Friday, February 18, 2011

Did you see my status update?

The first blog prompt on the list-o-prompts I’m trying to use is, “How I use Facebook.”  I resisted signing up for Facebook for quite a while when it first became the big thing.  I endured endless harassment from Erin that I needed to create a profile and finally gave up because I knew that was the only way I would get her to be quiet about it.  It also became the best way to communicate with her and replaced our once daily emails! 

Since that time I have had a love/hate relationship with the social networking site.  In the beginning I logged in every once in a while to poke someone or throw a president at them.  Or maybe both.  Then as more people began to join and my network grew I logged in daily to see what everyone was up to.  Cyber stalking, if you will.  And then something terrible happened...  Someone invited me to join Mafia Wars.  Sadly I was sucked in like the millions of others who have become addicted to this mindless, pointless, never-ending game.  There literally is no end to it.  You can't ever finish it.  After that came FarmVille, CafĂ© World, Treasure Mania, that other one that was like FarmVille, Farkle, some sort of see-how-fast-you-can-type game, and others.  I wish I could reclaim all the time I spent playing them.  I wish I had seen them for the marketing ploy they were.  Though I will proudly say that I never once spent REAL money on in-game play.  I may have whored out my email address a few times for some bonus offers of farm cash or godfather points, but Facebook never saw my credit card.

Once I was playing the games, checking my news feed became an addiction.  I HAD to know what my friends (and acquaintances) were up to.  If I missed a chunk of time I would go back and keep reading until I was caught back up.  I got a little perturbed with family members if they didn’t know about something that was going on in my life because, duh, I posted it on Facebook...  Why didn’t you see my status update?  I consider that a low time in my life.

Slowly as I got busier with photography I stopped playing the games and spent more time editing photo sessions.  I blocked one game application and it felt good... no more stress about making sure my flowers were watered or harvested.  No more being sad because my friends didn’t come to fertilize my crops.

Now all of the games are blocked.  I think I’ve finally managed to hide all of the game apps from appearing in my news feed, and any time someone sends me a new teddy bear it’s ignored without the slightest bit of guilt.  Oh, and if someone answers a question about me?  I don’t care.  Answer all the questions you want about whether I'm cute or you have a crush on me.  I'm just going to assume you said good things because we're friends and you posted that you answered it on my wall and how crappy would it be for you to bring my attention to a mean answer. 

Honestly, if it weren’t for the fact that Facebook has been my primary source of advertising I probably would have already deleted my profile altogether.  I rarely ever post a status update and when I do it’s more like using Facebook as a resource to answer a question or share an opportunity with people.  (Or yesterday to vent about the systematic raping of State employees' salaries, after which I was reminded why I don't ever EVER get involved in political discussions on Facebook.)  I do enjoy the photo aspect of it and seeing my friends’ photos, but I have my reservations about Facebook’s terms of use when it comes to my own copyright.  So I rarely upload any pictures I haven’t watermarked.  It’s a pain.  And for a while I had to take an additional step of resizing my images before I could upload them because of Facebook’s compression...  It made all of my pictures look craptastic, and that’s not good when I’m using it as a source of advertising. 

So for now I’m still on Facebook.  I’m careful about how I use it.  I think that has to be the case with anything on the internet...  You must be careful and look out for yourself because you can’t expect anyone else to look out for anything but their own best interest.  If that means making money off of your information (in Facebook’s case it does), then they’re going to do it.  Facebook isn’t there just to make us happy...  It exists to generate revenue for someone.

Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Do you have a Kindle?

One thing I want to continue to blog about here is my reading. I’m worried I will forget my opinions about books once some time has passed and I don’t want that to happen.

I got a Kindle for Christmas, which I absolutely L. O. V. E. It’s loaded down with books already and I have no idea how I will ever find the time to read all of them. I’m reading so much more than I used to, but it still just doesn’t feel like enough. I often wish I had more time to read.

As an example of how much I love my Kindle, I bought David one for Valentine’s Day. It was definitely more expensive than I should have spent on a V-Day gift, but I had to do it. He had been eyeing mine, asking questions about what it’s able to do, and asking questions about the other e-reader options available. He had been reading on his iPhone, and I knew from my personal experience how bad that can be for your eyes. My eyes used to hurt when I read for a long period of time on my iPhone. My eyesight is really REALLY bad and I don’t want him to join me in that regard so I thought it best he have the proper e-reading display. I also knew he was on the fence about it and would not have chosen to buy a Kindle over the other gadgets that he wants. So I pushed him off the fence on the getting a Kindle side. Ha!

