Facebook is bullying me

Back when I was in Junior High, I was picked on.  They use the term bullied and I’ve said before I was bullied, but compared to what kids go through now a days, I’m not sure that’s what happened.  I got made fun of, nobody really laid a hand on me that I remember.  And until I learned the phrase that I still live by today ‘I don’t give a shit”, it continued.  Once they realized it didn’t bother me anymore, they gave up.  Between that and my main antagonist getting in a fight with me, things stopped.  I know what your thinking, I kicked his ass and people stopped screwing with me.  No, that didn’t happen.

Brian made fun of me, every chance he got.  He hung out with Wally who did the same.  When he wasn’t making fun of me, he was goading me to fight him.  Brian was the cool kid who was an athlete.  Wally was his sniveling wannabe.  Anyways, we were sitting in class before the bell rang and he was taunting me as usual.

Brian – “Come on, fight me.  Let’s get together after school.  Let’s go pussy, you chicken” – or something like that.

Me – “Fine, you want to fight, let’s fight.”

Brian – after the shock that I said yes wore off “Good, meet me behind the gas station after school.”

Me – “No, you want to fight me, find me.  I’m not going to “meet” you anywhere.  But if you come across me outside of school, we’ll do it.  I’m not doing anything you say, and am not meeting you anywhere.”

I don’t remember what was said after that, but you get the idea.  It didn’t end there though.  Now he just kept talking about what he was going to do when he saw me.  Blah, blah, blah, I ignored him.

A week or 2 later, I was hanging out at my buddy’s house.  We were out in his backyard, throwing a football.  Guess who comes walking up.  Brian & Wally.  They came up and offered to play us, 2 on 2, in football.  Sure, why not.  See where I said Brian was a good athlete, well, so was I.  I just never played for my school.  But in the coming years in high school, I didn’t get picked on as much.  Mainly because I schooled most of the athletes in the school in whatever we played in gym class.  I regularly beat guys on the basketball team and it pissed them off, but it did get me a little respect.  But back to the backyard.  We started playing, I don’t really remember a whole lot about the game.  I know my friend wasn’t very athletic, but neither was Wally.  But Brian and I went at it, hard.  The last play of the game resulted in me grabbing his shirt to tackle him and ripping a huge hole in it.  And apparently he didn’t like that and it was game on.

He came at me, I defended.  All I did was keep my arms up on defense and blocked most of what he threw.  He only connected 3 times and they were all body shots that did nothing.  I never threw a punch.  Eventually he got bored and him and Wally went home.  A few people at school heard about it, tried to tell me I got my butt kicked.  I just shrugged my shoulders and asked if they saw a mark on me.  Eventually, they let it go and I learned that I didn’t really care who thought what about me.  Once they knew it didn’t bother me, they left me alone.

But why do I bring all this up now?  Well, when I first got on Facebook years ago, I friended anybody in my graduating class.  I’ve even made decent friends with some of them that I never really knew before.  Actually met my wife doing that being as she was in my graduating class.  Well, there were a few friends that I didn’t friend request.  You can probably guess 2 of them.  I’m telling this story in the hopes that whoever does the “people you may know” for Facebook, reads this, because I’m getting tired of seeing this.

He’s on top of my list, and I see him over and over again on my sidebar.  Stupid Facebook.

That was the closest I’ve ever come to a fight, I guess technically it is, just depends how you look at it.  That’s partly because back then I was 6”2’, 140 lbs with a white man’s afro and glasses.  Now I’m 6”3’, 260 lbs with a shaved head and usually a pissed off look on my face.  I don’t get messed with anymore.  Some people actually fear me, I find that funny.

 

 

 

                  

Surprise package?

Today started off as the usual work day.  I got up, shut off my alarm, got dressed in the dark and headed for the bathroom.  See, the typical morning start.  But this would not be the typical day.  My wife didn’t have a typical day.  She has problems with anxiety some days, this was one of those days.  I told her I would cheer her up when I show her a surprise that would make her smile.

