Core Dump

Recently someone asked me why I don’t have a Facebook account.

The simplest answer I could come up with was that I simply don’t need it – for me, Facebook is redundant.

The person who asked me tried to tell me how great Facebook was, and how you could do so many things with it, like connecting with friends, keeping up-to-date on what you’re doing, and easily share photos (among other things).

But the thing is… I can already do all of those things without Facebook. So what’s the point? Where’s the benefit for me?

I mean, look at it this way:

• I own my own domain and have my own website.
• I have and maintain my own blog, which means I have total control over every aspect of it (appearance, function, etc.) and to which people can “subscribe” using the RSS feed (an open standard).
• For sharing pictures, I have a Flickr Pro account. Because Flickr is dedicated to sharing photos, it does a really good job of it.
• For messaging, I have IM and Twitter and of course email.
• For people trying to find me, I have a Google Profile (and of course I am not a hard person to find – one of the advantages of having a very unique name!).

(There’s also the fact that I consider Facebook – and all similar sites – as being the modern reincarnations of  the crappy websites that populated Geocities back in the early days of the web.)

So really, Facebook offers no compelling advantages for me – no real reason for me to use it. Everything it can do, I can already do without having to sign up for yet another online account.

It might come as a surprise to some people to hear me say that I am not a slave to technology – after all, I’m a self-described “computer geek.” You’d think, therefore, that I walk around with an iPhone or Blackberry (or both!) strapped to my chest at all times, checking email and looking up information on-line everywhere I go.

However, you couldn’t be farther from the truth.

While it’s true that I am a major computer geek, and I would love to have (say) a nice little netbook for looking up information, sending email, writing blog posts, etc., the fact of the matter is that it’s because I’m a computer geek that I’m not a slave to technology.

Because I’m confident about it, I don’t allow it to control me – I control it.

For example, I know many people with mobile email who are, quite frankly, addicted to it (think: crackberry). They’re always checking email – all the time – no matter where they are. Even if I had a mobile email device (which I don’t), I wouldn’t be checking email all the time. As it is, I don’t check email often, even when I’m at my computer. I’m confident enough with the technology to know that I don’t need to answer every single email at the moment it comes in – that I don’t need to be “on-line” all the time. I control the technology – I use it when I want to, not the other way around.

Another example is when the power goes out – for people who are slaves to technology, to computers, the Internet, email, Twitter, social networking, what have you, the power going out is like having their “fix” cut off – they don’t know what to do. Without email, chat, or whatever, they’re lost. They’re so badly enslaved that they don’t know what to do when they are “freed” from it, for whatever reason.

As for me, even though I spend my entire day at the computer (and often much of the evening, too), writing code, answering emails, being online, writing blog posts like this one and so on – when the power goes out, I just shrug, grab a book from my bookshelf, and go read. Or, if it’s dark, I’ll go for a drive, or a walk, or just plain go to bed.

I control the technology around me – it doesn’t control me.

For many people today, the opposite is true. It’s worth it to sit and really take a look at yourself and see whether you are one of those people – whether you’re a slave to technology. Even in today’s connected world, it’s important to be able to just leave it all behind sometimes, to just “let go.” It’s the difference between being controlled and being in control.

Well, it’s been a little over a week now, and the verdict on the router-reset issue is:

Linksys Wins!

Since switching to the Linksys, I’ve had zero router resets and my Internet connection has been rock-solid. My Mozy online backup has been able to run each night without interruption, and during the day my work (which often involves some IP-based telephony) has been fine as well (nothing more irritating than making an IP-phone call and having your router reset!!).

I still don’t know what was causing the Netgear router to reset frequently – but at this point, I really don’t care. I don’t know what I’m going to do with the Netgear router, either – I’d sell it or give it away, but knowing that it has this problem makes me feel guilty. So I guess… into the great bit-bucket in the sky it must go.

I’ll be sad to see the Netgear go – I always had a soft spot for Netgear in the past. Their products retained that “metal enclosure” look long after Linksys and others had jumped on the “plastic” shell bandwagon back when home networking became “popular.” And those metal-shelled products were easy to rack mount, with the right brackets, which was always nice.

But now, all home networking products are plastic-shelled, and some (it would seem) are no longer as high-quality as they once were.

As for me – I’m just glad my ‘net connection is reliable again. Internet, ahoy!

Icon courtesy of the Crystal Icon Set.

I know it’s a silly thing to do, but I sometimes like to look at the visitor stats for this website – as well as for the buns’ website and Amanda’s blog.

Of course, sometimes these statistics are a bit depressing – but that’s neither here nor there. For “entertainment purposes,” here are some recent statistics:

As you can see, the Bunnies are clearly the most popular overall. I get more “total” page views because I have over 1,000 posts stretching back several years which cover a lot of different topics. (My post on Manual vs. Automatic is still the #1 page, with my Desktop Madness series being next in line thanks to Google Image Search.)

But Amanda is really coming up strong – since starting her blog less than a month ago, she’s had nearly the same number of visits to her site as I have in the same time period. Amazing!

I think I’ve created two blogging monsters!

So, I started using Skype recently (for videoconferencing). It’s a good program, and I like it – though I do just use it for Skype-to-Skype calls with a few people.

However, while browsing through the settings, I came across this little gem:

The sample chat that Skype uses is an exchange from two characters in George Orwell’s 1984.

That is just awesome on so many levels. Well done, Skype – I like your style!