Facebook, looks like you’re stuck with me!

An acquaintance of mine recently mentioned that he was going to give up Facebook for Lent. Although a totally honorable gesture and definitely a major sacrifice for a fellow IT professional, “totally insane” is what I thought. I could never do that. Wait a minute, did I just say that? Do I really believe I could never do that? Maybe I can. Maybe I need to challenge myself.

So, I decide to give up Facebook for a while. It seems to rob me of my time in the evenings anyway, why shouldn’t I give it up?

So, I “gave it up” (in the mildest sense possible). I decided I wouldn’t go back on there. I can do this, right? Apparently not, I found. It was very soon discovered that I cannot resist the temptation. It’s time for me to take drastic measures. So, Thursday night (2/26) I posted a status updating to everyone letting them know I was going dark for a while. At around 9:30pm, I deactivated my Facebook account.

The deactivation process is an interesting one. The first thing they do when you tell them you want to deactivate your account is present you with a screen which asks you to confirm that you want to close your Facebook account. On this screen, they try to guilt you into staying by showing you great, big pictures of about 4 or 5 of your “friends”, each with the caption “[Insert Name] will miss you!”. This is a nice concept, but it fails in execution. Facebook needs to work on their algorithm for selecting these pictures because, of my 116 friends on Facebook, they seemed to pick the 5 people who I never hear from anyway. Guilt trip.. denied!

Friday morning comes and I encounter a steady stream of text messages, IMs and phone calls, some really rude, asking me “why did you delete me from your friends list?”. One text message, despite being truncated due to its length, goes so far as to question my Christianity saying “Bible verses on your profile would be more effective if you actually treated your friends as friends. If you're going to talk the talk then wa”. I think we all know the rest of this message, don’t we? Another said “Not friends anymore? Nice!”.

Wow.

I reactivated my Facebook tonight. True, I’ll lean on this crutch and pretend its because I don’t like upsetting my friends, but we all know the truth, don’t we? I’m just not strong enough to stay off of Facebook.

The 4th Weekend

I woke up early today to do some preparation work for a “sysmod” (system modification) that a co-worker in California and I were supposed to do at 10a. No sleeping in for me. I got all my prep work done just in time for the sysmod to commence at 10am. I then sat and waited for my co-worker to call. Around 10:45a , I vaguely remembered a discussion we’d had very late in the day Friday. The conversation occurred while I was very, very busy pushing out the latest development build to the Q/A and staging servers. In the conversation, we agreed to reschedule this weekend’s work until next weekend. D’oh!

The obvious next chore was to get some laundry done. I’m leaving town on Monday, headed to California on business for a couple days. I need some clean clothes for the trip. I’ll be at the corporate offices, so I need to make sure my dress shirts and ties are ready to go. Nothing says “I’m a professional” more than a pressed dress shirt, slacks and tie, right? Personally, I’d rather be judged for the 16 years of dedicated, kick-ass service I have provided the company.

Speaking of 16 years of service, some obscure company policy at work was recently changed. The good news is that because of this change (oh yeah, and the 16 years of dedicated service) I now get to park in the “Reserved” lot. The bad news is that the email announcing this to me also mentioned that access to the reserved lot doesn’t guarantee me a parking spot, just access to the lot. Huh? Anyway, I guess I shouldn’t be too sore that the new parking privileges begin the week I’m out of town.

Starting the laundry really gave me a kick in the rear. I washed, dried and put away my dishes, cleaned both of my kitchen counters, scrubbed my kitchen sink, organized the papers I had on the bar (kinda, but too long a story to tell), vacuumed my living room and computer room, re-arranged my couch, cleaned my daughter’s bathroom, washed the windows, picked up my room. It seemed nothing could stop me. Well, except for the fact that I had to be at church at 2:30p.

