Blog of Josh Hall

Do not unfriend people on facebook.  It’s true, and if you haven’t had it verified for you yet, just give it time.

1. You’re either going to run into that person in real life and it’s going to be awkward for at least one of you
2. They’re going to realize and do or say something negative towards you without you knowing
3. There will be a social obstacle, from your side or their side, that would have been avoided if you had just left them as your friend.

Sure, there are ways to avoid getting to the point of unfriending people.  One is just not to accept friend requests in the first place.  Let them sit in approval limbo forever.  Second is just to block them from your feed or viewing your feed.

Warning, you may not want to watch this.  You may not want to let your kids watch this either.  I’m going to talk about the genitalia of the duck.  Specifically, the male duck.  It’s crazy.  The claim is that female ducks have been evolving to prevent the male from impregnating them by forming twists in their…”tubes”.  In response, the male penis has evolved to “fill up” the tube and spiral around to make sure it gets to where it needs to be…  You just have to watch the video.   Or, read the Discover Magazine article.

Eversions in barriers / from blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom from Carl Zimmer on Vimeo.

10.  I learned a lot about php, mysql, SEO, html, java, web design, social networking, webtraffic, and a lot of other geeky stuff that’s come in handy in my job and in my personal life.  Sometimes, just doing things is the best learning tool.

9.  When my dad passed, a college friend of his emailed me and said he liked my dad and was sad to learn about his death.  This guy didn’t know me, and I didn’t know him, but I like to think we helped each other heal there too.  He probably felt like he got his message across and got to say good bye, and I got a picture of my dad that I didn’t have before.  Good stuff.

8.  Can you believe people have asked me to give stuff away on my blog?  Heck ya!  I love free stuff.  I love giving away free stuff even more!

7.  When Kallie and I got married, I started doing a genealogy of her family.  After one her relatives found my blog doing a search for “Sealock”, he found my site and we ended up matching our family trees together.  Fun!

6.  This has been a journal and diary for me in a lot of ways.  I’ve gotten lots of entertainment looking at past blog posts and not remember saying those things.  Dreams, rants, or even saying things that other people said is a lot of fun to revisit.

5.  Back in the fall of 2007, I got asked if I knew of a LEGO artist in Pittsburgh.  I said no, but asked if I could help for what they were looking for.  Long story short, I was asked to teach a after school program to some 20 elementary kids.  I’ve taught the 6 week sessions twice and I love it and am so grateful for that opportunity!

4.  When I first started blogging, there weren’t many people out there blogging about their personal lives.  As it caught on, pittsburgh area bloggers started networking with one another.  I certainly have not gotten as close as many of the others have gotten to each other, and that’s largely my own fault, but I still feel connected to them and have gone to some meet ups to socialize.  ONLINE FRIENDS TURNED 3D ZOMG.

3.  Separate from just seeing the history of my thoughts, just being able to express myself, or type out my ideas is therapeutic and calming.  As the blogging platform gets better, it becomes easier for me to type up ideas instead of mulling them over in my head or possibly forgetting them.  I’m able to create drafts, schedule posts, and it’s no longer a chore, but an outlet that I’m able to make work for me.

2.  I’ve lost contact with friends over the years.  Sometimes, those people find me again through my blog after not knowing how to get in contact with me.  Even people that I was only acquaintances with in the first place has stumbled upon my blog and sent me a message letting me know about the small world scenario.  It’s funny when it happens.

1.  You reading this.  Honestly, it’s nice to be able to share my thoughts openly, and then people know how or what I’m thinking and respond back.  It’s kind of like an open invitation to a conversation with me; something I’m not good at anyway.  I’m not afraid of people who know too much about me because they stalked me on my blog.  If that’s how they like to spend their time, who am I to judge?  It’s creating the real world connections that make this blog so fruitful, for me.

If you’re in Pittsburgh this weekend, make sure you check out the Three Rivers Regatta!  The Regatta is always a blast and this year there’s a huge sand sculpture!  of course there are fireworks.  There are always fireworks in Pittsburgh.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/divinehammer42

1. There’s no delete key.  There’s a backspace, to remove characters from right to left, but there’s no way to delete characters from left to right.
2. Prices are ridiculous.  Especially after they switched to Intel based hardware, prices should have dropped significantly.
3. Their CD/DVD drives sound like death.  All of them.  WHY?!?!?!  RRRRBBBBBRRRRZZZZRAREARE.  Every time you eject or insert, it sounds like 100 little bugs in there are choking on asbestos and they’re about to die which means you’ll never see your disk again.
4. Proprietary hardware is proprietary.  It’s so stupid that I can’t just go buy the hardware that fails and replace it myself.  In the PC world, it works just the the automobile industry.  You have a choice to fix it yourself or not.  Apple says you have to let them fix it and you can’t get the hardware out or in without voiding warranty.
5. Planned obsolescence.  They’ve forced depreciation on their customers.  With their latest generation of the ipad, they even reused the name of the first generation, so you have no clue what you’re getting any more, just that if you haven’t bought it in the past year from them, it’s old and dated.
6. What are they giving back?  Steve Jobs himself was not a fan of philanthropy.  I may just be unaware, but I don’t see huge innovation competitions or research grants or programs coming out of Apple.  Where is the investment in future of people?  future of technology? of society?  I don’t like it.
7. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain hype.  Most companies get beta testers for their new products.  They’ll have honest excitement and information and let everyone know what they’re working on.  Not Apple.  Everything is shrouded in mystery until their big unveiling press conferences.  So much hype.  I’m almost positive that strategy stems from legal paranoia or even actually stealing technology but releasing it before anyone has time to stop them.  Secrecy makes me not want to trust you.
8. Itunes on Windows is a load of crap.  I think they do it intentionally.  There’s no plugin support or API to add functionality or change it around or even customize the appearance.  Not to mention the huge memory leaks and errors.  You see Microsoft spending a lot of time and money making it’s products work on macs, but it’s not the same the other way around.  Even take a look at how they treat their app store developers.  They deny apps based on their mood that day and then turn around and put the same functionality themselves!  ^%$&3@$F
9. You need a third hand for key combinations.  I mean, come on!  4 different keys pressed at the same time and they’re no where near each other?  I feel like I’m playing a micro game of twister.
10. I hate gestures.  More prevalent on the laptops, I hate having to gesture on the mousepad to see what windows I have open or perform certain functions.  I have the same distaste for gesture driven browsing on PC.

Honorable mentions:

• No double click on the mouse – There are ways around this now, but that ticked me off that I had to use the keyboard and the mouse at the same time to perform a function.  Isn’t Apple supposed to be known for their interface design?  Or is it just their looks?
• I hate how the system bar changes by what application is open.  It’s as if there’s no way to get back to the operating system functions without closing every application you have open.

Your intelligence in any given moment has a direct correlation with your ability to access the internet.

Related: http://xkcd.com/903/