Andy Gapin

This is kind of a spur of the moment post, a quick reaction. My wife emailed me an article from No Meat Athlete a little while ago (I don’t read his site, but I’m familiar with the content since my wife talks about it sometimes and even has one of his shirts) and it got me thinking. If you’re not going to take a minute to click the link and read it, the article is a response to a conversation he had with the writer of ZEN Habits regarding living life without goals and how maybe that’s a better way to live.

The point (or at least a point) from ZEN Habits is that if something isn’t enjoyable at any point, why are you doing it? Is achieving a goal what’s really important if the process of getting there isn’t enjoyable? Shouldn’t you be trying to enjoy every moment of life instead? No Meat Athlete seems to have a hard time fully agreeing with this idea and I’m with him on it. His example is ultramarathons, but for me, it’s just plain old marathons (you know, the easy stuff). These long races are painful. Doing them physically hurts. A lot. And training for them isn’t really all that fun all the time either. I enjoy running, a lot, but there comes a certain point, usually by mile 10 or 12 where I’m not really having fun anymore. Sometimes, that point comes way earlier…like say mile 4 or 6, but for the most part, I enjoy running up to a certain point.

If pretty much no part of running a marathon is really fun, why do it? As No Meat Athlete points out, I don’t need to run excessively for the sake of exercising, I can run much less and supplement with other fun activities as well. So I don’t need to run long races and the fun parts of running could still exist in my life without having a goal and doing the hard stuff.

When I was running the Philly Marathon there was a spectator holding up a sign that  said “it doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.” Seeing that sign was a kind of weird moment. It just kind of clicked in a way for me, I knew exactly what was meant by that. I could really feel the sentiment behind that sign. That sentiment kind of carried itself with me through most of the race, even in the last few miles. I was in crazy amounts of pain and, by most definitions, I was not having fun, but yet, what I was doing was still fun to me as a whole and I knew it would be fun after crossing the finish line.

It was fun to know that I was pulling off something a relatively small portion of the population has done. It was fun to know that after just a little more pain, I’d have this for the rest of my life. No matter what, I could say “yup, I ran a marathon.” Nothing could take that away. And it’s not in an “I’m better than anyone who hasn’t run a marathon” kind of way. It was more in the vein of how we all have something that makes us stand out or some accomplishment that we can be proud of, and this was both of those things to me.

That was my first thought as I was reading, my justification for why I put myself through something that wasn’t fun for the majority of the time I was doing it. But there was a second thought that came after that about why most of us have to have goals.

If life was reduced to doing only the things that were the most fun at the moment, I wouldn’t leave the house. Ever.

As I’ve mentioned, I truly do enjoy running, but that doesn’t mean that when I come home from work the first thing I want to do is change and head out the door to run. Really, what I want to do is plop down on the couch, have food handed to me, watch TV, and at some point have sex with my wife (hey, we’re being honest here, right?). I don’t want to go run. On the weekends, when I don’t have plans, I want to move from the bed down to the couch and just watch TV. I don’t really want to go for a run.

If you’re keeping track, I really just want to hang out on the couch and watch TV. But the thing is, I don’t want to do that! After doing just that, I hate myself. I feel like I’ve wasted my time when I could have been doing something else. But doing something else that I enjoy would be more work, at least to start. That initial work, without some other motivation, a goal, if you will, isn’t fun. If we’re trying to maximize fun and only do things that are fun from start to finish, then anything that requires me to put on pants is going to lose to plopping down on the couch.

This gets us to the poing, having fun is the goal.

Much of the time, getting to the fun part isn’t fun itself, but without it, there wouldn’t be fun at all.

Like I said, I don’t want to go for a run when I get home, but once I’m out there and a mile in and all warmed up, I’m happy. I’m having fun and I’m glad that I didn’t take the immediate fun (i.e. the lazy fun). And on top of that, the fact that I chose the delayed fun for my run means that I’m working towards being a better runner and therefore having more fun running in the future.

I know I’ve been doing a lot of running talk here, but there are other examples. I hate having to book vacations. You can just ask my wife about booking our honeymoon, it was one of the worst and least fun experiences I’ve had in the last year. But, vacations–especially, that honeymoon–are fun! If I chose to only be doing things that are fun from start to finish, I wouldn’t have chosen to plan a vacation…and I certainly wouldn’t have chosen to deal with TSA and the airport.

