I was listening to Radio Paradise last night when I found myself really liking a song. I quickly looked on their “Now Playing” feature found at the top of their website and found out the song playing was “Manic Street Preachers – If You Tolerate This.”
Personally, I have never heard of these guys, but then again, I wouldn’t say that I am very into music. I tend to hear it in passing.
You can check out the Manic Street Preachers at their Wikipedia page to see what they are about.
I have been sitting back for some time now, watching and listening to people’s opinions of Facebook. They are wide and varied, but lately, I have been hearing some grumbling. I have heard it from friends and I even heard it on the radio this morning. That’s what prompted me to write today.
For those of you who don’t know what Facebook is, it’s a social networking tool intended to connect you with anyone and everyone from your past, present and future. It’s pretty powerful and pretty awful at the same time.
I am going to give you my experience with this website and let you draw your own conclusions.
A few months ago, I opened a Facebook account. I did this with the intention of placing my blog link on the “Info” page, to drive visitors. You know me, I am always trying to hook new readers. At the time, I had been reading so many articles online about the value of marketing your website, business or service on these social networking websites. I really didn’t think it was a bad idea. Now, being a few months later, I am seeing the value of it, but the good comes with the bad.
A few weeks after opening the account, I began getting friend requests. The friend requests were from people that I completely forgot about in my life. They were from all sorts of nooks and crannies…you know, like from that classmate who moved out of town during nursery school. It was remarkable. I started making friends. As time went on, and I made more and more friends, I started reading these little messages that my new friends would type in their profile. It went something like this – “John Doe’s is rubbing his foot” and “Jane Sue smells something weird in her apartment.” It was cute in the beginning, but then as time went on, I started feeling a little strange about reading things from people who I really didn’t know. I began to realize that I might be going down the wrong path by knowing too much about the guy who moved away when I was three years old. First, it was getting annoying and second, it was a little creepy.
I decided to take action. I logged into my Facebook account one night and decided to delete about 25 of my “friends.” I got rid of the people who I didn’t care for all that much, or never actually talked to in the first place. It was like a weight had been lifted off my chest. My life went on.
A few days later I started complaining to a good friend that I was beginning to feel uneasy about the whole Facebook experience. I knew that I was merely trying to market my websites and that I needed to “network” and gain “friends,” but the little voice in the back of my head started telling me that this whole experience was more difficult on the mind than it was worth.
Let me give you some background about my personality – I like to maintain a low profile. You might think that’s amusing because I write so much on this blog. You might ask, “Jay, if you like to keep a low profile, why do you put yourself out there so much?” I would answer, “Because I like you guys. I also get to choose what goes on here and there isn’t much that I don’t have control over.” Also, if there is someone reading this blog that I’m not necessarily fond of, I don’t know it. If I don’t know it, I don’t care about it.” You see, with Facebook, everyone is right in my face and I don’t like that.
I am fairly satisfied with where I have come in life. I’ll admit that when I re-connect with people who I sat next to in my elementary school lunchroom, it brings me back to the not-so-comfortable days of my existence. I’m sure we’ve all had them. It’s when the white milk cost five cents and the chocolate cost six. Those days were strange and hard to remember, but one thing is for sure, I don’t really want to relive them. One of the things Facebook is really good at is offering you the chance to relive your whole past. Since much of our experiences have to do with old friends and acquaintances, Facebook puts your past front and center.
If there is one thing I like about where I am now is that I put myself here. If I wanted to be back where I used to be, I would put myself there. Since I haven’t, I think I am saying something. I don’t want to relive my past. I would actually like to move on from it and never look back. Don’t get me wrong, I had a great childhood and met many fantastic people along the way, but I think there comes a time in life to move on from those relationships to form new ones. It’s called being mentally healthy. Maybe we should call it the “shedding of time.” It’s been going on for thousands of years and for it to stop now is wrong, in my opinion.
If you are a member of Facebook, you might have had some of the same thoughts. They might not be as prevalent as mine, because I am quite sensitive about these types of things, but they may have popped up from time to time. Admit it…you have winced at the computer screen at least once while seeing someone’s name pop up asking you to be their friend. You may have been tempted to write back telling them that, “No, you don’t wish to become their friend because you were actually hoping to never hear from them again. But thank you for the offer.”
For the past few weeks, I have been threatening to delete my Facebook account. I think it might be time for that to become reality. By dumping this reminder of my entire history, I can move on the way I had been for so many years. I mean seriously, if I wanted to be reminded of my life while growing up, I would go put an offer on the house I grew up in, buy it, put down some shaggy green carpet in my old bedroom and live like I had for 22 years. I think you’ll agree, that’s just not cool.
