Social Networking Sites

Social Networking Sites do changes lives! Thanks to a friend of mine 4 years ago, I have been on Myspace and Facebook since before they were "the thing to do." I started off on Myspace and really liked it because you can customize the background and a few friends from high school were on it who I hadn't talked to for a couple years at that point. I was on Facebook too but wasn't a big fan of it then but since it has increased in popularity I find myself using it more because more people are on it that I know.

Myspace was what really changed my life though. I am not saying this like a 15 year old who totally needs it to keep up with the whatsgoingson at the cool kid's place. I say this because believe it or not I met my wonderful wife on Myspace!

It's a neat story if you ask me and well...I like it so that's what counts right?!? It was the fall of 2005 and I was still in college in Florida at the time. Back then I went to the gym regularly and played a lot of raquetball. I had a long day at school and a buddy of mine and I decided to go to the gym and work out for a bit. I was driving to the gym and very narrowly averted getting T-Boned by a car at an intersection where the other guy clearly was paying no attention. (Side note: The truck I had was the only vehicle that I ever bought brand new and before it had 2000 miles on it someone hit it. That was when I really started to realize how crappy Florida drivers are!) My friend and I had a good workout and then we parted ways, both having homework to do for the next day.

Even though I had a good workout I was still in a pretty down and depressed mood. School and everything else was going ok in my life at the time but nothing was going good. You know, just sorta hanging in there kind of time. I get home and grab a bite to eat and go in my room to go online and check my email before cracking down on the books.

While I was online, I decided to check out my Myspace account. While on there for kicks I figured I would check out the latest people who signed onto Myspace to see if I happened to know any of them. That was where I saw Teri's pretty black and white photograph (Teri is my wife's name if you haven't already realized this). I checked out her profile and saw that we actually had a lot in common. She was working with animal emergencies and at the time I was helping my parents raise a Beagle that had been abused. I sent Teri a message basically saying "hey, we have a lot in common" not doing the whole "Dude, you're like really hot!" type of stuff that most immature college guys do. Mind you, I wasn't doing this to try to hook up or anything. I was single and looking at the time but I didn't contact people online with the intention to try to date them. There are WAAAAYYYY too many wackos out there who would probably plot to kill me or something.

Teri messaged me back and we hit it off. Turns out our paths had crossed a number of times over the years but neither one of us knew it. I even had a thing for her dancing partner back in high school, worked with her sister at Office Max and worked around the corner from her one summer. She was friends with one of my ex's closest friends as well. We knew many of the same people, were a part of many of the same things but didn't know each other.

After going back and forth over email for a day or so, we started talking on instant messenger. Next thing you know we set up a date for that Saturday to have dinner and a movie. I am told that a couple of her friends told her not to do it and a couple others said to do it. I had couple similar thoughts but figured, oh what the hell, what's the worst thing that could happen?

We met up and had dinner and had a pretty good time and then went to see a very crappy scary movie that shall remain nameless. After the terrible movie I am shocked she ever wanted to see me again but she did and we have been inseperable ever since!

Although I don't use Myspace as much as I used to I still have to thank the original creators of it for putting it out there since it gave me the chance to meet Teri. I've heard some pretty bad stories about people meeting over the internet but I can stand up and say I have a great story about meeting someone on the internet! Some say things happen for a reason and in this case I'm glad it did.

Selfishness

Even though they shouldn't, people still amaze me. I don't understand the selfish nature that society has. We see it every day. You know, it's the guy having to cut you off in traffic even though there is no one behind you. The person at work who you ask if someone walked by and they respond with "It's not my turn to babysit" because you were imposing on their holding up the wall time. The worst I think is when someone has their arms full of something (groceries, presents, animals, whatever) and a person just watches them fight to try to open a door instead of actually helping the person get the door. Would it really hurt you to open the door to let the person through? I sadly see this scenario more often than I would like.

I have heard the expression the "me generation" because of how selfish people are these days. This got me wondering how all of this started. When did people as a whole become so selfish? Were they always this way and I am just noticing this because I am older and a little wiser? Or is this something that all of a sudden happened, where people started thinking "screw them, it's about me!!" So I went to the trusty tangled interwebs to find an answer!

I put into my favorite search engine "When did society become so selfish" and here's what I found...

