Facebook? Me?? No Way!
I have always been opposed to the social networking sites. If I want to talk to my friends I can email or IM them. I have never needed a prefab website because I’ve had my own since the late ’90s. Not to mention all the problems with myspace. I remember when facebook first came out. It was limited to specific groups of people, university students, if I recall correctly. It was designed to only allow your friends in real life to see your profile, yada, yada, yada. It was better than myspace I thought, but if only your friends can see your profile then why can’t you just tell your friends what you’re up to? Why would anyone need a social networking site?
About a year ago I started having the feeling that I needed to get in touch with some old friends. See how they were doing, and reconnect. These weren’t just run of the mill friends. These were my best friends who I had lost contact with. Time and semi-frequent relocations tends to do that. There are two in particular who I have felt I needed to get into contact with. I started scouring the internet. Nothing. After a while I found one of them in a local newspaper, perhaps a BYU Idaho paper. His name was in the caption of a photo of a local band. He was playing the drums. That was the only thing I could find. I couldn’t even find his email address from BYU’s directory. The other friend has all but dissappeared.
A couple weeks ago a friend invited me to join facebook, it was one of those form letters, you know where everyone in that persons address book is invited; personal spam. I haven’t ever accepted any of her invitations before, why would I now? I ignored it for a few days, even deleted the email. It kept pestering me. I kept getting the feeling that I should do it. I even ran across an old journal entry of mine where I talked about how I wished I would always follow that little voice. Talk about prodding. I pretty much had to do it. So I found the email in the trash, and accepted the invitation.
During the application process that ensued I was asked about my entire life, the high schools I went to, where I went to college, where I work, where I live, where I go to church, the whole nine yards. Little did I know that it would use all this information to find my real life friends. It is a little scary how accurate it is. After I filled out the application it popped up a list of names and said you might know these people. The first person on the list was James Speirs, one of my best friends. One of the few people I’ve kept in touch with through a mission, college, and marriage. That’s cool I thought. The remainder of the entire first page was people I knew. Some of them are friends, some I wouldn’t be caught dead with, I guess facebook can’t know everything.
After choosing some friends I sent them a friendship invitation, where they accept that they know me and are my friends. After a few days I had a couple people ask to be my friends. A couple I didn’t know, it must be popular to have tons of ‘friends’, whether you know the people or not.
Anyway after a day or so it asked if I knew Nathan Hope, since we both are LDS and went to Temecula Valley High. Nate was one of my best friends when I lived there, in fact Nate was the one playing the drums in that band in Idaho. I’m glad I followed that nagging feeling. We’ve sent a few emails back and forth, and it’s nice to re-connect with someone you were good friends with and haven’t seen for 15 years.
As for Josh Corrington, I still haven’t found him. I drove by his dad’s house when I was working in the area, but it’s gone, and a subdivision now sits where their orchard was. Hopefully he’ll have that nagging feeling to join facebook.
In the mean time I’ll be wating for a message that says “you may be friends with Joshua Corrington”…
and for James to acknowledge that we’re friends.
Hiking with Kids
Last week while we were in Enterprise Tyler, Mainie and I took the girls hiking. It was an “easy” hike. No hiking is truly easy, at least not around here. But we had quite a good time. Here are the kids hiking in the only spot where they don’t have to hold someone’s hand.
Hannah climbing big rocks with a little help.
This is why you don’t look down. It looks like Hannah is standing on the edge of a cliff.
Victoria didn’t really like the rocks, they were taller than her, so I carried her up all the way. She wouldn’t even get out of my arms without a fight. It was all I could do to get her to stand still for the picture.
Here they are posing under the big tree at the top.
The Reward.
Funny Kids
On July 4th we went to Laurie’s family reunion early in the morning. After we got back the kids decided they wanted to take a nap…on the kitchen floor.
The next day Victoria went into her room wearing normal clothes. This is how she came out. She must have had some help from her sister.
Free Educational Materials
I don’t usually mention specific websites, at least not here. I stumbled on an awesome website a few minutes ago.
It is targeted to be an aid for ‘tonights homework.’ I think it is pretty cool, maybe that is just the nerd in me. Whenever I find a repository of so much information, neat information that is worth learning about, I get very excited. I think this may become one of my favorite websites. Check it out.
P.S. I really enjoy the engineering section.
Water-Wise Gardening
I receive an email full of advertisements from Wayside Gardens just about every day. Usually it only has plants for sale, but today it had some tips on water conservation in the garden that I thought were very insightful. It is mostly common sense, but I learned something new from it, so maybe it will be useful to others as well.
- Water in the morning so roots have time to take up moisture before it evaporates during the heat of the day.
- Install drip irrigation or soaker hoses to put water right at plants’ roots and prevent runoff.
- Frequently check irrigation systems, sprinkler heads, etc for leaks.
- Water deeply but infrequently, causing roots to reach down into the soil for moisture and strengthen growth.
- Use an organic mulch to keep roots moist and cool.
- Reuse household water as much as possible (e.g. water from rinsing and cooking pasta and vegetables, cleaning aquariums, and emptying coolers, vases, etc).
- Put up a rain gauge to help manage your water needs.
- Clean decks, patios, sidewalks, etc with a broom instead of a hose.