Yesterday, a little birdie told me about a fantastic place to listen to music online – Radio Paradise.
If you work on the computer a lot like I do, you know that good music can really make the day a heck of a lot better. I have been listening to a lot of MP3s, but that gets old after a while. After I heard the tidbit of advice yesterday about Radio Paradise, I decided to give it a try. I went over to their website, read about their “many styles and genres of music” on the homepage and then clicked on, “Listen.” I chose the “128k MP3″ link and clicked on it. A little “open” or “save” box appeared, and I chose “open.” From there, my Windows Media Player opened, the website disappeared and I have been listening to a pretty sweet variety of good music.
Strangely enough, this great, commercial free music is free to listen to. It’s pretty nice. Since these guys are giving me something for free (I may even contribute one day), I decided to give them some mad props over here at my wildly popular, attractive and globally active blog. I hope some of my visitors stop by the Radio Paradise to give these guys a try.
Daniel Tammet: “Our world is generating more information with more resources and technology now than at any time in history: through TV and radio programs, cell phones, magazines, email, websites, blogs, and other media… Being overwhelmed by a continuous maelstrom of information can be just as damaging to our minds as having too little of it…”
For most of us the universe is unimaginably vast. But not for cosmologists. They feel decidedly hemmed in. No matter how big they build their telescopes, they can only see so far before hitting a wall. Approximately 45 billion light years away lies the cosmic horizon, the ultimate barrier because light beyond it not has not had time to reach us.
The Swedes have a simple message to the Americans: Bite the bullet and nationalize. With Sweden’s banks effectively bankrupt in the early 1990s, a center-right government pulled off a rapid recovery that led to taxpayers making money in the long run.
It’s the “other” ivory. And this week, conservationists in London stepped in to stop its sale. It might not be as well known as the stuff that comes from elephants, but the ivory from the narwhal, the tusked whale of the northern seas, is just as much in demand – and with that demand comes a threat just as severe as the one elephants face.
I would say that I rolled into bed last night around 11PM. I found myself still staring at the ceiling at 3AM. I was having the most random thoughts about today. I finally fell asleep thinking that I am just plain weird. Upon awakening this morning, I read an email from my sister telling me that she had very odd election day dreams last night. After that, I checked out my uncle’s blog and he said the same thing. I guess, either I am not that weird, or all three of us are.
I voted today sticker
The school where the voting was taking place was much busier than I thought. I was on the phone with my idiot friend when I rounded the corner to see police lights. In Connecticut, the police are pretty much required to be there if you are doing anything…voting, construction, etc…they are fairly laid back though. I heard reports on the radio this morning about how crowded the polling locations already were. I figured that this small town wouldn’t have any issues. I am usually in and out.
Traffic on election day 2008
Election day 2008 signs
I drove right by and had to turn around. Me, being me, thought I could find a better spot down the road. When that didn’t happen, I drove into the main parking lot right behind everyone else. While we were waiting in line to find a parking spot, some old man cut around everyone else and parked in an open spot. I wanted to put the car in park, walk over to him and smack him across his chest. I didn’t though because all the cops were around. Watch your back old man.
There were a few differences between New York and Connecticut voting. First, the lines that you go into to check in were alphabetized by street name rather than last name. I helped the woman in back of me find her correct line. She may have been a Republican, so I’m not sure that was such a good idea.
The second difference was that we used paper ballots here instead of the big gray machines from the 1940s. That worked well and was very fast.
After I did what I had to do, I got my sticker and walked outside to enjoy the sun.
As you may have noticed, the last post I wrote about the 2008 BMW X5 was kind of vague. Also, I included photos of a car that was in the showroom. What I would like to introduce tonight is the car I actually bought.
It took a few days for the dealer to get their hands on what I wanted. They had to ship it down from Massachusetts. The biggest issue was that I didn’t want leather. BMW offers an interior in leatherette, so that’s what I asked for. As you might guess, they make fewer cars with leatherette than with leather.
It only took the sales guy a few hours to find a vehicle for me. The problem was getting it to Hartford. There was a weekend in between, so it took a few days.
The car they found was a 2008 BMW X5, V6, space gray metallic with black leatherette interior. The car came with the cold weather package (retractable headlight washers, ski bag, heated steering wheel, heated rear seats, heated front seats), rear climate package (privacy glass, rear manual side window shades, 4-zone automatic climate control), running boards and dark bamboo trim. I also requested that the car have floor mats, a towing package and the roof rack base support system. There was a whole bunch of other stuff to choose from, but none of it really interested me. This car is one huge computer that is going to take a while to learn as it is.
Ok, who cares about all that stuff. Here are the pictures.