Some people blame video games and movies for the selfishness. Movies and video games apparently promote it in some fashions. I can understand this to a point, especially with the younger people who have grown up with this stuff all their lives. There aren't many video games or movies that promote team work. The games have to have some sort of 1 player option or they wouldn't sell as many games. Newer games like Halo and Call of Duty can connect to the internet where you can play as a "team" but there's still tons of individual stats. Movies are very similar. Usually movies center on one main person. Everyone else basically lives in that person's world. So this is a good argument for selfishness for the video game generation but what about the generation of baby boomers who are out there flipping the bird and cutting others off when driving because it is so important that they get somewhere before that other person?

Many people say that it is "human nature" or "we have always been this way." This one I can see the argument for. Many stories/tales/history has shown selfishness over the years. This includes stories of King Arthur. I love Arthurian Legends and although chilvary by the knights is talked about quite often, the knights who act this way are the heros because of the selfish bad guys. Like one of the rival Kings to Arthur capturing Queen Guinevere to be his instead of Arthur's. I am told that the Bible makes refrence to selfishness as well but I am not well versed in the Bible so I apologize that I do not have an example here.

Putting together these two theories makes a pretty reasonable one in my crazy head. Lets look at it this way....Lets say that way back in the day there were an equal amount of selfish acts as there were unselfish ones. That lasted for hundreds if not thousands of years. You fast forward into the 1900s when movies started becoming popular. These movies unknowingly started to promote selfishness because it was cool to be like the main character. Continue that into video games to add even more fuel to the fire and you have the selfish society that we have today.

It's an interesting concept. Tell me what you think. Do you think this stuff is totally crazy? How do you think all of this selfishness came about?

Happy Pills

So I was driving to work the other day and I got to thinking about what people use as a "pick-me-up" to get them going. I am one who loves Mountain Dew. I don't "need" to have one in the morning (meaning that I will not die if I don't have one) but I am clearly a different person when I do have one. I certainly crave a dew when I haven't have one and boy does it feel great once I finally do!

An awesome friend of mine is the same way but not with Mountain Dew. Her's is vitamins. The legal, good kind for all you sports fans who immediately thought of A-Rod or Manny Ramirez when I mention "vitamins." Those things pick her right up when she is in a bad mood or is feeling down. They are truely her "happy pills" that is for sure.

I used to work right next to a Starbucks (when I say right next to I mean I could smell coffee through the walls!) and I saw so many regular customers there that had to have their morning coffee/whateveraccino drink they needed to start their day. We all have certainly met that person or persons who are crabby and shouldn't even be spoken to before their morning cup o'joe.

So all of this put the question in my head of how and why so many....I'll even say most people have to have some sort of fix to get going. What happened to waking up to the sun rising to wake us up? I know that people these days rely more on drugs than ever before. You know, getting whatever medication when he or she has a slight cough or depression meds just becuase you are having a couple bad days in a row. Have we as a society turned to relying on outside influences just to wake up everyday?

Personally, I think it is pretty sad when it is put into perspective. This country has gone from physical farmers who woke up at the butt crack of dawn to one that is dependent on energy drinks and coffee.

So let me end with this. Do you think I am off base here? What are your "happy pills" to get your day going?

A year in the "North"

June 23rd marked the one year anniversary of my wife and I packing up our stuff and our animals and moving from Florida to upstate New York, Rochester to be specific. A year into it and I am still loving it in upstate!

Before I moved I had many people ask me why I was going to leave Florida and to this day I still have people ask me why I left "sunny Florida" to go Rochester NY where many people seem to believe it might as well be the arctic circle. The bottom line is that I lived in Florida for over 24 years and I honestly grew to dislike the state. It was a state in the south but I never knew what "southern hospitality" was until I met people from Georgia and Louisiana. I also am one who really loves cold weather and am not a big fan of the heat. I am all about the mantra "you can always put clothes on but you can only take so much off." Much of my wife's family lives in Rochester as well so that made moving away from my family easier to deal with. All in all, I like it up here.