So when we got home, I kicked my shoes off and told her to have a seat.  She sits down in the recliner and as I’m unbuttoning my work shirt, I asked if she was ready for her surprise.  She looked scared.  I opened up my shirt and started to unbuckle my belt.  I stepped close to her and told her to undo my pants for a surprise.  She didn’t want to, I had to tell her she had to so she would feel better.  She unbuttons my pants and pulls down my zipper and spreads it open and starts to laugh.  Just what every guy wants, a girl that pulls down his pants and starts to laugh.

No, it’s not what you think.  See, when she opened up my pants, she realized that hole that’s normally there in your underwear, wasn’t there.  That would be because my boxers were on backwards.  Now remember up there, where I said I dress in the dark.  I usually feel around the waistband for the tag on my boxers before I put them on.  Apparently this morning, I didn’t.  What’s really bad is I never noticed until after 4.  A few times to the restroom, never noticed.  Granted those were trips to the urinal.  But when I sat down on the toilet, I noticed they were on backwards.  Now the question was, do I remove my boots, pants and flip my boxers around, all while in the stall or do I just keep wearing them backwards.

I decided to tough it out for the rest of the day.  That might have been a mistake.  I was walking and there was someone behind me, I started to wonder, can they see my boxer line, can they tell they are on backwards?  What if everyone finds out?  Will I be shunned or bullied?  But I did notice I didn’t get any wedgies today.  I’d like to think that I stretched out the front so there was plenty of room for my ass but I’m 99% sure (and a few inches) that it wasn’t that.

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes.  Stop by, read them all and vote for me and 4 others.

Stats, part 3

Part 1, Part 2

I left you off in January of this year.  I also said that this is where Random Thoughts from a Random Guy really starts to become what it is.  And it really starts with the first post of February.  First, let’s take a look where we are currently.

I’m closing in on 11,000 pageviews which is nothing compared to some of you, but I think it’s pretty awesome.  I’m also closing in on 250 posts and I added a new follower.  Like I said up above, I left off with January in part 2 so let’s get started with February of this year.

You can tell from the first post because it’s titled “Me, a Writer?”.  I had posted on My Sports Obsession a good, thought out post about why I collect cards and how it might be associated with my father’s death (“The Year My Life Changed Forever”) and I posted it on my Facebook and a couple of family and friends had complemented me so I started to think about blogging for real.  Which is what that first post is about.  “Who Was that Guy?” was my first post where I just threw it together, a quick story about something humorous that happened that day. That’s when I realized that maybe I could blog semi-regularly.

February 2012 – 8 posts - 3898 words – 9 pictures

• average of 487 words per post.
• average of 1 picture per post.

If you remember, last month I only averaged 82 words per post.  So you can see where I actually started blogging more.  At this time I started reading a lot more blogs as well, trying to find what I wanted to do. 

“Genetic Disaster” was my first attempt to connect with other MS blogs.  I still don’t touch on that subject much anymore but that’s because it has become an every day thing that I don’t think about as much.  You can see a lot more posts this month as I’m getting a little more into it.  Some goofy titles that were pretty much the same as my Randomness posts except that I titled them with each paragraph of the post.  You also see Weekly Catch-Up posts.  I would like to continue to do those but I never take the time to do them.  They were posts about what I posted on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

March 2012 – 20 posts – 13,929 words – 88 pictures

• average of 696 words per post.
• average of 4 pictures per post.

I like seeing months likes this.  Almost 700 words per post and 20 posts, both good stats for the blog.  A small chunk of the 88 pictures are from the post about Trevor’s Boy Scouts pinewood derby and the rest average out with a few per post, which is standard at least now, I always try to put a few pics per post.

Another 20 posts for April.  I’m flying now.  Lots of good stuff up there.  Should be a pretty good average with nothing over 1,000 words.

April 2012 – 20 posts – 11,219 words – 82 pictures

• average of 561 words per post.
• average of 4 pictures per post.