This is my weekend at church. I spend the 4th weekend of every month serving in the technical ministry operating the teleprompter. Serving in the ministry is always fulfilling but there’s really nothing noteworthy or glamorous about the teleprompter. Usually, it’s not very difficult. Sometimes it’s very frustrating. And with the exception of the satisfaction you get from knowing that you are serving in the ministry, it’s a very unrewarding task. If you do your job correctly, no one notices you, no one thanks you, no one really seems to notice you're there. But screw up once? Oh man.

All the work I’d been doing at the house came to a halt when I looked at the clock and noticed it was already 2pm. Ummmm… It takes 20 minutes to get to church and I definitely need to shower. So I’m heading to church and text my friend Jim. I don’t know what Jim’s exact title is but he sure seems to be the glue that holds our productions together. If you have a question, you ask Jim. I text Jim and let him know I’m running 10 – 15 minutes late. He texts me back while I’m flying down I-45. “Rehearsal doesn’t start until 3. Will you be here by then?”. Uh, YEAH. I mean, seriously. I now have time to stop for lunch.

So as I pull into the Burger King near church, my friend Anne starts texting me. Seems she’s sitting in her van with her kids waiting for her husband to get out of a meeting. It seems they were waiting outside until it started raining. Poor Anne. I had to break it to her that we were having beautiful weather. I even snapped the pictures below. The first looks out my windshield at the beautiful sky above while I’m parked in the church’s back lot, eating my lunch, getting ready to go into rehearsals.

This second picture shows our baptistery (right) and the pond on the south side of the church. To get an aerial view via Google Maps, click here.

After church, I brought my daughter some stuff she’d left at my house Thursday night. I figure she’ll need her hair straightener, shampoo and conditioner before I get back from California… whether she likes it or not :-)

I’m spending the rest of my night watching stuff so I can delete it from my DVR. There’s nothing worse than missing your favorite shows while you’re out of town, is there? Oh right, there is: missing your favorite shows while you’re out of town when you HAVE a DVR but can’t record on the DVR because it’s FULL and you just THINK you’re recording your shows while you’re away.

Windows Live Writer

There’s been lots of buzz on Twitter lately among the SharePoint Twitterati expounding on the many virtues of the new Windows Live Writer. I decided to try it out. Here goes nothing.

I think it’s time that I start blogging. I mean, all my friends, family and even some of my co-workers are doing it.  I really need to be just as cool as them, right?

The truth is, I’ve never strived to be cool. Until I bought my printer about two years ago, I had never owned a scanner. I know, a computer guy without a scanner. Sacrilege! And speaking of not following the cool trends, would you believe that I’ve never used EBAY? Nope, never. Not once to buy nor to sell. In fact, I’ve never used any online auction to buy or sell anything. But with my impending move, I really do need to get rid of some stuff so if you happen to read this, please provide me with some advice on what to do or what not to do and how to get the biggest benefit and avoid getting ripped off on ebay. 

Speaking of who’s reading this, I’m guessing something pretty close to nobody is reading this blog. I’ve linked to the blog from my Facebook account but I doubt anyone’s noticed it.  If you do happen to be reading this, please accept my humblest of apologies. I am what is known as “verbose”. I tend to go overboard with details. The thing is, in recent years, the main thing I’ve been writing is technical reports and in the type of work I do, I feel compelled to include every minute detail. I mean, really… who likes to find out that the documentation they just read isn’t comprehensive? The truth is, I used to write. Any I used to write some really cool stuff. I used to write comedy and I used to write poems. Yes, poems. I said it. Why?

I will do anything to write like I used to. I hope that by blogging I will get back to my old style. Funny would be nice, poetic would be nice, funny poetic would be… OK, I think that would be a little too “Weird Al” for me.

My very own blog!

Yes, I deleted everything previously on my blog. Seems now that the divorce (and other things) is final, there's no sense being reminded of the past. Time to move forward.

Any ideas or thoughts I might ever happen to have, I'll post here. So check back here to see if I've had any thoughts.

Mark <><