I have fun going to shows and seeing bands, but I generally abhor having to drive to Philly or, even worse, trek into New York City to actually get to the show.

I have fun going through my photos and discovering new favorites or realizing that a photo I didn’t think much of six months ago is actually really awesome. But I don’t have fun post-processing photos and tagging and organizing them so I can find them later. If I didn’t put in the not fun work, I wouldn’t be able to have the fun later.

I had a blast running the ZEN House and putting on shows in college, just thinking about the shows I did is fun. But doing the work to make it all happen wasn’t fun most of the time. In fact, it usually sucked.

Most of the time, you need to do things that are not fun in order to have fun. You have to choose the less fun option up front to have more fun in the end.

Having the sense of accomplishment from completing a long race or making a new personal record is fun. Getting there may not have been fun, but without doing the unfun stuff, I couldn’t have had this fun.

Having fun is the goal and to have the most fun, you must have a goal.

I generally keep politics-based rants to a minimum here, but…

The results of yesterday’s election aren’t surprising, we all knew the outcome months ago. We knew the Democrats were going to get slammed, we knew many Americans were going to base their vote simply on voting whoever was the incumbant out with little to no other consideration made.

Regardless of what people are saying the reasons for all of this are, what it really comes down to is the fact that Democrats have no balls. Neither individually nor collectively.

It’s no secret that I’m extremely liberal, but the thing is, I think I can’t stand the Democrats more than I can’t stand the Republicans. I disagree with just about everything that the right says and does, but the problem with the left is they don’t stand up to the right. They don’t fight for what they feel is the best course of action for the country. While Bush was in office, the Republicans had control of Washington and they pushed through everything they wanted. They spent eight years screwing up this country so badly that two years wouldn’t have been enough for anyone to fix it. But the thing that the Democrats don’t understand is that the Republicans got things done. They were the wrong things, but they got done.

The joke of a Democrat-controlled Washington started immediately when they gained control and Pelosi and company refused to call Bush on his shit and refused to investigate his administration. The Republicans showed Clinton now mercy and pounced on one of the world’s greatest pleasures, a blowjob, yet Bush (and friends) lied about real shit, was responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent people, got us into this recession, etc., etc, and the Democrats just turned the other way. I would say this set the tone for the last two years, but it’s nothing new for the Democrats. No mercy should have been shown. An iron fist should have come down on the Bush Administration and the Democrats should have sent a clear message that they were out to undo the wrongs of the previous eight years, that they really were the “change” they campaigned on. They should have come on with guns blazing. They did none of this.

Democrats took complete control of Washington in 2008 and have done what? Unlike when the Republicans had control, they didn’t push through the legislation that needed to be done. Instead, they stayed in the middle and mostly kept the status quo (I’ll say right now that, beyond this sentence, I’m not even going to acknowledge the joke of a health care bill that finally got passed). They worried too much about the Republicans. They should have been pushing through everything that this country needed to get back on track.

In 2008, I was inspired and taken hold of by Obama. His speeches and campaign made me hopeful and showed that there was a bright future ahead of us. I was excited to cast my vote for him. I couldn’t wait for Election Day. Now it’s 2010 and Obama hasn’t done anything to keep that hope and “change” alive. Where is the man that inspired us all? Someone, please tell me.

The past two years have been spent trying to make friends and hanging out in the middle. Where has that gotten the Obama and the Democrats? Take a look at the results from yesterday’s election and you’ll see. It’s gotten a large amount of their party booted.

The Democrats had a chance to fix the wrongs and get us back on the right track, but they stagnated. Obama didn’t take a stance of doing what he knew needed to be done for the sake of this country, what he promised to do, even if it cost him a second term. He had a Congressional majority that he squandered. We spent eight years moving backwards and two years stagnating, now we’ll spend another two stagnating because of this.

As much as I disagree with the right, there’s something to learn from them…quit trying to make friends and just get shit done! Don’t be a spineless turd. Stand up for what you believe in and make it happen, those that oppose you aren’t going to work with you to help you achieve your goals. You can’t play nice in Washington and Republicans know that…because they’re the ones that aren’t playing nice.

The fact that the Tea Party actually got taken somewhat seriously is an embarrassment to the entire left. They spent the last year and half (or whatever it’s been since they started up) constantly on the attack. Did the Dems attack back? Nope. They watched as a movement based solely on pure insanity and misinformation gained media attention and grew in popularity. It’s a shame that finally a large group of Americans got organized and got somewhere, yet turn out to be a bunch of morons. But they’re morons that fought with flamethrowers while against a small group of aimless children armed with squirt-guns. The Dems should have been fighting back with fire-hoses. They should have made it abundantly clear what kinds of lies and misinformation the Tea Party was basing their entire existence on. They didn’t. They could have completely embarrassed the Tea Party. They didn’t.