Average words is down a little, probably because of the quick Happy Easter post which was only 33 words.  That was my first post since January that had less than 100 words.  I crossed 50,000 words total on this blog, that’s pretty cool.  Now that I’m pumping out more posts with more words, let’s see if I can get to 100,000 by the end of this post which will end on September of this year.

I slowed down this month, down to 12 posts and I have a lot of posts with no pictures.  The 18 pictures on “MS Walk: 2012” are pictures from the fundraiser walk for MS and the 13 pictures on “A Phone Cleansing” is a post where I just posted a bunch of pictures that I had stored on my phone.

May 2012 – 12 posts – 7751 words – 37 pictures

• average of 646 words per post.
• average of 3 pictures per post.

The average pictures per post is deceiving since I only had 4 total posts that had pictures but my average words per post is holding steady.

Only 11 posts in June, I’m slowing down some but I’m guessing my words per post is about the same.  I don’t have as much to say with these posts as I’m coming into my own.  I don’t think I have too many followers yet but what I have learned is because my blog doesn’t really fit into a certain category (parenting, MS, comedy) is part of that reason, but I have also learned that it doesn’t matter to me.  I write for myself and just hope it’s entertaining to the readers.

June 2012 – 11 posts – 7458 words – 33 pictures

• average of 678 words per post.
• average of 3 pictures per post.

Almost exactly like last month.  My average pictures is actually spreading out between all the posts.  The “How Hot Is It?'” has pictures that I took at work if I’m not mistaken.  2 posts over 1000 words, one of those being a holiday weekend post where we go camping.

Almost doubled my posts.  Summer months I do more and therefore have more to talk about.  Sounds like I know what I’m talking about, right?  I crossed 500 pictures posted in July.  I don’t really care about the pictures posted and really could take that stat off but I was afraid if I didn’t add it, later down the road I would actually care about it and have to go through all this again.  At this point, I don’t think so but it only takes 2 seconds to plug in the stat so it’ll stay, for now.

July 2012 – 21 posts – 13417 words – 110 pictures.

• average of 639 words per post.
• average of 5 pictures per post.

Really averaging out on my words and pictures now.  3 months straight of between 600-700 words.  And I like to average 3-5 pictures per post, just so it’s not all words.

15 posts in August but there are 2 fairly long stretches of no posts.  I really started picking up more followers in August.  I posted my first Dude Write post at the end of July but I didn’t pick up some more followers until I was posting regularly to the contest.

August 2012 – 15 posts – 7907 words – 71 pictures

• average of 527 words per post.
• average of 5 pictures per post.

My average words per post dropped below 600 but is still a respectable 500.  I had 6 posts under 500 words and 4 of those are under 100 which explains the average drop.  Pictures stayed the same but almost half came from 2 posts.

And for our final month of this post, we have September.  I made it my final post because I think I’ll do one of these stat posts every 3 months, or quarterly.  So you won’t have to see another one of these until January.  You all should be happy about that.  19 posts for the month, looks to be a lot of smaller posts.  Didn’t quite hit 10,000 words but I bet I do in October, guess you’ll have to wait until January to find out.  Even though my words per post have been down, I do like some of those posts.

September 2012 – 19 posts – 9201 words – 53 pictures

• average of 484 words per post.
• average of 3 pictures per post.

A couple of long stretches where I posted every day, I like seeing that.  October’s numbers are my best yet, but you’ll have to wait until January to see those.

Track of the Day CD Compilation

I now have 921 songs in my playlists.  My “All Items” playlist is generally all songs I like.  It’s essentially a radio station with no commercials and I like all the songs.  If you’ve followed this blog at all, you know that I list a Track of the Day at the bottom of some of my posts.  Those are usually songs that bring back a memory or they just give me something to say about it.  I was thinking I’d post a Track of the Day until I posted them all.  Of course, I didn’t think about it being more than 921 posts to do so.  Or about 2 1/2 years of posts if I even posted every day.  I started the Track of the Day posts about 20 or so days ago and I’ve only posted 9 songs.  Not to mention, some of the songs, I just like and I don’t really have anything to say about them or maybe just something quick.  So every so often (when I feel like) I’ll create a CD Compilation post.  Throw out 20 of the so-so songs like a CD.  That’s what this post is, a mixture of some songs off my playlists.  I’ll use the random on the Spotify until I get 20.  Here we go.