Back when we used to live up in Naples, NY, I loved listening to Rush Limbaugh. I have to admit, I am not a conservative, but the man was entertaining.
This is back in the day when he used to beat up on Bill Clinton. Even though I thought the whole Clinton scandal was a little “consuming” for my taste, I still liked listening to what Rush had to say. Hmmm, perhaps it was because I was living in the middle of nowhere and the radio was slowly becoming my friend. Ok, we’ll leave that out of this.
I have discovered an old pal, Air America Radio. This is basically the “Anti-Rush” equivalent. It’s funny how long it took the left to come up with a counter punch to the right’s rambling on the air waves for all these years. I mean, heelllooooo…is anyone out there? Maybe it’s because there was never anything to talk about. We had a Democrat in office as president, so it would have been a little weird to get on the air and complain about stuff. When people tune in to these kinds of shows, they want to hear drama, not the sound of patting one’s self on the back. I suppose they could have gone after congress and Newt Gingrich, but that wouldn’t have been that effective.
I gotta tell you, I like Air America. Of course, it isn’t all too objective, but it seems to be based more on intelligence than that other show I was talking about in the beginning of this post. I doesn’t seem like anyone is trying to pull something over on me, yet, they are just trying to explain something to me. They even offer the video and audio to back up what they are saying. I may, admittedly, have receptive ears though.
My favorites are Rachel Maddow and Ron Reagan. They offer the same level of sarcasm that I was semi-forced to listen to while in Naples. Now, this is good stuff.
I just like her. She is smart, witty and takes on the big boys. If you don’t know her, you really should check her out. Her name is Rachel Maddow.
I really only started hearing of Rachel a few years ago. She is the host of “The Rachel Maddow Show†that airs on Air America, online at airamerica.com and on XM Satellite Radio. Her TV show airs on MSNBC.
I think the thing I like most about her is the way she really knows what she is talking about. If you are like me, you might kind of sputter out half way through an argument because you run out of ammo. Not this lady, she just keeps on going. It’s point after point after point. I would put her in a debate against almost anyone.
Take a look for yourself. You can check her out all over YouTube. Watch a few videos and tell me I’m not right about this one. Hey look, she even has a blog…and writes in it!!! Maybe I should put this one in my favorites…
Goodbye, Au Revoir, Adios, Sayonara, Auf Wiedersehen, Bis Dann, Arrivederci, Hejdo, Ciao, Le’hitraot, Sampai Jumpa, Paalam, Zai Jian, Zoi Geen, Farvel, Namaste, Fir Melenge, Feri bhetaula and Do zobaczenia.
To the friends I have made over the past five years, I will miss you. I really will.
Ahhh…my first audio book. I don’t know how Laura finds these things, but she does.
I like to think of her sitting at her computer, very studiously analyzing and contemplating my psyche. “Who is Jay?” she would ask herself. “What makes this guy tick?” In actuality, she probably sees what is popular that day on Amazon, but we try not to think about that.
I can’t get over the clarity of the new stereo I installed in my car today. Just a moment ago, I walked outside, across the driveway to it. I sat down in the driver’s seat and turned the key. The radio came on so I could hear 95.5 WPLJ, down in the city. I changed the channel to 100.3 Z100. It’s remarkable how clear the radio receives the signal. My old one never did that.
I opened the package of the audio book, “Wandering Home – A Long Walk Across America’s Most Hopeful Landscape: Vermont’s Champlain Valley and New York’s Adirondacks,” by Bill McKibben. I really didn’t know what to expect. My mother has been raving about audiobooks ever since she lived back in my home town. I think they helped make her drive everyday to work in Danbury a little bit easier. She used to say, “My car can steer itself on the trip to work. That’s how used to it I am.” I think she really believed that at times. Well, when she told the story, she sounded very convincing.
I pushed the CD in the brand new slot. Everything is so shiny. The radio stopped and the CD started. A very faint, but clean guitar sound started. It got louder, and then a very soothing voice, that introduced himself as the author, Bill McKibben, began to speak. I though, “Ooh, this is going to be good. I listened for a few minutes and turned the key back, so the sound stopped. I didn’t want to ruin the first part of the story during a time when I wasn’t focusing on it. I turned the key forward, so the CD turned on again. Yup, it picked up right where it left off. This was going to work out fine.
So what’s the story about? Well, Bill’s website tells it like this…
“The acclaimed author of The End of Nature takes a three-week walk from his current home in Vermont to his former home in the Adirondacks and reflects on the deep hope he finds in the two landscapes.”
As you can see, I am quite excited about using my frontal lobe even more than I currently am. It is going to be nice to break out of the mold of NPR and bad local radio. Yeah, it’s going to be nice.
