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I've always posted about things that are not political but I thought were interesting or just personal on Gort42. Now I find that I put that sort of thing on my Facebook page . I have it set up that whatever I put on the blog will automatically post on Facebook so should I continue to bore you about my everyday pet peeves and pictures of my pets?
Another Monkey predicted a few months ago that Facebook and Twitter will kill blogging. Ed Mitchell sent me this link a few weeks ago arguing the same point.
I think blogs will be around for awhile and even grow in the political sphere of influence but they may decline as a version of an online diary because other than your friends very few people are interested in what you had for breakfast.
So I will share some of my pet peeves .
Cell phones. I don't have one and I don't understand why people are glued to the things especially when they are driving a car. What the hell can be that important? You are slaves to those machines.
TV audio. Whenever the show you are watching goes to commercial the ad is a lot louder than the program.
Flashing lights. The radio towers on Penobscot Mountain now have a strobe light that I think is dangerous to people with epilepsy and blinding to many others.
Talking elevators. I can look at the buttons and figure out what floor I am on and don't need to be told to watch my step.
Change. I was in the F&B business for a long time and I always taught my people was not to put the customer on the spot. A server should never ask "do you need change" after you plopped down your cash on the check. The proper response is I will be right back with your change .
Plastic. Whenever you buy some sort of electronic product it comes in a well built plastic package that you need a chain saw to open.
Enough bitching. Pictures of the Pets are in order.
Quincy keeps an eye on Ptolemy who keeps an eye on Quincy.
9 comments:
Our esteemed host listed, as a pet peeve:
Cell phones. I don't have one and I don't understand why people are glued to the things especially when they are driving a car. What the hell can be that important? You are slaves to those machines.
I don't know if such being the first listed means that cell phones are his pettest of pet peeves, but, for me, my cell phone is great. T'were in not for my darling bride's insistence, I'd get rid of the land line. After all, each of us has a cell phone.
The people I want to have my cell number, have my cell number. It isn't listed in some phone book, and the people to whom I haven't given my cell number don't have my cell number.
My biggest pet peeve is that baseball has ended the tradition of the first game on opening day being the first Cincinnati Reds game. That, to me, is sacrilege.
Blogging may have peaked, but it isn't going any. Why? Because what blogging does is to simply make an activity some like to do naturally and much easier, accessible and interesting. As long as there are numbskulls like me who like to write, then this will exist in one form or another.
As for Twitter, it takes our already attention-deficit society and brings it down to a new "if it can't be said in 140 characters then it's not important at all" low. Yes, Twitter may be fine if you want to know what J-Lo is wearing, but if I want to discuss the validity of the Laffer Curve then I'm thinking that 140 characters may not be enough.
One of my blogger/Facebook friends who used to be a top-notch blogger but now is lucky to put up a post once every three months recenly lamented on her Facebook page:
Facebook would make so much money if you could publish your own book out of your statuses. I'd like to know what I was thinking back in 2008 and I wouldn't mind having it shelved away in my bookshelf. Just sayin', Facebook.
To which I responded:
Yeah. If only there were some format for recording your thoughts and feelings, maybe photos and videos, too, in a way that you and others could easily access at some point in the future. A sort of, I don't know, "web log", so to speak.
And the new strobe tower on Penobscot - I'm wondering if it's going through a "burn-in" period. I remember there was another explosively bright one up there about fifteen years ago, but after a few weeks it wither dimmed, was modified, or was replaced.
Here's a pet peeve of mine: slow answering machines:
YOU........
HAVE................
TWO..........................
NEW.................................
MESSAGES..............................
FIRST..........
MESSAGE.....................
AT...............................
THREE..................................
O'CLOCK......................................
SMASH!!!!! WITH THE SLEDGEHAMMER!!!!!!!!!!!
CHANGE: A server asking if I "need change" drives me up a wall and does have an effect on my tip. I service was good, 20% and no more because of the stupid question. The other thing that bothers me is this new deal of clerks at store checkouts asking if I want to donate a dollar ... WTF ..... That could keep me out of a store. Both situations seem to be nothng less than extortion.
Gort, be patient, you WILL own a cell phone. I wonder if you ever borrowed one? You remind me of my dear mother who thought car AC was an unncessary luxery and my father who thought car radios were not necessay but if you had one, AM was sufficient. Eddy Arnold has a song, "Welcome to my world", you will come in!
Anonymous wrote:
Gort, be patient, you WILL own a cell phone.
For me, the tipping point came when my daughters were old enough to drive. Yeah, somehow my wife and I learned how to drive before cell phones were invented, though I'm sure our parents were nervous wrecks. Once our kids were old enough to drive, we wanted them to be able to contact us if they needed to, or we needed to find them.
If you're a parent, you will find reasons for your kids to have cell phones.
I feel compelled to defend Twitter haha. It can be useful depending on who you "follow"--if you follow newspapers, news services, etc. you will get breaking news updates and links to full stories--it really is a useful news filter for me. It's useful for politicos because a lot of party clubs and resources such as DCCC, DSCC, Young Democrats, etc. will post important info. Blogs like fivethirtyeight.com will post links to their most recent stories. And there's even a NEPA traffic report I follow that's kept me from unknowingly getting stuck in construction or other traffic jams--very handy! It's true you will have some people who post about the inanities of their day (like those who have friends who are teenagers, former students or interns or whatever, I wouldn't reccommend folllowing them because it's usually a lot of junk like "just went for chinese food with my bf Josh! <3" or "OMG. I hate my roommate", but even the annoying and useless updates you just tune out or ignore as you're skimming through. Seriously, it's got it's good points, I'd recommend trying it.
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