In the end, what it comes down to is that while most American voters are easily manipulated, uninformed, and not very intelligent, the real blame is on Democrats for not having the balls to actually fight and make things happen. This isn’t a movie where the good guys win simply because they’re the good guys. Real life doesn’t work that way. If you want to win, you need to have a spine and a pair or two of balls. Figurative balls.

And we’re all going to suffer because of it.

It’s not a new revelation that most large American businesses just don’t get it, but over the course of the past few weeks, this has driven me almost to a breaking point. As friends and frequent readers of this site know, my fiancée and I are moving from our large, but only-slightly-better-than-college-quality apartment in wonderful Highland Park, NJ to a townhouse in Somerset, just a few miles away. The big move is happening this weekend, I’ll be picking up the keys tomorrow morning and, on Saturday, we’re renting a truck to move everything that I won’t be able to fit in a few car loads over the course of the day tomorrow.

With everything there is to do when moving, I figured that it would be a smart move to get a jump on setting up utilities and changing our address at the various institutions that (may) send snail mail or need our address for one reason or another. I thought getting a head start would mean that we could move in this weekend and not have to worry about anything beyond unpacking. Unfortunately, while I’ve ultimately been successful, this has turned out to be a rather torturous affair.

It might be a somewhat obvious statement to say that moving can be a pain in the ass, but the biggest pains have been solely (read: solely) caused by major American companies either not caring about their customers or not really thinking about their needs or sanity. Maybe this is a passive thing. Maybe these companies are just too large for customer complaints to make it anywhere that would actually cause a meaningful change to their practices. Maybe these companies know that it doesn’t matter because we have no choice but to deal with it because there either is no competition or the competition is just as bad. Maybe these companies know that Americans are generally extremely complacent when getting screwed by large companies and we do little more than complain on the internet about it (see: what you’re reading right now). Or maybe, these large companies really just don’t get it and don’t understand their customers at all. I don’t really know, but I’d venture to say that elements of each of these play a part. In most cases, greed probably plays a large part as to why these companies don’t put forth a serious effort to make their customers actually like them, but much of what I’ve encountered through this can’t even be explained by the standard corporate greed.

Now, I’d like to take some time to actually describe just a bit of the pain I’ve gone though.

The first issue was Comcast. I’ve been a Cablevision customer for the last five years so I had to open a brand new account with Comcast. After finding out that after six months we’d be paying more than we are now for the same service, I was already not very happy, but there wasn’t much choice in the matter, FiOS isn’t available and there’s no way I’m doing satellite/DSL. I finally accepted this and tried to actually set up the account and schedule the installation. The fiancée is taking online classes currently so it’s a somewhat high priority for us that we have as short of a gap in internet access as possible. Plus, I’m a nerd, I pretty much require it.

I initially tried setting things up online, but the site was not being very helpful so I attempted a call (it takes a lot for me to actually use a phone for the purpose of calling). No luck, their customer service is only open during regular business hours. That works great for those of us that work 8:30-5:30 during the week. It’s not easy to step away from my desk for long periods of time just to make a phone call to the cable company. I eventually found some time to call on a day when I had to shift my hours back to provide some extra developer coverage post-release. Thinking that I’d be able to get everything scheduled and set up, I again picked up my phone and called. Nope, couldn’t be set up yet. The previous tenants hadn’t ended their service yet and it didn’t matter that I had a friggin’ signed lease for the place starting on the first of November. Comcast wouldn’t do ANYTHING until the previous tenants ended their service. They wouldn’t even at least create the account and allow me to tentatively schedule installation. It was a waste of my time to even call, apparently.

So I waited a little while and then tried again last week. This time I actually made it further on their website, but when trying to finalize, I was taken to a chat session with a representative. I have no idea why, but it happened. I spent a while chatting with this person giving them my information and working everything out with them. It seemed like I’d actually be able to make some progress and the previous people had told Comcast they were closing their account. Excellent. But if only it were that simple. After a while, the representative I spoke with told me that he wasn’t in the sales department so he had to transfer me to a new person…in the chat, mind you. So a new person hops on and I had to reconfirm everything I already provided. Annoying. Then, Comcast had the balls to actually have this person ask me for my social security number. Really?!? Really? I’m going to just provide that in a chat window to someone? Nope. I said that I didn’t feel comfortable so I was asked to provide my driver’s license number instead. Not as bad.