U2 (Sweetest Thing) – Aaron Lewis (Outside) – Alanis Morissette (Hand in my Pocket) – Bon Jovi (Keep the Faith) – Ozzy Osbourne (Let me Hear You Scream)

Kelly Clarkson (Mr. Know it All) – Godsmack (The Enemy) – Selena (I Could Fall in Love) – Janet Jackson (That’s the Way Love Goes) – Petra (Back to the Street)

Paul Young (Every Time You Go Away) – Petra (First Love) – Fun (We Are Young) – Creed (What’s This Life For) – Here Come the Mummies (Dirty Minds)

Linkin Park (Somewhere I Belong) – Bryan Adams (Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman) – Bruce Hornsby (Big Stick) – Bruce Springsteen (Born in the USA) – Rick Springfield (Affair of the Heart)

Randomness

I got in trouble last night, apparently my wife was trying to talk to me during “the Walking Dead”.  You would think she would know better, but I guess not.  She even posted this on Facebook.

The bad thing was, I get her status’ to my phone, but I didn’t realize she had posted it, until after it was over.  Oops.  I tried to argue that I heard what she said, she argued that since I didn’t respond, that if I heard her then I was ignoring her.  Crap!  I’m screwed.

I got a lot of reading done today, I mentioned earlier in the week that I was a week behind on my reader.  I’ve gotten up into November now, so I’m only 5 days behind.  I will admit thought, that I tend to skim a lot more when I’m behind so it goes quicker.  It was dead at work, that always helps.  Since I only work 3 or 4 days a week, it doesn’t take me long to get behind.  I suppose I should start reading more at home to stay caught up.

Mom, you’ll appreciate this story.  I found out something about my daughter today.  My oldest daughter came home tonight which means my youngest sleeps in her brothers bunk beds.  While moving her pillows over, a book and a penlight falls out of her pillowcase.  I asked her about it and she admitted that when she can’t sleep, she reads.  I know this means nothing to you, but at her age, I was always getting caught staying up late, usually reading.  I know my mom is laughing her ass off right now.  She always loves it when my kids do things that I used to get in trouble for.  I guess it’s a good thing she doesn’t have a cellphone yet, not that she isn’t trying to get one out of me.

For previous Track of the Day’s click the cassette tape above.  For a brief overview of my music history, check this out!

Track – Denomination Demolition

Artist – Mylon & the Broken heart

I loved this group back in my christian music days, I’ve seen them in concert at least 4 of 5 times.  I used to do all the concert stuff before I wised up and stopped wasting my money.  But back to this song, Denomination Demolition.  The title sums up all of it and it is what I believe needs to happen with religion.  I don’t claim to be religious anymore, but I am a good person.  But to me, what is wrong with religion now, is just that, religion.  This songs talks about demolishing denominations (religions).  To me, all religions are is a way for everyone to interpret the bible into what they think is right or wrong.  Why else does each religion have different rules?  If they all followed the bible, wouldn’t most religions be the same?  And isn’t that what everyone should be trying for?  My personal belief is you do what is right, now what is wrong.  You help those who need it, not turn your back on them.  Just be a good person and contribute some positive into this world and your ahead of the game. 

Help a brother out.

I have a friend, (I know, shocking right.)  His name is Brock and he works with me.  He is in the maintenance department, but he does Frank’s job on some days.  I used to do Frank’s job, till I told them I wanted more money and they said no.  So I told them no to doing the job.  He hates doing that job, so I feel it’s my duty to make fun of him when he complains about doing it.  That’s what friends are for.

