Saturday, August 9, 2008

Facebook is the devil...

Listening to "Flight of the Conchords".

(Makes me smile every time!)

Ok, so I got sucked into joining Facebook so that I could look at the photos of some friends and of my baby nephew. The reason that I've been avoiding it for years is now confirmed: It's a royal waste of time! Wow.

Not only do I get useless updates like "Bill is going to brush his teeth", but I get an email notifying me that someone has written a note on my wall and I have to go online to look it up and then respond to it, which in turn will send an email to them to notify them that I have written on their wall. Why didn't you just email me in the first place?!!

But the bigger problem comes when I try to upload photos. After several failed attempts, I search online and find that there is a conflict between Facebook and Firefox and that I need to download an IE adapter. In order to do this, I have to download a newer version of Firefox. Great, except that now all the bits and peices like the Google search bar need updates, installations and the uninstalling of the old ones. Still no good, so I try and actually use Microsoft IE to do it. First I have to install ActiveX. OK. FINALLY... It gives me a dialog box that says "upload has failed, please try again". ARrrrg. Explain to me why this is such a phenomenon...

Fortunately the day has been productive with other things for finishing up the course. It seems surreal that we are done already. The time has flown by. I am currently putting the finishing touches on a powerpoint slideshow with contributed photos from all the participants and staff, telling the story of the course to music.

I'm really wishing that Burkinabé TV would show some of the Olympics. We only get one channel here and there isn't much to work with. They showed aobut 45 seconds of the opening ceremony on the news last night. I guess when your country is as poor as this one, you don't go around splashing millions to buy TV rights to airtime for that 1% of your population who own TVs. Still, I miss it.

The good thing that happened today is that Nicki and James finally won a City Chase event!!!! Yeah! They're going to Newfoundland for the National Championships! They stand a pretty good chance. Last year Nicki and partner Jen came 3rd. James and his old partner won and also won at World's. AWESOME.

http://www.mitsubishicitychase.com/championships.asp?nav=champ

3 comments:

Condredge said...

Ahhh... Flight of the Chonchords, what fun! I must admitt that I was surprised to see you on Facebook! I mostly use it for the pictures as well, but it is interesting to see who which friends know your other friends that you didn't realize you had in common! Yes. Confusing. Hope you can wrap up all your admin stuff & have a great time on the bike! Love ya!
Ali

Condredge said...

Ali - commenting under my name! Oh man, the fraudulence!

STeve, sorry to hear that you got sucked into Facebook - I thought the *exact* same thing about the Wall when I joined - I guess the 'benefit' of the Wall is that everyone gets to see the conversation.

The thing that drives me crazy is when people use Facebook to send you a message - just email me! Gail's the worst with this one. She'll send a Facebook message. Then I'll just respond via email. Then when she replies, rather than just hitting 'reply' in the email message, she'll login to Facebook and send me a message there... just don't get it. Great if you don't have some old friend's email address, but otherwise, just annoying!

- Redge (the *real* one)

Å said...

I've always been way behind on this networking sites. i feel like the last person on earth to have used msn messenger... Anyways, i first heard of facebook when one of my students sent me an invitation to join. And right then and there i knew i was never going to join. Besides, people find out bad things when the go peek in other people's pages...

Take care, and good luck on your trip.

Hugs!
Å

Funny... part of the word verification code was "hox". I love Hox genes.