever country you are in can use your help even more.

Still, I got a couple of gift cards, one from Amazon, one from Borders. So I got my fix of new music for a while. From Borders, I got the greatest hits albums of the Guess Who (my previous copy had disappeared), and Peter, Paul, and Mary (I saw Peter and Paul at Proctors in the fall of 2010). And I was really pleased with myself with my Amazon purchase. I looked at my wish list and noted that a Sheryl Crow album had gone down from whatever to under $5. A Madeleine Peyroux album was down at least $3 to around $10. And Judy Collins’ cover album of Leonard Cohen songs, used to be $16+ but was down to under $11. The grand total was $25.15, plus 84 cents tax, for a total of $25.99, minus the GC for a massive charge of 99 cents to the credit card. ($25 was the minimum to get free shipping.) Oh, I may have purchased newish albums by Robert Plant, Mavis Staples, and R.E.M. as well.

Carol and I got to see an amazing percussionist, Dame Evelyn Glennie, with the Albany Symphony Orchestra at the Troy Music Hall, performing a piece written by Academy Award-winning composer, John Corigliano (“The Red Violin”). Thanks to our friends Philip and Marilyn who couldn’t use the tickets. In the same week, we also saw The Lion King at Proctors in Schenectady, which was great.

My wife was confounded as to what to get me for my birthday. She thought about getting a bicycle. But, using the $100 from the CSN stores I got from Lily Hydrangea, I bought a Mongoose myself for $59 additional. She thought to buy me a TV, to replace the one we have with only two volumes, inaudible and LOUD; but then my friend Uthaclena and his wife offered their spare set when they showed up with their daughter as a surprise on my birthday weekend; the following weekend, he brought up the set.

And the wife did buy me a book, the autobiography of Ed Dague, the local newsman I admire, but a friend from work had already given it to me.

So she let me have a card party, specifically a HEARTS party, on March 19. There was a period in the 1980s where a group of us would play hearts once, twice, even thrice a week, always at the home of our charismatic and maddening friend Broome and his “this woman is a saint” wife, Penny.

At the card party, I got to see my old friends such as Orchid, who I goaded by e-mail – “You HAVE an A game?”; Jeff and Sandy, Jendy, and of course Broome. As they say, a splendid time was had by all.

So it’s been a pretty good birthday month, thanks to many of you. Well, except for some major computer problems at work, but that’s finally fixed.

Second place in this crossword contest, by my boss, is not bad, especially when the winner was a ringer.

The Cheap Flights song, complete with dancing. And subtitles?

Lots of Elizabeth (“I hate being called Liz”) Taylor tributes out there; here’s the one from Arthur.

In answering my questions, Jaquandor says something shocking about Richard Nixon. Worse, I’m inclined to agree with him.
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My buddy Steve Bissette writes about D.W. Griffith’s two Biograph caveman movies, Man’s Genesis (1912) and Brute Force (1914), with a link to the latter.
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Diagram For Delinquents Kickstarter project:

“This is a documentary film about the most hated man in comics history: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham.

“Beginning in the late 1940s, Wertham began publishing articles linking comic books to juvenile delinquency. This work culminated in his now-infamous 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent. Burnings of comics were reported across the United States, and Congress held hearings into the matter, which helped spur the creation of the self-censoring body the Comics Code Authority…”
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Google Alert finds – other people named Roger Green:

Roger Green Pt 1/5 ‘Feng Shui & Building Biology’ ‘Conversations with Robyn’
Roger has a background in Chinese Medicine and was a pioneer in introducing the ancient knowledge of Feng Shui to the western world.
This clip also shares some info on the harmful effects of wireless broadband on our health and sleeping patterns.

Custom Knives Created By Roger Green

Patients who walk through the doors of Dr. Roger Green’s clinic are eagerly greeted by Izzy, Green’s 5-year-old Basset hound.

One of those passengers at Narita Airport in Tokyo, on flight No. 276, next in line on the runway when the earthquake hit, was the Rev. Roger Green, longtime pastor at Grace Baptist Church in Middletown.

MOVIES-The King’s Speech; The Fighter; The Social Network

I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg’s less than stellar image in this movie had anything to do with the real Mark donating a ton of money to the schools in Newark, NJ?

I had seen a paltry number of 2010 films. Once the nomination period – SAG/Golden Globes/Academy Awards – starts, I tend to at least try to see a lot more of the movies that a) are still available in theaters and b) reviewed well. I’ve discovered in recent years, though, that a third criterion has crept into the movies, ones that c) won’t totally creep me out. For instance, despite the PG-13 rating, the True Grit remake reportedly contains surprisingly bloody bits of action and violence.

Whereas, The King’s Speech, which I saw with my wife on December 30 at the Spectrum Theatre for our monthly date, is rated R, but it is almost certainly based entirely on language, specifically the repeated use of the F-word, and other salty talk. But it is done in the context of the future King George VI of Britain dealing with his speaking issues, and not gratuitous. Considering that the storyline is both quite straightforward, and the context historically familiar – Mrs. Wallis Simpson is a pivotal character – it was amazingly affecting, in no small part due to great use of music. And funny; I’m talking LOL, in an intelligent manner. Colin Firth might receive another Oscar nomination, after last year’s A Simple Man. But I’d wager that Geoffrey Rush, who I first could identify in 1995’s Shine, will get a Best Supporting Actor nod.

Maybe the beginning of The Fighter, which I saw New Year’s Eve at the local Madison Theater (rated R for language throughout, drug content, sexuality, and some boxing violence) was really good; maybe. I found this dysfunctional family surrounding/suffocating boxer Micky Ward really irritating, especially the Greek chorus of sisters who must have been rejects from The Real Housewives of Lowell, Massachusetts. He also has a manipulative, guilt-tripping mother, Alice (Melissa Leo), and a “Glory Days” older brother/ex-boxer with a drug problem Dicky (Christian Bale), balanced only slightly by people such as girlfriend Charlene (Amy Adams). But there was a particular point – Led Zeppelin’s “Good Times, Bad Times” was playing, when the movie finally took off for me. I see why Leo, nominated a couple of years ago for Frozen River, and Bale is getting Oscar buzz.

Finally, finishing my trifecta, back to the Spectrum on New Years Day for The Social Network (rated PG-13). I thought I was the last person in the country to see this in the theater, but the packed, albeit small screening room belied that. Of the three, this one is the most…cinematic, makes the most use of the fact that’s it a movie, with various locales. Still, I really enjoyed the framing story of a deposition, from which the narrative flowed. Did Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg) rip off the twins (played primarily by Armie Hammer) and his former partner Eduardo (Andrew Garfield)? I think possibly not, and absolutely, respectively. But it’s great storytelling by Aaron Sorkin that was most impressive. And a great last song! I wonder if Zuckerberg’s less-than-stellar image in this movie had anything to do with the real Mark donating a ton of money to the schools in Newark, NJ? That fact, the movie, and Facebook’s 500,000,000 member got Zuckerberg TIME Person of the Year honors for 2010.

So, I go to three movies in three days, all starting with the article The, and I hit on three stories all based, more or less, on actual events, in 1930s England, 1980s Massachusetts, and 2000s Massachusetts, watched, totally coincidentally, in chronological order. I suppose The King’s Speech was my favorite – STILL have that Beethoven piece stuck in my head – but they all were worthwhile.