Yeah, that’s me, the Facebook Jerk. Oh you know the type. You finally track them down, or otherwise come across them on Facebook, add them to your friends list, and wait for their approval. And wait. And wait. Then maybe they finally get around to adding you as well, and you send them a message saying how great it is to find them, how long its been since you‘ve talked to/seen each other, asking what’s new with them, telling them about yourself and what you‘ve been up to, and you wait for a reply. And wait. And wait. You maybe check out their profile, and see that they’ve logged in a few times to do this or that (add pics, edit info, join a group, etc.) since you’ve sent them a msg. and they still haven’t gotten around to replying to you. At this point you may just huff and say “Boy, what a jerk”. Yep, as I said at the beginning, that’s me, I’m a Facebook Jerk.

Now this isn’t because I want to be a jerk, or I because I don’t want to talk to these people, no, not at all. Quite the contrary actually; there’s so many people that I’ve found or have found me that I really want to talk to, and many I haven’t seen or heard from in years. Do you see those italics there? Years. Not just a year or two ago (although that can seem like a long time…), I’m talking Junior High! That’ll require more than just “Hi. How have you been, I’ve been fine”. This maybe wouldn’t be so bad, I do enjoy writing after all, but there’s just so many people I want to talk to, and its hard to find time for writing personal responses to each person (I don’t like to send generic group emails). I want the person I’m talking or writing to, to feel like I’m really talking to them, and not just on auto-response, so I usually put some thought into what I’m gonna write a person.

See, time is at a premium right now for me, there’s just not enough hours in the day to do everything I want to do, and often Facebook gets cut out of the equation because it just seems like such a daunting task, I just don’t know where to begin. I can’t even find the time to finish writing about me on my profile, or to post a more current picture, or to even just post more pictures in general of Tanya, Jade, and I. I have friends that I do see and talk to regularly, who are on Facebook all the time, asking me why I don’t add this or that, or to try this or that, or did you see/receive this or that I sent you. God there’s a lot to see and do on Facebook now. I log in every once in a while when I remember to. That’s another thing worth mentioning. I’ve been down with this whole internet fad since the beginning see, and over the years I have amassed a large list of sites that I regularly frequent. Sure, many have come and gone, but many carry on, and its always hard to add another to ‘the list’ with regularity at first, as you’re just used to your usual sites. Like how everyone has their favourite or regular TV shows they watch, right? But you usually tend to forget about something you don’t usually watch, even if you really wanted to. You just forget ‘cause its not in your usual habits or routine. Now all of that may not make any sense, but for a while I was always like “oh yeah, I totally forgot to check Facebook again” whenever I’d be logging off the ‘puter.

But that happened more often at first, as you can’t even make it through the day without hearing or reading about Facebook a lot of times these days, its everywhere. No, nowadays its even finding the time to log on, as there really hasn’t been enough for even that. For starters, I work all the time. I’m currently stuck working five days in a row, graveyards, with only two off (though it really only feels like one. If you’ve worked graves, I’m sure you know what I mean), and when I AM at home, I’m either spending time with Tanya, Jade and my family, or any of our friends who are always over, doing stuff around the house, running errands, or sleeping. There would be plenty of time to catch up on Facebook at work, but that site is blocked (along with many others….), so while I used to be able to go on Facebook @ work, I haven’t been able to for months now. I know that’s how a lot of you out there keep up with it; you do it at work. I even tried to get around things at work by using a proxy to access it, which was working for a couple days, but I got in a lot of trouble for that from head office! D’oh.

Another thing that has been impeding my access to the site was the fact that our (Tanya & I, that is) computer bit the dust. It still works, and we can access files on it, but not all programs are working properly, and we can’t get the sucker online. This was a problem of ours for a long time, but as I said in an earlier post, we’ve upgraded to a better computer finally, and that’s less of an issue. As is time, as it’s a notebook, and portable, so we can keep up from anywhere in the house, at any time of day. So yes, I have been neglecting Facebook for far too long now, and am letting the world know that I have one less excuse for continuing to do so, and that I intend on participating more in this social phenomenon than I have been. Like I said previously, I log in once in a while when I actually remember to and have a few minutes to spare, read a couple people’s questions they posted, check the mini-feed of friends activity and maybe click something that quickly catches my eye, approve even more friend requests, and log out, afraid of the task of replying to that many people, I don’t know where to begin. “ I have no time right now”, I think, “I’ll get to it later, or tomorrow”. But I haven’t been, and I really, really should, as these are people I really want to talk to, to get in touch with again, find out what they’ve been up to, brag to about my daughter, etc. To catch up with. I’m sure you know what I mean.

Back when MySpace first blew-up really big, I was on it, asking people if they had a MySpace page, and if not, then why, its so great, you should start one, you can do this and that, find people you know or haven‘t seen in a while, make new friends, put cool html on it, add photos, music, slideshows, have a blog, we can chat and message each other, blah ,blah, blah. It never really caught on with any of my friends that much, and I never really found a bunch of people I knew on there, plus I quickly grew tired of it (aside from the blog, which got me started/hooked on doing this now) and its overall teeny-bopper-ness. Other than the fact I blogged there, I pretty much gave up on MySpace overall. I was disappointed with it. All the spam, fake friend requests, posers, and more hyper-gaudy, flashing, over-the-top html than you can shake a stick at turned me off. Eventually I even gave up on keeping my blog there, I was done with MySpace, and started two others elsewhere, including this one your reading now.

