Leaving the beast.

Leaving Facebook has been an interesting experiment. I remember where I was when I signed up, early morning, summer of 2009 from the kitchen table at my little brothers house. My wife and I crashed at his place for whatever reason, and I had woken up before any one else. I was reading the news and came across an article about Facebook and the rest is history.

I know, I know... But this time I mean it.. REALLY!

I had a MySpace page but was never really 'into' it, and Geocities before that. But Facebook was different, something about it drew me in.  Although I wouldn't call it an obsession, I did spend a majority of my online time there. If I wasn't on Feedly, I was on Facebook. I have never taken it as seriously as some, I also had a few rules I tried to stick too. Never post about my employer unless it was completely positive, never air my dirty laundry, never post about politics and generally keep it light hearted. I've slipped a few times, posting about Sprint or Apple which seems to draw out the critics and fanboys.  Which is one of my reasons for leaving, I understand posting publicly is an invitation for discussion but Facebook seems to provide people something to hide behind, expressing opinions they would not generally state in person. Or worse yet, when you personally know a person, see their Facebook updates and realize they are completely fake and false. Yet they receive an outpouring of support or praise and you just want to say something, but you refrain. Over time, my usage increased I would checked it several times a day, it's installed on all of my devices and if my browser was opened, so was Facebook. I just felt like I have more important ways to spend my time, but it's been tougher to escape then I thought.

Around the time of Star Wars: The Force Awakens theatrical release I decided to deactivate my account until I saw the movie in an attempt to avoid spoilers. We ended up seeing SW the Saturday morning after it came out. I ended up leaving my account deactivated for a few more days. But for some reason I reactivated it. This week, after a discussion with someone where I was practically berated for not seeing a post I decided enough was enough. I locked down the security on my page and turned off messenger chat for all users. I've been trying to migrate any outside services to a Google sign on API instead of Facebook's, and have done that with most of my major services. I have yet to uninstall the app off my phone and tablet, but I haven't opened it in several days. I was out with the family last night, and found myself wanting to post something I thought was funny, but I didn't. I took the picture and laughed with my wife and kids instead. It was just as fulfilling if not more so. A few thoughts have crossed my mind this morning that would make a funny post, but again I refrained. I feel like each day will get easier, i'll factor in Facebook less and less in my daily activities to a point where it's no more than an afterthought.

I don't completely despise the site, honestly I've found much joy in it. Laughing at funny posts and seeing what my friends and family are up to. But when is it too much? I think the answer to that varies with everyone but for me the amount of time I spent personally felt like too much. And for some folks it's the only way they get any social interaction, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

And I'll be honest, i'm not completely disconnected from that world. My wife still spends a lot of time on there, and keeps me updated on items that might interest me. And in a way, that was also part of my moving off of it. It does give my wife and I something to talk about, but many times in the past I'd already knew about a post before she did so the conversation didn't get any farther than "Yeah I saw it...". But now we can engage in those conversations for the first time. After almost 12 years of marriage you start to run out of things to talk about at times, so maybe this is for the best, for more reasons then I originally intended. Perhaps I give myself an hour or so to look at the site each week or maybe one day I'll wake up and its not something I feel like I need to do any longer.

Either way, I do feel somewhat liberated, as always, thanks for reading!

Until we meet again Zuck!

Read me stories....

What better way into someone's psyche than a glance into their library? I love books but can never find the time to sit down and read. Several years ago a friend of mine turned me onto Audible, i've been a subscriber of their Gold Membership since March 2014. The membership provides a credit per month redeemable towards any audiobook, unused credits roll over to the next month.  As I read through my thousand plus RSS feeds each day, any books of interest I find is added to my Wish List which is currently at 66 items.

Shot of my current library

Much of my listening is done while driving, at work or anytime I'm able to throw on my bluetooth headphones. I really enjoy biographies about businesses and tech tycoon's, modern or historic, as well as the occasional fiction/non-fiction stories. Anyways, i'll list them out here, they are in no particular order I recommend each of them. I'm currently 20 hours into a 32 hour biography titled Andrew Carnegie by David Nasaw, it's an incredibly detailed look into Mr. Carnegie and his businesses.

These books have been purchased and are in various states of completion, I tend to jump around between a few books at a time, for instance I've been listening to the Carnegie audiobook since about November but have completed several books below since that time.

Books in progress:

• UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record by Leslie Kean
• One Second After by William R. Forstchen
• Law 101 by Jay M. Feinman
• The Personal MBA Master the Art of business by Josh Kaufman
• 52 Things Daughters need from their Dads by Jay Payleitner

Completed Biographies:

• Empire: Howard Hughes The Life, Legend and Madness by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele
• Elon Must by Ashlee Vance
• Becoming Steve Jobs by Rick Tetzeli and Brent Schlender
• Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
• Failure is not an option by Gene Kranz
• Wizard the Life and Times of Nikola Tesla by Marc J. Seifer
• I am Spock by Leonard Nimoy
• The Grand Slam; Bobby Jones, America and the Story of Golf by Mark Frost
• American Sniper by Scott McEwan, Chris Kyle and Jim Defelice

Other titles i've completed since joining Audible:

• Where's my Jetpack by Daniel H. Wilson
• Marvel Comics the Untold Story by Sean Hoye
• Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that defined a generation by Blake J. Harris
• The Innovators by Walter Isaacson
• The Martian by Andy Weir
• The fast track to your Technician Class Ham Radio License by Michael Burnette

Screen cap from my wish list on Audible.

As you can see history, biographies, and space exploration are a large portion of my library. I hope this gives anyone who might read this a bit of insight into me.

Thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I personally purchased all the products mentioned in this post, I received no compensation to endorse them or link them. 

Why me?

I've decided to go against the masses and jump off the Facebook bandwagon, branch off and do my own thing. I'm done with how fake it is and all the "look at me". I realized it's a drama I no longer want or need in my life. I want a place where I can express my opinion and unique views of this amazing reality we inhabit.  We are all unique I've got an very interesting spin on the world around me. At some point during the mixing of my genetic material in late 1978, completely spontaneously I might add, my DNA decided it was going to add a fun mutation and give me the ability to not create collagen properly. That's manifested itself in a condition called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), specifically Type IV. But that's not something i've ever let get in my way, it's simply a set of challenges I've learned to adapt too.

I thought my twist of the world might interest someone, it seems to interest those I interact with on a daily basis. The questions I am asked are astonishing, everything from "can you have children?" (The answer is yes, I have two) to "You drive that car?", as i'm the only person exiting my automobile. I wanted to turn this blog into something along those lines, something that might answer those questions and give me a chance to cover topics I've had trouble finding. I'm very much a student in the school of life, always on a quest to learn. For instance, a few months ago I decided to get my Technician level HAM radio license. I pulled together resources and tools from all over but never saw these resources all in one place, studied and on February 22nd received my license; KE0HVC Monitoring! I'm hoping to do something like that here. Perhaps a product reviews  from the prospective of someone who uses a power wheelchair for mobility, i've been on a kick recently to make my chair more utilitarian and useful, an extension of myself, not something I just "ride around in". Perhaps I'll make that my first post outside of this introduction, a review of my Quantum Rival power wheelchair.

On that note, I'm done here, I hope to have my first none introduction post up in a few days. Thanks for reading.