Eventually, I got everything sorted out and actually got a decent installation time. But this took multiple tries and hours of my time to accomplish. Not cool, Comcast. I’ll leave this one here and not even get into the ridiculous things that Comcast charges for.

Okay, next issue, American Water. According to them, our address doesn’t even exist. Awesome. Comcast and PSE&G think that it exists and I can say with a fair amount of certainty (you know, because I’ve actually been INSIDE of it) that it’s there, right where I’m trying to tell them it is. This issue is still unresolved. I tried first on their site and then had to call. While the woman on the phone was extremely friendly when I called, it was a little difficult to get off the phone with her after she said about a dozen times that she shouldn’t find it. But how can they not find it? Did no one ever pay for the water there before?

When setting up our account with PSE&G, I filled out their form online and received and email confirmation saying that I would receive another email within 5 days. Yup, never got that. So I gave them a call today and found out that everything was in order on their end. Yeah, thanks, that email I was supposed to get would have saved me the call during my lunch break.

The rest centers mostly around just trying to change my address with various companies. I decided that this would also be a perfect time to update my passwords with newer, more secure ones. Not that my old passwords were terrible, but I’ve been meaning to use more secure ones that are unique for every site. So far the password changing process hasn’t been too bad, except at financial institutions. I’ve learned over the past few days that American financial institutions have the worst password policies on the internet. Almost none of them let me choose the password I wanted. They either don’t allow special characters at all or only allow the use of characters from a small list of three or four of them. Let’s just think about that for a second, the sites that you probably need the most secure passwords for do not allow passwords that are considered secure at all by today’s standards. What the what? Really? Every other site I’ve updated so far has allowed me to enter a nice and secure password. But not Citibank, Capital One, PNC, ING, AMEX, Fidelity, or Chase. Nope. I guess they hate security. Somehow, they don’t realize that asking customers to answer the security questions is a joke. Most of these questions could be answered by close friend or even through a few Google searches about the person.

Citibank, whom I’m still paying back a student loan to, wouldn’t even let me change my address via the website. I mean, the form was there, but it didn’t work. For some reason, the form required that I put something on the second address line. I had nothing, I really had no idea what they hell the wanted from me so I just put a period. When I hit submit, I got an error that I had filled in my social security number wrong. WHAT?! Social security number wasn’t even a field on that form! I couldn’t have entered it even if I wanted to. So I was stuck. I filled out the contact form with the issue, but of course that form was a mess too. The form wouldn’t allow me to enter any apostrophes or quotations marks (I tried to actually quote the error I received in an attempt to help their developers) in the message. Yup, no proper contractions! Proper grammar be damned!

And lastly, for this rant at least, Horizon Blue Cross and Blue Shield. They don’t want you to change your address…ever. This just can’t be done via their website–and by the way, their website only works with Internet Explorer and even then, it’s not even usable, they should be embarrassed. They don’t tell you that you can’t change your address either. Instead, you need to hunt around their site like a savage. You can change all kinds of info, including your doctor, but not your address. I tried clicking all over and didn’t see anything. Eventually, I clicked to send new ID cards thinking that maybe there would be a form there. I was presented with my current address and asked if this was current. AH-HA! I found it! Nope, just kidding! I clicked to modify it and was provided with a message stating that I would have to call to do that. So, I called. That was a joke too. No where in their voice menus were any options that alluded to allowing me to update my information with them. Eventually, I just got myself to a representative and had them change my address, but that apparently requires me to be on hold for ten minutes while they process it. That doesn’t make much sense. How does changing my address take ten minutes?

I wish that I could say this got long because I included everything ridiculous that I’ve dealt with in the past couple of weeks, but it doesn’t. These are just the highlights. And they all simply come down to companies not giving a shit. If these companies cared, I wouldn’t have had to talk to a single person, which mind you requires me to step away from my desk at work since evening hours almost never exist. I should have been able to accomplish all of this quickly online. The websites should be usable and provide the ability for people to do what they need, easily and securely. I should be able to use a long password with upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters. I should be able to change my address without much hassle. It doesn’t take much of a thought process to understand that if someone is changing their address, it’s likely that they’re doing so because they are moving and therefore, not only have dozens of other places to change their address, but lots of other crap that needs to get done for the move. Make this easier for me, not harder!