When Facebook first went public, and blew-up bigger than anyone ever thought, at first I thought it would be just another MySpace. I joined up, but wasn’t expecting much from it, even letting the sparse design of the site convince me at first that it was inferior to MySpace, I mean heck, you can‘t even have a blog here, or edit your own html (which, honestly, is a total blessing, I soon came to realise). I left it alone for a while, and its popularity kept growing – I kept hearing about it online, in the news, from friends – so I decided to check back in. People I actually knew (including some that I had even tried to track down and find through MySpace, but to no avail) had found me and added me as friends. That’s when I realised that Facebook is everything I thought MySpace could be, everything I hoped to get out of MySpace, and more. This site is the real deal, and only keeps getting bigger and better (though that may be open to debate – its starting to get a little cluttered…), and I feel confident that this isn’t as flaky as MySpace seemed to me, that this is something that’s gonna last. Hell, actual adults use this site!

So, with all that said, my point is that I’m newly resolved to no longer be so much of a Facebook Jerk as I have in the past. I am going to go through my messages and friend list, and actually participate, no longer just watch from the sidelines. Don’t give up on me yet, starting with this post I’m out to be a former Facebook Jerk. Talk to you soon.

- Kimo

I just love Halloween, its easily my favourite ‘holiday’ of the year. I don’t care how old I am, I dress up, even if its just a little bit, every year. This year was no different, with some fake gory tattoos’ here & there, mixed with a little make-up/fake blood, finished with some yellow police tape draped across me. I told people I was a ‘crime scene’, and that’s what passed as my costume this year. Usually I try a little harder, but I’ve been busy lately and had to just throw this together because I wanted to dress up as something. Still, its way better than nothing, which is what I saw a lot of parents dressed up as when we took Jade trick or treating @ Kingsway this year. I was mostly excited to dress up for Jade this year, to say “look how crazy Mommy & Daddy look today”, which would also hopefully get her enthusiasm for staying in her costume up too. She was a little monkey, in a cute little suit we got from some friends of ours, and it had a ‘hat’ to wear for its ears. Jade hates wearing hats, so it was hardly on, but she still looked cute all dressed up. And even though she’ll only ever get to eat less than 10% of all the candy she got (she’s only 2 ½, after all), she had a blast, and it was awesome to watch her just be amazed that we could go into all these stores, hold out a plastic bag, and they give her candy. I wish I took a picture of her face when she realised what it was they dropped in her bag. “Holy crap! They just gave me those smarties Dad! For free. Did you see that?”, that’s the kind of look she had at first. At first, that is. After a while she was already looking down to the next store before they finished putting the candy in her bag, but she always said ‘thank you’ before waddling off, towing her precious bag of candy to the next bounty. Such a polite little monkey I have.

It was more fun than I thought we’d have trick or treating at the mall, as I’m more of a traditionalist door-to-door kind of guy. But Jade’s so little that this was a lot easier than going walking along in the cold with her, she’s tiny, so she moves slow. Plus, it was a lot warmer too, always a bonus. James (Tanya’s brother) and his little guy Phoenix came with us as well, as did Tanya’s Mom Rita, and our friend Blake. We all dressed up. Tanya did the same kind of thing I did, but more subtle, and it looked better. More real. James matched some make-up to this cool devil mask he got and it looked really good as a result. He totally scared some kid at the mall, not intentionally mind you, it just looked that good it person that he got a lot of stares from people. Blake had this fake full-arm tattoo sleeve-thing, and a blue Mohawk wig that he wore, and he told people that asked who he was that he was Izzy Sparks from Guitar Hero. Phoenix had a pretty damn cool Buzz Lightyear costume on, and was totally in his glory running around the mall as Buzz. He just totally loves that character, and the costume looked really good. We also met our friends Jim & Britney there as well, and their little guy Cody was all dressed up as Tigger, which is guaranteed to be cute, and he was. Here are some pictures of all of us, at home, and later at the mall (click ‘em to enlarge ‘em):

That guy in the Darth Vader costume was cool, his costume looked great, and he was a great sport. James asked him if he could take a picture with Phoenix, and he said sure, and we got a few pics. This started a trend though, and a few more people started kind of lining up to have their kids’ picture taken with Darth Vader. Poor guy, how could he say no to all those kids. I like that pic too, ’cause in Toy Story 2 Buzz’s Dad is a play on Luke/Vader from Star Wars, so that makes that a neat picture, dont’cha think? I don’t understand why so many adults don’t dress up for Halloween. It’s the only day of the year that’s its ok to wear anything you want, and you don’t take advantage of it? I don’t get it, I‘ll always dress up. You know what else is funny? I had to go to work afterwards (graveyard shift) wearing all that make-up and tattoos, and while that’s cool and I always dress up when I work on Halloween, it was fun going home on the LRT in the morning. Everyone would either just stare at me, or do a double take, and it was the look like “what the hell is with that guy”, like I was crazy or something. Hello?!? “Halloween was just yesterday, have you all forgotten already“, that’s what I was thinking as I continually got stared at like I was completely nuts on my way home. Oh well, it was pretty funny to see people’s faces all half asleep on their way to work suddenly perk up and do a double take when they saw me.

I really do wish there was a monthly day like Halloween, where you could wear whatever costume you liked to work, school, or wherever. I usually have a hard time deciding whether to be this or that, so that would be awesome to be able to do so many costumes a year. But once a year is all we get, so I say take advantage of it, no matter how old you are. I’m already thinking of what to dress both me & Jade up as next year. Halloween actually gets more fun when you have kids. Cool.

-Kimo