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Wow, facebook. You really, really suck.

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Feb 282011

So, for the first time in MONTHS, I log in, because of a walkthrough showing how to take care of the latest facebook privacy settings.

It’s truly shocking how many things I had to change since a year ago (fine, 9 months for you pedanticists), when I last set everything to “as private as it can be” and logged out. Facebook is apparently run by a bunch of sociopathic spamming markettroids who will take full advantage of any human trait as an exploitable weakness for them to profit from. This makes them both “something to invest in” AND “something to protect yourself from.”

I saw that there were a slew of messages — please, please PLEASE use my email instead. I read all of your facebook updates and links in google reader, using the RSS feeds that facebook provides, but it does not alert me to private messages, and I don’t want to log into facebook long enough to deal with those… no matter how much I might love you individually (hint, hint, Aunt Georgi!), I am determined to keep all my updates on my blog which feeds into both facebook and twitter, and where I own the original. Plus, the “like” button tracking me across websites gives me the heebie-jeebies (and it should do the same to you), so I refuse to even log in to facebook using my primary browser.

Now, I let my android phone sync my facebook contacts to my phone (but who knows how much longer that will last?), but rarely do more than click on a widget update that grabs my interest.

Long story short: do not message me on facebook, send me an email instead!

Thanks, folks.

I rhyme, therefore I am

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Feb 102011

This limmerick is self-referential
I hope it lives up to potential
Tell me if it gaffes
Or if anyone laughs
Or if it’s too urban or provencial.

I am the love child of Glen Olberman and Keith Beck

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Feb 102011

All the pundits I see induce nausea
With hate filled conspiracies implaussia
Who likes this damn dreck?
I’m in over my neck.
I hope never to learn me the cause’o'ya.

Just you try to deny me the inheritance of Dorothy Parker…

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Feb 102011

A limmerick’s form’s built up with ease
And it’s message is certain to please
Audience under thirty?
Or is it quite dirty?
Or is the last line just a tease?

I am stronger than I have ever been, and I need you to wear purple Wednesday.

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Oct 192010

So, all last week there was much buzz about the It gets better project. Friday, I finally saw the Joel Burns video.

I watched it at work, and cried. Later that night, I watched it again, alone, and had the worst sobbing panic attack of my life. All the pain of the complete ostracism, the total isolation, the sense of worthlessness — it all hit me like a ton of bricks. Feelings that I have not thought about for decades dragged me right back to that time of pain, with a clarity that time was supposed to heal.

And tonight, listening to that video again, I realized that on the day that Cy and I celebrated 25 years together, with the most wonderful 8-year-old I can imagine, one of those boys was on life support. Two days later he died. I remember being 8 when the taunting started.

I have had some deeper understanding of myself within the past weeks, and will have a rant about that soon enough (mormons beware!) Those of you who knew me both before and after G came along might understand better what I mean about strength.

But in the meantime, there are many, many young children and teenagers who are in trouble and need help. The easiest way I can think of for all of us to help them is for them to have a signal — hidden or not — that there are many folks that appreciate their pain, and want to tell them that it does, indeed, get better.

The signal is for people to wear purple. I don’t care if it is a shirt, socks, a hat (but preferably not underwear, I don’t like that “sagging” look) or an armband. These kids need to know that there is a world out there that does not condemn them. Technically, it is the least we can do.

I cannot change what I went through, but I can hopefully alleviate the sense of isolation that other kids might be feeling.

So can you.

Duck!

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Oct 032010

?http://j.snyder.name/duck

Historical Thursday: Lockheed Plant

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Jun 172010

Historical Thursday: Lockheed Plant

via There, I Fixed It.

Want to celebrate “Quit Facebook Day” without quitting facebook?

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May 312010

As I just saw:

Viral clickjacking ‘Like’ worm hits Facebook users | Graham Cluley’s blog

And recently:

Facebook sez, “Don’t mind us, we’re just whoring out your photos”

Top Ten Reasons You Should Quit Facebook – Facebook – Gizmodo

Some quitting Facebook as privacy concerns escalate – CNN.com

Well, These New Zuckerberg IMs Won’t Help Facebook’s Privacy Problems

Facebook Privacy: Secrets Unveiled – PCWorld

ReclaimPrivacy.org | Facebook Privacy Scanner

A sneak peek at Facebook’s dra…

It’s Quit Facebook Day, Are You Leaving? – PC World

How to Return Facebook’s Privacy Settings to What You Signed Up For [Privacy]

Not that it’s much better, but I’m tied into Google pretty well, even using reader to aggregate all my RSS feeds. You can use that, or any other RSS aggregator you choose — just follow the guide that jwz provided many, many months ago. You’re halfway there, as now you can read all your friend’s updates without ever logging in to facebook directly.