It’s almost 2011, there is zero excuse to not have a very well laid out website that works and allows users to do almost anything a customer service rep can do for them over the phone. It’s not hard. I would know, I make this stuff for a living. Hire developers that can think like users when designing the layout and functionality. At the very least, allow me to do basic things.

Companies don’t do this because they don’t care…and they don’t even want to pretend like they care.

Now there’s no need to comment asking if I’m surprised or anything like that. I’m not. I expected a fair amount of this, but this has been a lot to deal with in a very short period of time and I’ve just about reached my breaking point for it.

I hate you. You are a terrible bank. My fiance and I use you for our joint account, but we are leaving you. This weekend, we will be opening a new account at a new bank and once we get everything switched over, we’re closing our account with you and we will never look back.

I wish that I could say that a slow and clumsy website–it took us days just to get both of us set up with logins that actually worked–and transfers that seem to take forever were the only reasons why I hate you, but I can’t. What put me over the edge is the fact that you call me constantly with marketing calls. Your tenacity is almost impressive, actually. This has been going on for over six months now. At least twice a week.

What really gets me about these calls is that they come from numbers all over the country. Luckily, I used my Google Voice number instead of my cell number so it is easy to block numbers, but the myriad of numbers from different area codes around the country that you use is astounding. And now the most recent area codes that you’ve moved on to are local to me. The interesting thing here is that when I block one of your phone numbers, you get a message saying that my number is not in service, but you are not deterred, you see right through this and, instead of removing the my number from your listed under the impression that the number is no longer valid, you just change the number that you call from. Very clever, Bank of America. Very clever.

When I don’t answer your calls, which is almost always the case as I don’t answer numbers I don’t know, you don’t even leave a real message. Many times, it’s just a blank two-second message. Other times, there’s the tail end of a recording. If I try to call this number back, it either beeps a few times and then hangs up on me, does not answer at all, or takes me to a voice menu that hangs up on me no matter which option I select. I don’t even get what you’re going for here. If you’re trying to market something to me, don’t you want me to be able to get back to you? This must be some trick you’ve devised that is just too complex for me to understand.

At this point, you might be wondering how I actually know that it’s you calling me since you don’t leave me messages and I don’t usually answer. Well, I have answered a few times. Each time, I am first taken to a recording and then I eventually get connected to a kind representative from your company that asks to speak with me. Once I tell her that she is speaking with the person she’s looking for, me, she starts an extremely long speech about whatever it is that you’re trying sell me. Seriously, I don’t even know. She kept going for so long that I couldn’t pay attention anymore. She wouldn’t stop either. It was a waste of time for all parties involved. And each time, at the end of the speech, I kindly said that I was not interested and would like to be removed from the calling list. I also stated that the number being called is a cell phone. This is only kind of a lie, as my Google Voice number only forwards to my cell. Every time, the representative tells me that she will have my number removed, but that it could take 30 days. First of all, I know that it doesn’t really take 30 days to remove a number from a calling list. It takes a couple clicks in a computer that’s that. Second of all, I was never removed from any list. This has been going on for well over six months and I still get calls.

What will it take, Bank of America?! Honestly, leave me alone. It is these calls that are driving me away from your bank. I will never do business with you again and I will also share this story with anyone that will listen. I wish that I had listened to the others that have hated on you for all kinds of other reasons.

Screw you.

I think this is something that has always bothered me, but I can’t stand when people dismiss country music as being automatically bad. When I hear people say things like “I listen to everything except for country,” I have to hold back smacking them across the face. No one should take this personally and I’ll be fair and say that I know most people don’t realize what they’re saying and don’t mean anything by it, but take a moment and think about this.

You don’t listen to “everything” except for country. I guarantee that there are tons of other genres and sub-genres that you aren’t into. Should I be able to assume that you like grindcore or Afro-Cuban music or traditional music from India? I’m going to go with no. What you mean is that you listen to most radio friendly rock and pop music. Maybe a little bit of the hip-hop, R&B, and dance stuff that gets played in the bars and clubs that are frequented by the 20-somethings of this country.

