I always enjoy taking a quick trip down memory lane via my old blog entries. It’s great fun. Sometimes I cringe at the tone or content of the entries; other times I’m quite impressed with the rhetoric. And tonight, when I read some of the comments my friends had written, they reminded me of how our friendships once were and how bad I have been in keeping in touch.

But even more so, one thing I consistently come away with each time I read my old blogs is a burning question: “Why in the world did I ever write in neon green lettering on a black background?” (Sample here.) My goodness. The contrast is jacked up way too high to the point that it hurts to read. And the moment I look away or switch to another page, I begin to see dark flashing spots swirling in my vision.

Since the advent of Facebook, the boundaries that once defined the group of people called “friends” have blurred and/or broadened more considerably. Unless one is the type that dutifully scrutinizes every friend request against a set of stringent criteria, people generally will hit the accept button without too much deliberation.

Personally, I’ll add friend requests if I’ve had some sort of direct interaction with the person. I figure that since I am acquainted with them and Facebook is a social networking tool, I shouldn’t be picking bones with the fact that they don’t exactly fall into my ideal definition of what a “friend” is. Besides, at what point in the stranger/friend continuum does an acquaintance become a friend or a friend transition to being a mere acquaintance?

But suppose you have Facebook “friends” who were acquaintances at the time of the add, but your relationship with them never progressed and you haven’t seen or spoken to them at all in the last six years. Would you conduct a Facebook purge and de-friend them? Now the consideration here is this — what is the point of having a social network clogged with people who are, in effect, strangers to you? Doesn’t that dilute the effectiveness of the networking tool (I’m thinking of the News Feed in particular)? Now it’s one thing if these are ones that you still want to stay connected to for one reason or another (i.e. being able to see what your junior high classmates are doing in life), albeit passively (you stalker). It’s another thing if these are people you will never see or care to see or plan on seeing ever again (Yes, yes. I know the future may never go according to plan, but please follow my drift).

So, would you de-friend? Thumbs up or thumbs down?

I finally got around to upgrading my website publishing platform (btw, I use WordPress). I’ve been wanting to do that for two years already, but like many things (i.e. the GMAT), I just never got around to it. I think the upgrade fixed a few glitches that I’ve had problems with in the past, so I’m glad that I finally just sat down and took care of it. Not that the upgrading took that much time or effort (WordPress makes it ridiculously easy for users), it was really just a matter of overcoming inertia.  Seems like the same applies for a lot of things on my To Do list. *sigh*

Also related to websites, I’ve rediscovered my old blogs. Yay.

When I first began creating my personal websites, I used the GeoCities free hosting service provided by Yahoo. In 2009, Yahoo decided to terminate the service and delete all files from its servers. For some reason, I never backed up my files. My guess is that I either wasn’t aware that GeoCities was being shut down, forgot about it, or thought I had backup copies (turns out I didn’t). When I finally realized that GeoCities was gone, it was too late…all the content on my former website was gone. That made me sad. It wasn’t just a website; it contained an archive of my thoughts throughout college, sometimes marking significant events in my life. And I thought I had lost those pages forever.

As a last ditch effort, I began googling key words related to my old website in the hopes that I could find some archives of those pages somewhere on the web. The situation seemed bleak, but on the 3rd page of my Google search, four links from the bottom, I finally found something. It turns out there’s a project with the goal of restoring as much of the former GeoCities pages as possible. The site is Reocities.com, and in it, I found most of my old website intact. Of course, there’s still a few files missing here and there, but at least I now have all my blog entries again. I was ecstatic.

I’ve downloaded all the files that had been restored, and eventually plan on uploading them to my current web-hosting service provider.

I did some more growing up this month. It wasn’t too fun. =(

The hardest part about cleaning a living unit shared with others is that bottlenecks occur frequently unless there are clearly designated cleaning times. Say you’re totally in the zone for vacuuming, so you decide that it’s vacuum time. But then, as you make your way to the closet where the vacuum is kept, you realize that your housemate’s boxes and miscellaneous items are strewn all over the living room. So until those things are put away, you don’t have the space to vacuum. Deflated, you end up frittering the time you had budgeted for cleaning on useless activities…such as writing this blog entry.

The second difficulty is when you don’t have the proper cleaning supplies (i.e. no rags, so you have to substitute rolls and rolls of paper towels). That increases the difficulty of cleaning significantly, and simultaneously decreases the motivation to clean drastically.

Tonight, the moon was intense. It was so fatty huge and yellow. And it hung so low in the sky that it pretty much sat on top of the hills of Berkeley. But I didn’t get the chance to snap a photo of it. Sad.

I think it was the fattiest moon I had ever seen. Maybe.

Btw. The winds outside are intense. At least its semi-warm. Nice.

Tomorrow is the last day of coordination for the Fall 2008 semester. Seems only like a week or two ago that I started serving.

Time sure has gone by fast.

Today’s a pretty cold day up here in the Bay…even though it’s only 44 degrees outside. I was shivering in my room at 4 pm, even though I had four layers underneath.

But the temperature needs to drop another 12 degrees. I want to see it snow in Berkeley.

So? What are you waiting for?!
Snow.

So I got a new digital camera over the Thanksgiving break. It’s all very exciting, and I’m looking forward to reading the owner’s manual (yes, nerd).

However, the selection process was mentally draining. Considering cameras don’t come cheap, I was slighty obsessed with making the perfect purchase. Yet with so many different brands and models to choose from, each one complete with differing reviews, it was difficult to ascertain which camera would be the best fit for my needs and/or preferences. As such, I was very worried that I would make a less than ideal choice.

Ultimately, I settled on the Canon Powershot SD790IS. Image quality is pretty high up there on my list of important camera attributes, and I had read some very positive reviews of the SD790IS in that regard. Of course, other reviews also pointed out that the camera had some shortcomings. Still, for the price, this model seemed as if would suit my needs quite well. It also helped that Costco was listing it at $229.99 ($20 less than it’s normal price of $249.99), and then offered a $50 coupon, throwing in an extra 2GB SD card. I figured that made it a steal.

Below is a picture of my beautiful camera:

Now that I am the proud owner of the SD790IS, I am actively blocking out any negativity regarding the camera, choosing instead to emphasize it’s positive attributes. I’m hoping this will help me fight any buyer’s remorse, and solidify, in my mind, the unfailing genius of my choice.

Today, I saw a man in a wheelchair. Big whoop, right? Wrong. Normally, it’s not anything to get excited about…except the man was going down a lane in the middle of a street (Mission St. in SF) as if his wheelchair was just another car. He even somehow managed to cross an intersection.

And it’s not like the streets were empty. This was at 10:30 pm, which meant a good number of cars were still on the road. In fact, to get an idea of traffic volume, there were probably 5 or 6 cars with very annoyed or very amused drivers stuck behind the man, waiting to pass him by.

Obviously, the man was drunk out of his mind. I say “obvious” for good reason. The man was throwing beer cans in the air and occasionally puking his guts out onto the asphalt as he pushed himself backwards down the street. He also couldn’t even keep his wheelchair straight.

I marveled. I laughed. And then I made a mental note to blog about the event. It’s not every day you get to witness something as novel as this.