The Facebook Experiment Part II...

Well, it came and went. As I expected, the turnout of Facebook birthday messages was significantly smaller than in past years. I did however, receive four messages and none of them were along the simple lines of "Happy birthday" or "hope it's a good one". 

The first was from an old high school friend who happened to share the same birthday with me and the only Facebook contact we have with each other is on our birthday. The tradition continued.

The second one came from a friend here at Trent who did ask me when my birthday was, but after hearing about my Facebook experiment she elected to post anyways, which was nice of her. 

The last two came from friends of mine in Winnipeg. Whether they knew it was my birthday or they simply saw the messages from the others is tough to say. I'll hope for the former. Either way, it was still very nice of them to write to me, especially since each had a nice little message.

I did also receive a few nice emails from close friends and some phone calls, which was also quite nice.

Thank you everyone.

Trent's poor computers...

Be warned, this is primarily a frustrated rant.

This morning an assignment was due in one of my classes. It is worth 20% of my mark, although the course is only a half-course, so it's nothing huge. However, it was supposed to be over 4000 words long. That, along with its being a science course, made it a particularly arduous assignment. It was long, boring and not worth as much as the time put into it.

In my typical fashion it wasn't completed until fairly late the night before, which is OK with me. I am a little lazy and haven't bought new ink for my printer in ages and I instead use the printers at Trent to print off the assignments beforehand. It's a little annoying, but it always works. This morning, however, it didn't.

I took the early bus to give myself some leeway before class, especially since the computers have a tendency to take a little while to load up. I had roughly 30 minutes before class. You would think this would be well enough time to turn on a computer and print a paper off.

The computers at Trent are notorious for taking long to boot up, but the mornings are especially bad because the computers have been shut down all night. I'm guessing (I'm not a computer whiz) that as the computers are used throughout the day, they seem to 'warm up', like a car, and take a much shorter time to load up later in the day.

The computer finally loaded up with ten minutes left for class. Waiting for twenty minutes to have a computer load up is painful, especially in this day and age. I finalized some of the files and sent them to the printer, although the second file froze as it was loading (I imagine the computer was still feeling a tad slow at that point).

I then received an error message telling me that the print job didn't work. As I discovered a few minutes later, the printer wasn't connected to my computer somehow and the printer itself required maintenance. Several other students in the computer lab were in the same situation and equally (if not more) displeased. One student kicked a few chairs around. I don't blame him.

At this point class was starting, so I elected to run across the bridge to the other side of the campus to print off the paper in the library. It didn't take quite as long to load this time and I finally got into class ten minutes late.

I do take some of the fault for this silly situation, but it really shows how awful Trent's computer system is. Forty minutes to print something? It's a little reminiscent of print times circa 1982.

Trent has a lot of things going for it, but computers is not one of them.

The Facebook birthday experiment...

So tomorrow I'm turning 21. It's pretty cool. I get nice phone calls from family and close friends, some gifts and a few pints at the pub. This year though, I'm expecting that there will be a large number of people who don't realize it's my birthday. Why? I've deleted my birthday on Facebook.

In the past few years, my birthdays have been great, but I've routinely opened my email to find that I have tons of messages in my inbox. Sadly, most of them are from Facebook, telling me that one of my 'friends' has written on my 'wall'. I know what each message says and its fairly uniform: 'Happy Birthday!' accompanied by something along the lines of, 'hope it's a good one' or 'have fun partyin'.

Last year I got 40 or so of these messages. It's nice getting happy birthday messages, but what really concerns me is the reason for sending it and how these people know it's my birthday. Is it because they've remembered it from memory? Doubtful. Chances are they got a little alert on Facebook telling them it's my Bday and a few clicks later a congratulatory message is sitting in my inbox.

Great. But it just isn't genuine. Some of the best birthday wishes I've gotten since being on Facebook have been from close friends of mine, who either take the time to pick up a phone and call me or at least email me. I'm yet to have family members Facebook birthday me, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened in the future.