The trip up was an adventure though. Since we had two cats and a dog to move up it made things a little more complicated. We rented a POD to load everything in and had it shipped out and put in storage. This made things easy because we didn't have to rent a moving truck just to load it up, drive it up and then unload it into storage. That was the easy part. The hard part was loading the rest of our stuff, the animals, the animal stuff and still fitting myself and my wife into a Mustang and an F-150. It was a lot harder than you might imagine. I got the dog, my wife got the two cats. The cats have always behaved better with her and the dog behaved better with me so it fit.

We lucked out and hit beautiful weather up the east coast the whole ride up. We didn't have the luxury to take a lot of time driving up. This was due to the animals so we drove the 22+ hour journey stopping every couple hours to let the animals stretch (it made a good excuse for bathroom breaks for me) and had one hotel stop. I have to thank Howard Johnson for letting our pets stay with us for a very small per night charge (Note: I do not personally know Howard Johnson or anyone named Howard or Johnson). For such a cheap rate it was a really nice hotel. Maybe it was just a bad part of town in Richmond Va. where we stopped? It looked good to me....

We loaded back up and 14 hours later we were in Rochester and we haven't looked back since!

Since I had lived in Florida primarily all of my life I never faced a real winter with real white stuff falling from the sky. They call that snow!!!! It took a lot to get used to, shoveling, driving almost sideways while your vehicle slides down the road. But all in all, it could have been a lot worse.

I have met some great people in the "North" and am fortunate to be able to call a few of them friends. They say the grass is always greener on the other side but I went from green to white on the ground and I love it!

Loneliness Complex

Ever have those days or even periods of the day that you would like to just be alone. You know, when you are using the bathroom or if you just had a fight with a loved one or if you received bad news. I am sure everyone has had these times (especially going to the bathroom, you will understand why I bring this up in a moment). I am also sure that during those periods of times you have encountered people who you would really prefer to stay away from at least for the short time. Let me explain.....

Example 1: I own a pretty good sized pick-up truck. There are a good amount of parking lots that haven't been updated for the larger vehicles on the road so I tend to park further away from whatever store I am going to in order to make it easy on me when I leave. Note, this is totally different than the kids who have "pimped out" cars who feel the need to take up multiple spaces so their 1992 Neon doesn't get a ding in the door. Over 100 other open parking spaces and never fails....someone parks right next to me. I'm 3 miles away from the front door, what real reason do you have for parking your Honda Civic or other small car next to me? The whole point of me parking far out is so I don't have the congestion so I can maneuver my truck easily. Does that person say "awwww...that truck looks lonely, I think I will park next to it!" Come on people!

Example 2: The other day I was in a public bathroom at work that has 10 stalls and 6 urinals. I was the only one in the bathroom at the time and decided to use a stall to take care of what I needed to take care of, let me repeat, I was the only person in the bathroom at this point. I hear another person enter the bathroom, and he has 15 fixtures to choose from and he decides to use the one directly next to me! Now, don't get me wrong it's not like there wasn't a stall wall between us but come on. Who goes to the bathroom thinking "I would love to go to the bathroom right next to some other guy right now." I have seen this happen at urinals as well where a guy has 4 to choose from but chooses the one right next to someone else using one. Sorry to guys who do this, you don't need someone to hold your hand while going to the bathroom!

Example 3: Annoying Office Guy at work. This is the guy who goes to your desk and talks and talks and talks when you really don't want to talk to anyone. This is the guy who when you are at lunch will sit right next to you and crowd you so much that you gobble down your food and leave the lunch room as soon as you get done with your food. Myself and friends of mine have all had the conversation with Annoying Office Guy. Basically Annoying Office Guy talks, I reply with "uh huh" or "oh ok" while continuing to type on my keyboard and never looking at him. The guy still doesn't get the point!

What I am getting at is there are certain people that don't get the point. These people have what I call "The Loneliness Complex" if they see someone or something that is alone they have to save the day and keep them company! I am not a person who is typically rude unless I am in a really bad mood so I am not one to day "dude, go away" or "do you really have to use the stall right next to me?" I do truely believe that this world needs people like Kramer from Seinfeld. The man just blurts out what he thinks. Too many of this type of person wouldn't be the greatest thing but a few more in this world may get the point across to some people!

So next time you are thinking that something or someone looks really lonely, fight the urge and think that there may be a reason for the "loneliness!"

This is my first of hopefully many blogs. Feel free to leave comments!