Empire Avenue

OK, I am annoyed right now. Earlier today I logged into EA, checked my social graph and went about my business. Just tried to go back on my lunch and found my account has been deleted. I'm not sure what I did or what I clicked, but unless someone decided to hack into my account, I must have hit something. I did modify some privacy settings in facebook this AM, but, I was under the impression that EA was a separate entity. Now I am not so sure.

It would appear that my whole account is now gone. And I'm not going to spend the time bringing it back. So, if we connected on EA along the way, I'm sorry for this error. If Empire Avenue can figure out how to salvage my account, then I'll continue, but since my primary peer groups never connected there, this might actually end up being a blessing in disguise.

Oh what a tangled web we are weaving.... this is certainly a wake-up call for what is connected where.

Facebook

So, yesterday facebook changed everything again. Annoying. Most of my friends reacted negatively too. Couldn't find things I normally scanned in the morning, lost the train of the feed on several occasions etc.

Interestingly my college aged son wondered what the big deal was. He has the updated feed but didn't care about it. My high school daughter didn't even notice, but then again she only uses FB on a mobile device.

Which got me to thinking. Why was I so annoyed and they so unaffected? My guess would be that they share everything with their friends. I don't.

I started sorting into two main groups over a year ago, people I actually know and acquaintances. The acquaintances got sorted into a group that locked them out of the details of my life. We could message one another, we can play games together, they can invite me to their events, but they couldn't see the pictures of my kids. I also used the lists option to sort my feed, my preferred method was to view status updates and I hid the feeds of many of the games, groups I was asked to like etc. When it was time to play Cafe World or Mafia Wars (yes, I got sucked into those games by my kids and I still play) I could sort the feed for game updates and send gifts etc. I was very happy.

Now, facebook has sorted all my friends for me and the feed lists option appears to be gone. If I click the FB games list, I don't see my friends there who play games with me, only the acquaintances. I have to click several places now to see the info that used to be at my fingertips. From a work perspective, I am concerned that the pages I promote will get buried... that we won't be "top news" cause we publish in waves of info and our fans might not see the info we do share.

This afternoon there was a press conference explaining why all of this is so great. Honestly, it just feels like a targeted advertising demographic grab. If I am forced to sort all of my friends into all the categories in which I hold them, Facebook learns a little bit more about my likes. And someday the ads will be more personalized. Honestly, if I wanted to sort everyone into groups I could use google plus :)

So, if you are as fed up with facebook as I am, come find me on google plus. I've already got the circles started over there. I won't leave facebook, too many friends and family there, but I don't think I'll spend the time curating my peeps the way FB wants. I'll just figure out how to view the basics and play the games. And continue to try to keep my private life private.

Crash!

So, two weeks ago my netbook started acting funny... needed some updates but all seemed OK. Until the day it wiped itself back to factory settings, all by itself. And then wouldn't accept any more updates and then it forgot it was a computer and became just a pretty shell of itself.
After a bit of swearing, cause my daughter had just finished a paper for her summer class on it, we launched the home computer and she dictated her paper while I typed. Got the whole thing recreated in about two hours, printed it and all seemed fine.

Until the next morning when the desktop started acting funny. And needed some updates and started losing the connection to the monitor etc. Tried a new video card but it's the motherboard. And so, the desktop is now dead.

Interestingly, both computers were purchased at the same time and set up on the same day. Makes me seriously wonder if I'm dealing with some planned obsolescence here. Just too weird that they both died within days of each other.

Since I believe the hard drive to still be OK on the desktop, I'm not freaking out as much as one might think. We do regular back-up of the data on it so even if it really did die, I have photos etc. Will have lost some video, but I have memories. We're just computerless at home right now. Which feels really weird.

The bright spot in this whole fiasco: well there are a few.

• First, because I bought extended warranties (over the objection of those who shall remain nameless) both computers are still covered. So they get fixed or I get new ones. Will just take a few weeks to sort that out.
• Second, my son is now willing to get a external hard drive to save his work at college. Might save him some of the pain his sister experienced.
• Finally, this happened before real school started, so we have time to get up and running again by September. And we're playing board games most nights now since we can't goof off online. Improved family time is the best ending of all.

Failed Tasks

So, I've been asked to complete a task at work... not going to go into the details of it but it involves essentially removing access from a social media platform we will no longer support. Went online, read the instructions, followed them to the letter and nothing. The final button did nothing.

OK, try it again, maybe I missed a step? Nope.

OK, maybe the browsers I updated won't play nice with this site anymore, so I go get an earlier version to try that. Nope.

Maybe the help forums have an answer, Nope.

Then it became at least a 30-minute search for the contact button. Finally found it, sent a message and waited.

It took 24 hours for a response and then I got new instructions. None of which are online in the "how to delete an account" or "help deleting your account" forums. I'm not sure why that would be, because now they have to talk to anyone who is serious about removing an account, but I'm not the manager of that group. So, I followed those instructions and am now waiting again.

This is the second time I've had issues recently with removing a profile... my other headache was with a website I created for a class on a free server. When I went to delete my profile I was told that I cannot do that, but I could delete my site and never return and eventually I'll be placed in their dead account file. I guess I understand keeping content for liability purposes, but making it hard to clean up my internet life? I'm not sure I'm happy about that. I don't like leaving accounts with emails and passwords out in the ether.

Crossing my fingers that the first group clears the account for me and I can move on... but this will make me think twice about trying new social media sites...

Blogger issues

So, last week, blogger crashed. People freaked out for a few days but it came back. I didn't lose any content and I haven't met anyone who did.

Technology is changing so much... I used to print photos, now I save on a computer... will I be able to access them in the future? I blog into the cloud...what happens when that server crashes or the company supporting it can't pay their bills...

Where are the archives of the future going to be? They say nothing is ever deleted that is published online... but I wonder how true that is. Only time (and resources) will tell.

Cloud Fails

So today, the unofficial day Skynet tried to terminate the human race (revised Terminator time line courtesy of the Sarah Connor Chronicles) Amazon's cloud failed. I find that somewhat funny.

I'm not in the cloud quite yet...here is a list of posts about it: (http://blog.hootsuite.com/notes-on-todays-outage/) I use twitter not hootsuite (although I like Social Oomph), I don't like foursquare(see my previous post on privacy and robberies) and I'm not in the other affected tools. I think Amazon has a great business model (scale up as you get bigger) but its failure today shows the weaknesses inherent in these tools.

I agree that the times are changing; I use twitter more than email, I use facebook more than the phone, I text to my kids instead of call them. But, I still remain firmly grounded with the understanding that stuff breaks, I need to know the basic tools and a sharpened pencil can still be useful.