So here's the experiment. Now that my birthday isn't listed on Facebook, how many birthday wishes will I get? Any? It'll be interesting.

I'll let you know in a few days how it pans out.

The importance of newspapers...

If you've been following the massive chain reaction that the current economic crisis is producing, you might have heard about the impending collapse of the newspaper industry. Companies like CanWest (a massive Canadian media conglomerate) are dangerously close to defaulting on its loans--which are in the tens of billions--used to purchase a swath of North American news outlets. Throughout the country, large newspapers are now being forced to cutback, continually announcing expansion cutbacks and job losses. 

Much of the current downfall is being blamed on declining advertising revenues (a newspaper's largest source of revenue), but the newspaper industry has been on a downward spiral for quite some time. The rise of the internet has perhaps been the greatest enemy of the industry, as readers can now gather their information online (often for free) and from a wider range of sources. And where the people go, the advertisers (and more importantly, their money) go. Bloggers are being partially blamed for the downfall. Even environmental concerns and an impatient society unwilling to sit down and read the morning paper over a cup o' Joe can be blamed for the industry's potential downfall. 

Many are saying good riddance. There's no need for newspapers, or at least the print versions. But these people are wrong. Dead wrong.

Newspapers are our best source of credible information. It is true, there is much concern over the monopolization of the industry and the top-down influence on the paper's content, but the majority of our news service from newspapers is credible. No matter what the conspiracy theorists say, we can trust most newspapers, as long as we act as critically thinking readers. 

Imagine a world without newspapers (including those who have moved online), where the only source of information comes from TV, unregulated websites, magazines and ahem, blogs (I would trust a Globe & Mail article over anything found on this site 9 times out of 10). TV is wonderful, but even more at risk of this top-down influence and is often greatly condensed. The unregulated sources are often fraught with mixed and inaccurate information.

We need newspapers because they keep us well-informed. They are trustworthy, credible sources; the catalysts of democracy, if you will. Many have columns that allow credible writers to dish out their honest opinion (it is true that this is not always the case, as has been seen with the numerous and controversial drops of Gwynne Dyer's column). Some that have adopted sophisticated websites now have blogs from reporters, columnists and editors, allowing them to express their thoughts on issues without the constraints of the mainstream news.

I would not be surprised to see it and other media outlets suddenly come crawling to the door of the government looking for some handouts. And with the automotive sector getting much of its way, I don't see why the newspapers couldn't get the same. 

The newspaper industry has its control issues, but it is absolutely necessary to keep around. If not for the democratic and informative benefits, then at least for those who still find the time to sit down with a cup of coffee or an afternoon snack and read the print version.   

Grads looking for a job?

No, this isn't a classifieds site, but I wouldn't be surprised if a whole swath of university graduates and potential graduates end up thinking it is.

The economic crisis is hitting the North American labour markets hard. People are losing jobs right, left and centre. But it's not just those who are losing jobs that are in trouble. The university and college grads that have just committed many years of their life to education in order to get a good job when they come out may find that there is very little for them. And the Baby Boomers (whose work we're supposed to take over) don't want to retire yet, especially since their RRSPs have gone down the toilet. Shit.

So what to do? Maybe you'll find that job that you were looking for, but you'll certainly face stiffer competition to actually get the job.

With limited jobs out there, employers may be looking for only the top candidates for jobs. You might have been able to get that job with your undergrad degree before, but with so few jobs, you might need an additional degree or certificate to boost yourself above the rest. Uh oh, that could be costly.

Alternatively, you could shoot lower. With an undergrad degree, maybe it's far more appropriate to look for the jobs that only require a high school diploma or some years of post-secondary training, putting yourself above the rest with your qualifications. The pay would probably be less than other jobs, but at least it would be better than EI.

Then again, you could always go back to school. If employers are looking for that extra nudge, school might be the way to go. Maybe grab yourself a Master's degree or short-term college diploma. If you want job security, take a look at professional schools. Just don't wade too far into those fancy-schmancy business schools. Yet. The financial sector has taken a beating, and the first to go are the new people. And the financial pain is far from over.