That’s not really the point of this though, I want to talk specifically about country music being singled out as the one genre that people feel they must openly and explicitly exclude. Maybe I just have a soft spot in my heart for country music because I spent a lot my childhood with my grandparents and they exclusively listened to country music causing me to develop a bit of a taste for it. Or maybe I just naturally like a little twang in my tunes. Either way, hating on country music doesn’t make you seem hip or cool. All I hear is that you are predisposed to hating things that you don’t know much about or that you haven’t taken the time to realize just how much country music has done for you. Yes, the mainstream country scene, as a whole, blows. There are very few good artists–I do enjoy me some Dixie Chicks–in the mainstream, I’m not ever going to deny that. However, there is an amazing amount of great stuff out there if you look beyond the mainstream. Not all country music is about pickup trucks and sung by hillbillies and ignorant southerners with annoying accents. It’s not just Billy Ray Cyrus, Garth Brooks, and Dolly Parton.

There are lot of indie and not-so-indie bands that are basically country, country-rock,  southern rock, or at least heavily country influenced. Even a lot of respected indie-rock, singer/songwriter, and folk music is very close to being nothing more than country music. Much of it is only not categorized as country because it originated from the indie-underground and not Nashville. There are good punk bands that combine elements of country and southern rock into their music. And let’s not leave out all of the overlap that can exist between country and folk, a genre which is rarely crapped on.

Hell, The Beatles, yes, the band that was extremely important either directly or indirectly to pretty much all rock based music to come since their existence, were into country music and very influenced by it. And they in turn went on to be very important to the country-rock scene. I’m not saying that because a great band liked something you should too, but I am going to say that if a band very few people are going to openly hate on had such strong country ties, maybe it’s time to ease up on the country hating and give it a fair shot.

I’m not asking anyone to embrace twang and throaty vocals in their music. All I’m asking is that people ease up on the hate and realize what they’re saying. Country music has been very influential to many, many bands and other types of music. I can guarantee that without country music, your own music collection would be vastly different. This is an extremely small list that I just pulled off the top of my head without even thinking about it, but here are just a few bands that are either country or one of its sub-genres, southern-rock, full of country elements and influence, or that straight up wouldn’t even exist without country music. They may not all sound like what you think of when you hear the term country music, but trust me, country music is pretty important to all of them

I’m probably preaching to the choir here, but that’s a pretty impressive list, don’t you think? Sure I sneaked a few bands on there that you probably haven’t heard of, but you should check them out! I may not like every artist on that list, but I can say that I love at least half of them and like at least half of what’s left after that. And the ones I don’t like are pretty big names and probably well liked by many of the same people that “listen to everything except country.”

Again, all I’m saying is ease up on the hate and realize what you’re saying. Country music has done a lot for you and you don’t need to listen to the mainstream stuff if that’s not your thing. You don’t even have to listen to or like any of it. You don’t have to say you like it. Just quit singling it out like it’s the plague.

My iPhone seems to be a little confused this morning about which way to be turning. Or maybe it’s trying to play a lame April Fool’s Day joke on me. As you can see from the conversation that’s happening via text, I was already a little confused otherwise I would have jumped all over the classic Mallrats reference. For anyone that may be wondering, the topmost message in the left screenshot is indeed a reply to a random Flight Of The Conchords reference I sent.

But speaking of April Fool’s Day, I hate it. This tends to come as a shock to my friends when I tell them, but I just find it annoying. I feel like I spend the entire day being blamed for pranks pulled by other people. I come off as the kind of guy that would be all about pulling pranks and playing jokes on others and, to a degree, I am. So this makes me the first person that people blame for pranks…every day of the year. And sometimes, it is me. But it’s so cliché and expected today. Why would I bother? My pranks usually fall into one of the following groups: making someone believe something ridiculous about myself or that I did/didn’t say/do something, sending horrible links to people disguised using TinyURL that are not Rickrolls, or bigger ones that tend to require a lot more effort and planning. The first two I’ll do any day of the year if the opportunity arises and for the third one, if I’m putting a lot of effort, I want to go for maximum shock and do it on a random day instead of April Fool’s.

So everyone should go and have fun today, but I’ll sit this one out. I won’t be installing the blue screen of death screensaver, freezing anyone’s office supplies into giant blocks of ice, filling someone’s office cube with packaging peanuts, installing software that randomly inserts keystrokes here and there, or partaking in any other office or non-office related pranks.

And while I’ve already been accused of using this as a way to boost a prank later in the day, it is not. I promise.