Best bonus so far? You’ll never, ever see another app update (think farmville, mafia wars, fishville, voleville, crapopolis…)

Now, you know that twitter account you signed up for but never use? Tie that in to facebook. There are many ways to do this. Myself, I’m using my wordpress blog as the base of everything, with the “Twitter Tools” plugin syncing my blog with my twitter account, and twitter pointing everything on to everything else. My photo uploads to picasa point to friendfeed (which is still actually facebook, but I’m logging out of that one as well…)

Before you log out for what may very well be the last time, you’ll want to fix your privacy settings as strictly as possible. Salt to taste how much email facebook will send you alerting you to comments people make to your posts (though you will not be able to obviously “like” or comment on their posts within facebook itself).

Since I’m doing this myself, I’m going to log in one last time, pointing people to this post.

Be sure you log out; otherwise you’ll still see that cnn (among many other sites) still tell facebook about your visits.

Campfire

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May 192010

xkcd.com

via Campfire.

Bad Eyedea

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Apr 182010

Bad Eyedea

Best Photo Caption Ever

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Apr 092010

Remember, it could have been one of the firemen…

Sadly, a cremation could never be this easy…

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Feb 212010

http://j.snyder.name/ezbake

Celebrating tonight

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Feb 202010

Got the new gentoo-based web server working yesterday, so tonight’s event http://sambaparty.com/ will truly be a celebration!

Catchup blogging…

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Oct 262009

These are all things that are either too specific or too small to deserve a post of their own.

A huge change in my life…

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Oct 052009

After carrying a palm pilot for over 12 years, I am almost ready to stop.

Most folks who see this won’t care for any data beyond this. You might if you currently hate AT&T or the iphone, however…

Twelve years of data have almost completely transitioned to the new android phone. Twelve years of contacts, migrated. Twelve years of calendar, migrated. To-do list, migrated. Notes, migrated. Outlines, migrated. Bookmarks, migrated. Autographs (yes, autographs), migrated. Music, migrated (see why you use mp3s and not whatever-apple-calls-theirs?) Photos, migrated.

Applications? Only one silly one is missing: a falling timer, where you click when something starts falling, click when it stops, and it tells you how long and how far it fell. (This one is something simple enough that I think it will make me become a part-time android devloper!)

There are several games that I had on my palm that currently have no equivalent on android:

Bridge
Craps
Monopoly
Mille Bournes
Scrabble
8-off solitaire

Again, any of these could make me become a part-time android developer.

Some folks are going to ask, “Why android?”

Because it is open. You don’t have to use their app store. Anyone can develop for it, and the underlying OS source code is available for anyone to look at. Unlike the iphone, it can run more than one application at a time. Unlike the new palm, anyone can develop for it.

Right now, there are 2 phones in the US that run android, but many more are on the way. The camera on the mytouch is better than the iphone, but even better ones will be here soon.

I can now do all the things that matter that I could do before, and only carry one device.

New things I can do:

sync contacts automatically, I don’t have to wait to hook up to my computer
import contacts from linkedin, facebook (with photos and phone numbers!) and more
GPS-tag photos (actually, anything GPS-related, like google latitude)
share photos and videos while still out and about with my gallery2 installation, picasa, facebook and SMS
google voice
podcasts with google listen

Things that need work:

Rotation. I don’t have a hard keyboard, let me rotate in any direction.
We need more bluetooth support, especially for objects
We need a good, full-featured solitaire that knows all variants
I’m chomping at the bit for ereader.com to get an android app out, but fbreader is okay in the meantime.
Support for both personal and work google accounts would be fantastic
More processor power and more battery, or at least give programs in the foreground more priority

Some things I have discovered:

Openhome locked my phone; I’m going to stick with freshface.
Since I had all my apps backed up with astro, restoring from the locked phone took less than 30 minutes.
Restored apps from astro do not update automatically until you reinstall them from the market.
Get a task killer
Visual voicemail needs to not have wifi enabled when it starts the first time
Bluetooth file transfer is the best bluetooth app so far
Astro is currently the best file manager.
Spare parts is currently the best additional settings tweak tool.
Lock2 makes it feel more like the iphone on startup
A page of shortcuts to people beats speed-dial – especially if those shortcuts have photos!
androlib.com with a qr-code scanning program (I use barcode scanner) makes finding and installing new software a breeze!
The donut firmware upgrade sped things up considerably, and added VPN
My online shopping list works just fine in any webkit browser

The worst news? I cannot find my list of birthdays. I’m going to have to get those from everyone again. (Update between writing and posting this: Between ebobirthday and syncmypix, almost all the birthdays are back, and more — I’m only really missing birthdays for children too young to be on facebook. That’s manageable!)