But school costs money. Some people simply can't afford going back. And there's no guarantee that throwing $8000 at a Master's degree will help you get a job. And getting into schools might be tough, too. Not only will more people be tempted to take this root (making it tougher to get in), universities have been hit financially too, resulting in higher tuition fees, lower quality of education and an apprehension to expand university services. You could go back to school, but it might be crap. Is it really worth it?

Us upper years are in a tough spot, especially those who are about to enter the job market. I would say that the government should provide help for these people in the way of jobs, but at least us youngens have the benefit of time to build ourselves. The people who are losing their jobs right now may have mortgages, kids and other expenses. They need more help right now.

The biggest recommendation I could give to the government is to extend to interest-rate freeze period on student loans. As far as I understand, the banks come a bitin' six months after graduation. That period of time needs to be extended significantly so that recent grads don't end up declaring bankruptcy in their twenties.

Dear Facebook: You're no longer my BFF...

OK, so FB and I were never BFFs, but I think mine is a common sentiment among people who are beginning to realize that our relationship to FB may be a little too close.

Over the past few months I've been gradually trimming down my footprint on FB. Information regarding personal interests and whatnot was removed, then silly applications and the piece that seemed to grab the most attention: my relationship status. I had been listed as 'single', but I just removed the status altogether. But, FB notifies everyone that I 'am no longer listed as single'. Needless to say, messages came flowing in asking who my new lover was. Sorry, my real relationship status never changed.

Today I went on a greater rampage. Most personal information was removed, including my birthday (darn, I won't be receiving FB birthday messages anymore...) and work experience. I'm now one of those lame FBers who provides very little information about themself. Sorry, kids. I even elected to remove over 100 'friends'. Do I talk to them? No. Have I ever had a real frienship with them? Maybe, but not really anymore. Do I really want to know what's going on in their lives, let alone they know what's going on in my life? Not particularly. What a strange thing to do, but it's done.

So why did I do such a thing? Why am I shutting myself off from the world of FB?

I've mentioned the future risks of FB before. Photos could come back to bite us in 30 years when we're running this world; potential employers can peruse our profiles at their will; and stuff about us could get out there that we really don't need spread over the internet. These risks played a part, but it's really the present nature of FB that bothers me.

I had an interesting conversation with a friend of mine the other day regarding FB and we discussed how bizarre FB is. Yes, having 'friends' is strange, especially when we trust them to have a full-blown view of us. Posting our photo albums online for everyone to see is similar to inviting all these people to your home and going through your photo albums. That's kind of weird.

I have found that certain friendships have become de-personalized, whereby phone and lengthy email dialogue has now been replaced by 'wall posts'. What a shame. Sure, it's great for quick messages, but when it becomes the norm, the seriousness of the friendship degrades.

I do enjoy aspects of FB. I can look at pictures, advertise my blogs and keep in touch with some people who may not use email or phone. But that's about it.

Perhaps I'm crazy and am just trying to stop the inevitable. Maybe FB will one day swallow us all up. But I'm not the only one doing this, and I doubt I'll be the last.

Oops, CERN snags again...

It's been awhile since I mentioned the Large Hadron-Collider located in Europe, spanning over two countries deep underground. You may remember that I mentioned several risks associated with the giant underground magnet, including its potential to create a black hole that could eventually swallow the entire Earth and perhaps the universe.

You may also remember it was supposed to get going during the past summer. The world is still here, so everything must have gone right, eh? Well, not quite. Back in September, a simple electrical fault shut the whole thing down just after it finally got going. The repairs (estimated at $26 million) are taking longer than anticipated and the new restart date has been postponed until September, 2009.

In my last post on this topic I recalled a conversation I had with my cousin, where we discussed the development of the CERN project as being a litmus test for intelligent life in the universe. If the project has the potential to destroy the universe, surely those uber-intelligent lifeforms will try to stop us from getting the machine going.

Strangely, these unexpected shutdowns have occurred before anything really dangerous has taken place. Maybe the alien theory is too far fetched. You never know...