I’m pretty sure that tonight’s episode of How I Met Your Mother was one of the best episodes of any TV show I’ve ever seen in my life. Definitely in the top 10. I literally fell off my couch laughing when Lily planted the Creed CD in Ted’s college girlfriend’s dorm room. And I’m almost 100% sure that I would consider a girl owning a Creed CD to be proper grounds for ending the relationship as well.

Speaking of ending relationships for silly reasons–alright, owning a Creed CD is NOT a silly reason, but I swear I’m about to go into some silly stuff–I met a rather cute girl on Saturday at the mustache party/show that I attended. No big deal really, that’s not the point of this post. The point is that when I got home, I immediately did exactly what I hate, I went on Facebook and looked her up. Her profile permissions allowed me to see everything. I’m not if it’s because we went to the same college or if it’s because we know a couple of the same people (which is what made it so easy to find her) or if it’s just because she has them set to allow anyone to see anything, but it was all there.

It’s probably pretty clear that I am an internet nerd and wouldn’t know what to do without the internet,¹ but this is one of the ways that I think the internet has ruined things. In reality, things may not be ruined, just changed, but for the sake of the next few minutes of your life, let’s assume that they are indeed ruined beyond any possible repair and, as a species, we’re all screwed. Being just short of 26, I’m in that age range that is just young enough to have gone through most of high school and college with the internet, but is still old enough to remember life before the internet. So keep in mind that that’s where I’m coming from with this.

My last four relationships cover my life back until I was 18.  If you add up all the time in between them and since my last relationship ended it’s only about ten months and I was friends with all four of these girls prior to dating them so I can’t say that I have a lot of experience in getting to know a girl in the context of trying to start a relationship. It’s not completely foreign to me, that time in between those relationships wasn’t spent avoiding the ladies, but still there isn’t a lot of experience there. However, what I do know from these ten months and from what I remember from high school is that you need to get to know someone over time, directly, and in an organic way. The internet has kind of ruined this idea. Maybe not for everyone, but definitely for people like me that have no self-control to not access easily available information.

You can get to know a ton about someone in just a few minutes now. Log onto MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, their blog, etc and it’s all right there. There is so much information about people out there now and it’s so easy to find, but it even goes beyond just things that people put up themselves, you also see what kind of people they are friends with and the kind of interactions that they have with each other. And you have no real context for this stuff at all. None. It’s just there to speak for itself. You don’t know the inside jokes or the dynamics of these friendships. You can only take them at face value and that’s usually not a very good thing at all.

So now, rather than getting to know someone through conversation and spending time together, you found out everything about them in roughly five minutes. For some, this may not be a big deal, but for me, it’s a horrible thing. I don’t want to get to know anyone in this manner and I feel the same about people getting to know me so I keep most of my profiles on sites private except to those that I’m friends with in real life (IRL OMG!!). Twitter and this blog are two exceptions, but I think there is good reason there that doesn’t need to be explained. Anyway (how many times have I used this word?), I’m the kind of person that will easily see one or two things that are minor turn offs and lose interest right then and there. They won’t even be big things at all, such as owning a Creed CD (or Uggs), they’ll be little silly things that I wouldn’t even care about if I just found out about them in a more organic matter. Nevermind the fact that most of them can probably be explained away very simply. But you present it all to me at once like this and it’s a whole different story. They become dealbreakers.

I’m sure that many people don’t have this problem at all, but I have no self-control to not look people up online…hmm…that sounds like I stalk people. Yikes! Is it stalking if you don’t really pry beyond a few socially accepted websites? I guess that’s a question for another time, but the point here is that I have no self-control and I’m easily turned off by little things so the internet has ruined getting to know new people outside of work or any social circles that I’m already a part of.

Let’s go back up to the beginning of this rant and get back to the girl in question, at the party I thought she seemed pretty awesome. We had great a conversation throughout the night and I was getting a decent vibe, but then when I looked at her Facebook I found a few little tiny things that made me lose some interest. Again, things that wouldn’t bother me in the least if I found out about them over the course of time, but that’s not how I found out about them. This brings us up to where I stand right now. I’m going to try to ignore these things and move past them, but it’s hard for me to ignore that this is the world we live in now. I take very good advantage of all of the great things about there being all of this information at our fingertips, but, at the same time, I can’t turn away from how scary the effects that it is having on social interaction are. I think that once people already know each other a bit, technology and social media can be great in helping continue that relationship, but in the early stages…eek!