Back to what I’ve been reading. I’m sort of jumping around books lately because there is so much I want to read. I bought a book that was on sale for I think a little over a dollar in the Kindle store and sounded interesting. It was random trivia and I usually like that sort of thing. But this one wasn’t even worth the sale price. It was called Any Body's Guess!: Quirky Quizzes About What Makes You Tick. Let me just say there were no quizzes and the trivia was plain old boring. I did finish reading the book (I’ve told you I’m OCD) but it was hard to do so! I give this one a big fat YUCKY!

I’ve also been working on the Morganville Vampires series and have finished book four. I honestly am not sure how I feel about this series yet. It’s not bad enough that I want to stop reading it, but it’s also not really a compelling read, either. I could take it or leave it. I have a friend who said book five was where she began to dislike the series and since I’m already on the fence about it I have to say I’m not anticipating I’ll stick with this one for much longer. The series is about a 16-year-old genius who moves to a town designed and constructed for vampires. The laws there are not your normal laws (there’s a curfew and anyone out after curfew is fair game to become a late night snack; all residents must donate blood monthly) and I have to admit I find the characters a bit hard to buy at times. The 16-year-old genius in college early and away from home bit is just unnecessary. Why couldn’t they have made her a normal college student? I think the story would have been just as compelling without the silly naivete. I also find it difficult to believe her relationship with the 18-year-old boyfriend. Perhaps I just have low expectations of an 18-year-old boy living in a house with no parents and his younger girlfriend. Especially when said 18-year-old boy is described as a tough guy. I just roll my eyes a lot is all.

Currently I am trying to read The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I’m finding it difficult. I made it 11% of the way through the book while we were on vacation and immediately after, but I decided this week to go back and start over, taking notes on the characters so I could keep them apart. (I’m not so good with names and this book jumps around.) I’ve been told that this one is hard to get into so I’m reserving judgment until that moment that it finally clicks and I’m sucked in. I’m told this will happen. I wish it would happen soon.

And because I feel this  blog is lacking in the picture department, here's my reading buddy, Ricki.  When I was in school she was my study buddy. 
Rik

I'm going to make a new effort here.

I often feel like I’m neglecting this blog.  I created it so that I would have somewhere to express myself when it’s not really related to my photography business and I don’t think my clients would want to hear about it.  But what I’ve found is that the things I want to talk about aren’t really things I should be talking about in a public forum.  I can’t vent about work here.  Nor can I vent about clients!  Every once in a while I have a session that really makes me wonder about people, but it would be inappropriate to voice my puzzlement publicly.  It also wouldn’t be appropriate to tell you here about the things I hear in court that I find interesting because there is a fine line when it comes to talking about my job and being an employee of the State and all.  (Did you know our lovely governor is trying to reduce my salary by 5%?  That’s a post I probably can make and probably will.)  I suppose I could tell you about my medical experience of having an IUD inserted in early January, but I doubt you really want to know about that lovely piece of biology and I don’t necessarily want the worldwide web thinking about that particular area of my anatomy, either.  My experience with it has been less than pleasant so far, but I’ll just leave it at that. 

So what am I going to use this blog for?  There’s the random contest entry that I get points for blogging about but don’t feel is appropriate for my photography blog unless it’s for a photography-related item.  I put those posts here.  And I do it very rarely!  I won’t blog about an item unless it’s something I believe in.  So yeah, I totally believe in shopping at Publix and I totally pimped out my blog for a chance to win a $25 Publix gift card.  That is something I can definitely use and you probably could, too, if you won it.  It’s free groceries.  Heck yeah!  But I’m not going to leave this blog idle save for the random venting post (when I can get away with it) and contest entries.  I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to post more here. 

But I need ideas.  I need prompts.  And honestly I think prompting myself with ideas that aren’t at the top of my brain is going to be good for me.  It will (hopefully) get me out of my rut and cause me to think about things I haven’t considered.  Or things I’ve considered but I haven’t really talked about.  So we’ll see how this goes.  I’ve found some prompts over at http://chrisbrogan.com that I’m going to use for now.  Hopefully you won’t find my writings too random or too offensive or too boring.  We’ll see how this goes!  And if you have any comments or suggestions please PLEASE jump in by leaving me a comment. 

Oh, and do you want to know an interesting fact?  You may not find it all that interesting but I pay very close attention to it.  All of the blog titles on this blog are complete sentences.  I make a concentrated effort to make sure that happens.  Don’t ask me why...  It’s just something I decided to do.  I like consistency.  I’m OCD like that. 

There's a $25 Publix gift card I'd really like to win.

Just a quick note to let you know that there is a $25 gift card to Publix being given away over at ourblessedarrows.com.  I would really like to win it because hey, who wouldn't like $25 to apply toward their grocery bill?  But it's also an italian-food themed contest and I seriously LOVE italian food.  My favorite food to cook, as silly as it may seem, is spaghetti.  And whenever I don't feel good?  Papa Johns is just WAY too easy to pick up on the way home!  So this giveaway really works for me!  ;)

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