Today was geriatric tuesday, and boy the store was full of elderly zombies. It wasn’t really clear what I was supposed to be doing today. I was only brought in to handle the overhead but ended up doing things that weren’t even for my department or doing someone elses job. It was one of those circle jerk style days… Tonight is going to be all about drinking and slacking.
I’m too antisocial to join a social network
Maybe I’m old fashioned but regular email, forums and blogging are good enough for me. Hell I never even thought I would be blogging or vlogging when I was younger. Then eventually I found reasons to do both. However I’m not really a spacebook/myface/tehgoogleplus person. I have no reason/desire to use social networking sites. For one I’m a privacy nut, for another I know that workplaces search sites like facebook to find out about their workers (they try to find me all the time). I have nothing to hide about myself (otherwise I wouldn’t even have a blog), I just think my online life should be like my real life. Personal. I mean it’s not like I go about the real world advertising that I exist online.
The reason for this rant is because of something that’s been coming up a lot lately at work. Random strangers asking if I have a facebook, today especially. There’s this one girl that I see shopping from time to time over the last few years while I’m working or out and about on my day off. She wanted to know if I had a facebook and I told her the truth. Then she wanted to know if I had an email address. Who doesn’t these days? But I don’t go about giving it out to just anyone, hell there are people who I’ve known for several years that don’t have my email. There’s no reason for it, especially if you’re local. It also seems like every other day there is a co worker or a stranger asking someone (including me) if you exist online. I can understand this if it’s a close friend or a family member. But if I see you every single day or every other day why should we discuss things online? I rate this among people who would rather text each other side by side than actually carry on a conversation.
That brings me to another point. As much as I like the online world I believe that places like facebook and even youtube cause social laziness. I guess for some it’s easier to break the ice that way, but often it seems to come off as creepy. Or maybe that’s just me.
Killing some time.
Played some L4D1 tonight, then decided to go into Serious Sam HD on a server in France. here’s some footage:
ISP may become big brother…
This just doesn’t sound right.
Internet providers would be forced to keep logs of their customers’ activities for one year—in case police want to review them in the future—under legislation that a U.S. House of Representatives committee approved today.
The 19 to 10 vote represents a victory for conservative Republicans, who made data retention their first major technology initiative after last fall’s elections, and the Justice Department officials who have quietly lobbied for the sweeping new requirements, a development first reported by CNET.
A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored.
It represents “a data bank of every digital act by every American” that would “let us find out where every single American visited Web sites,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren of California, who led Democratic opposition to the bill.
Lofgren said the data retention requirements are easily avoided because they only apply to “commercial” providers. Criminals would simply go to libraries or Starbucks coffeehouses and use the Web anonymously, she said, while law-abiding Americans would have their activities recorded.
To make it politically difficult to oppose, proponents of the data retention requirements dubbed the bill the Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011, even though the mandatory logs would be accessible to police investigating any crime and perhaps attorneys litigating civil disputes in divorce, insurance fraud, and other cases as well.
“The bill is mislabeled,” said Rep. John Conyers of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the panel. “This is not protecting children from Internet pornography. It’s creating a database for everybody in this country for a lot of other purposes.”
So by my ISP storing info on what sites I go to, what my bank account info is, how many pairs of underwear I’ve purchased off ebay, and whatever else they want to keep tabs on is going to keep children safe from people taping their sexcapades? Are we really going to be that fucking stupid to pass such a dumb assed bill? This is data mining, the kind of shit companies like google and spacebook thrive over.
It’s amazing what you can get people to do for you by simply shouting things like “child rape” or “9/11” over and over again. And the sad part here is that there are actual people out there that will think honest to the invisible man in the sky that this law will protect children from pr0n. Give me a fucking break.
Not quite out of the woods just yet…
It looks like I’m not quite out of the early mornings just yet. Next week they are giving me more of them. And today sucked so much that I’d rather not go into full detail about it, other than sum it up with “SSDD”.
God this town is fucking boring during the daytime.
Saturday Night Open Thread
The first thing I did today when I came home was read the internet to see if everyone was behaving. Then I plopped on the bed and passed out. On a promising note, it looks like I’ll be re-entering swing shift this Friday. So you’ll see me once on Tuesday evening and then on thurs and fri.
I’ve been reading at the thinking with portals website. I’m thinking of reviewing Portal/Portal 2 maps/campaigns sometime in the near future. Would be a nice change of scenery and since I am reviewing things in core form it would make sense anyway. I’m also using this as an excuse to not review “The Woods 2”.
Goodnight Open Thread
Well, I managed to play some Left 4 Dead before bed (almost sounds like a poem). Got a nice pot of lavender tea to help me hydrate through the night. I’m actually pretty tired from all the running about I did today. Perhaps I’ll get a good rest after all.
Well that sucked…
Well I’m back from the river… Sadly it was too windy and cold to go for a swim. So now I’m back to post the new episode, followed by figure out what to do next.
Open Thread
It’s fogged up a bit in town, but according to the weather service it’s nice and warm up river so I’ll be spending most of my time up there today. As I’m preparing for that I’m also uploading the next episode of YCDTOXB. It should be done by the time I get back. Then I’ll post it over here and at SNews. Probably won’t have anything much for next week though unless I have time to put something together. A vlog at the very least. I don’t want to forget how to render footage. Heck it took me a day just to remember how to construct something from scratch in after effects.
Work was work today. I got a couple extra hours in but nothing exciting to report.
Fun in der sun
Enjoyed myself up river today. Even managed to get a bit of a tan just by intertubing. I think I might go back up there tomorrow for some more fun. Gotta absorb that sunshine while it’s actually here!