¹That’s right, bitches! I included a footnote! Recognize! Just before I typed this up, I was going through Google Reader to try and get rid of a few subscriptions to sites that I lost interest in and when I was done, I still had 172 sites in there. This isn’t the first time I’ve go through and purged stuff either. This is ridiculous though. I get like a solid 500-600 new articles in there every day. It’s almost a full time job to keep up.

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

Last night, I was out at a bar in the city with a few friends and a discussion came up regarding the sexuality of a guy on the other side of the bar. He was pretty muscular and talking to a girl, but exploded with the vibe of not quite being ready to admit the truth to himself just yet. After a short while, we decided that the only way to find out was to send someone over to walk by and see if he checked them out.

None of us are really sure why we cared so much. It didn’t matter at all. We just needed an answer at this point.

Somehow, I was selected as the guy to do the walk by. The girl we sent, nothing. No acknowledgement whatsoever. But me, yeah, he looked me all up and down. It was quite flattering actually. But I couldn’t help feeling a little dirty afterwards. Here I was, a relatively straight man, trying to get a guy to check him out solely to prove a point. I almost felt bad, like I was duping him or something. I felt like one of those girls that go out on Friday and Saturday nights with the intention of being hit on by guys and being bought drinks all night. Then at the end of the night, they just go home to their boyfriends having had no intention of ever actually speaking to any of those guys again.

This got me thinking about two things…

One, why do gay guys seem to be way more into me than girls are? This is not even close to being the first time that I’ve received interest from a guy. Do I give off a vibe that I’m into men or something? I realize that I’m not the most masculine dude out there, but do I come across as being that gay?

And two, I think it’s sad when people have trouble just coming out about who they are. I have a couple friends that I think are afraid to come out of the closet. I feel really bad for them. I don’t want to make them uncomfortable, but at the same time, I just want to scream at them to be who they are and be happy about it. Quit trying to hold it in!

I’ve been holding this rant back for a while now. I made this same point via email a few weeks ago and wasn’t going to post it here, but I think I’ve finally had enough and I want to say something. It’s a little late now to make a difference, but it’s not like anyone really reads this thing anyway.

I think that it’s extremely important to vote and get involved in your government, but I don’t think there is much that irks me more than everyone going nuts with the push to get people to vote every presidential election. Every four years, our country goes into this huge frenzy to get people registered to vote and get them to go out to the polls on election day. There are people practically accosting you out in public, friends telling you to go vote, the internet telling you to go out and vote, etc. It’s everywhere. This is not where the focus should be.

Don’t get me wrong, I always make sure that I get out and vote and I hope that you do too. It’s very important to cast your vote, but there something that is even more important… Getting educated on the issues and the candidates!

It’s not your civic duty to vote, it’s your civic duty to get informed and learn about what you’re voting on. This is where the focus should be and this is where the push should be. We can’t just tell people to vote and then leave it at that. People need to be informed. Get out there and learn something. I’m not just talking about turning on the evening news or reading a few major news sources online. Dig deeper! Find some alternative news outlets. Find some left-leaning ones. Find some right-leaning ones. Find some that claim to be unbiased. Find everything you can! Explore! There’s a lot of information out there. Sure, there’s a lot of bullshit, but the deeper you dig and the more effort you put in, the more truth you will find. It’s out there (the X-Files reference was unintentional). I promise!

I really think that just getting educated alone will be enough to get most people to vote and negate the need for us to push people to vote in the first place. So if there is instead a push on getting informed, they will still vote, but they will also actually know what they’re voting on.

And honestly, if you dig into the issues and the candidates and you really don’t feel one way or the other, I think it’s alright to sit it out. Voting simply for the sake of voting is probably responsible for some of what is wrong with this country and it’s completely irresponsible. Keep in mind, that you really aren’t in a position to complain if you sit it out, but why would you want to influence an election that many people may care about if you don’t care as well.

The other thing that bothers me is that so much emphasis is put on the presidential election, but other elections coast by with little fanfare. These are important too! Local, state, Senate, and House elections affect us a lot too! And not only do these representatives and propositions affect us, but this is also where our presidential candidates’ political careers start out. So you can have a say early on too. I realize that the information for these elections isn’t always as convenient to get too, but that’s where getting informed and staying informed comes into play.

All that being said, I hope that you voted today and more than that, I hope that you really feel like who you voted for is going to make a difference and lead us in the direction and that that belief was based on actual information and not your friends or some guy on the street.

PS: No one get me started on the flaws in our voting system and the equipment used.