He’s also a Notre Dame fan and he likes Eli Manning, whom both I don’t like.  So I’m not sure why I still like him, but I do.  He’s a good guy just trying to make it through our crap job and spend some time with his girlfriend.

Why am I telling you all of this?  A little while back he was complaining that he was always sick.  I told him to go to the doctor.  He said that’s what his family was saying, that it might be cancer.  I told him I don’t know about that, could just be ulcers or something like that.  He then told me he eats like crazy and keeps losing weight.  I told him to get his ass to a doctor.  I told him that he knows just as much as I do, that if it is cancer, it needs to be caught early.  Well, eventually he did go.

Brock was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma on 9/5/2012. He is now going through chemotherapy and of course, is out of work until the treatment is done.  I’m not expecting any of you to help, but if you could, it would greatly be appreciated.  All money is going towards paying for his treatments.  You can go to his www.giveforward.com page or click on the widget I added to my sidebar.

Even if everyone who reads this donated a $1 a piece, it would make a difference.  So please help him out.  He needs to get back to work so I can continue to make fun of him, because that’s what friends are for.

Spammers

I’m so sick of spammers.  And they are all over now, Twitter,  Facebook, Email, Blogs and even Instagram.  Filters do a good job on my email and blogs, but it just pisses me off that they try.  I think in my case, I take it personally because I think your calling me an idiot.  Am I really going to fall for your stupid attempts to get me to click your links.

I don’t use Twitter for anything personal, I do on occasion, but for the most part it is a tool for my blogs to get more exposure.  So this morning, I tweet out links to 2 blogs I posted and not long after, I get a reply.  I guess technically it’s not a reply because this spammer thought by including my twitter ID, that my readers might click on their ID and then click on one of the links in his About Me section.  I report it as spam, I always have and I always will.  If everyone would use the Report as Spam, it would make it a lot harder for these spammers (or dickheads as I prefer to call them) to spam.  We will never stop them because there are always going to be dickheads trying to get their crap out.  Lowlife’s that can’t make it in the real world so they resort to tricking people.  There’s a reason you have to resort to spam, your too stupid to learn how to advertise correctly.

Facebook is personal, sure I have a few pages for my blogs, but being as I have very few Likes on either of them, I generally use them the same way as I do Twitter, to advertise my blogs.  I would like to use them more for communicating with readers and fellow bloggers, but with the very few likes I have, I don’t really see a point to it.  Facebook is good because it does allow you a lot of control, most of the people just don’t know how to use it correctly.  Did you know that even when he join an app or community, that you can always prevent them from posting on your timeline?  Before you automatically click the accept button, change the “Friends” button to “only me”.  Yes, it will still get posted on your timeline but it doesn’t go out as a status feed.  And who really goes to your actual page to read about you, most people use the status feed.  So next time you sign up for a game, change the view by button so I don’t have to see every time you get on your stupid game or that your 60% happy today.

                                                    

Now when it comes to email, I do get a lot of spam, but I use Yahoo and Gmail and both have great spam filters.  I have multiple accounts, especially with yahoo.  I even pay Yahoo $20 annually so I can use multiple addresses from the same account.  I have 2 yahoo addresses that both go to that account as well as multiple disposable addresses.  I use multiple addresses depending on what I do.  I have a personal address that I only give out to family and friends.  I have a couple of different accounts that I use to sign up with things such as Facebook, Twitter, ect.  I also use those accounts when I have to give an email address to sign up with something just in case they decide to sell it to spammers.  And I also use a Gmail address that I use to associate with all of my Google accounts.  Which I really started using more when I started blogging.  Plus my phone is an Android so it’s Google as well.  My spam folder always has stuff in it because I get a crap load of spam, but like I said, I never see if because of the filters.

Blogging has been great, and I love comments.  But not so much that I want spam bullshit in my comments.  I do get a crap load of spam comments but rarely does it get posted because of the filter.  Other bloggers have talked about the stupid crap they say like complementing my post that you didn’t actually read is going to get me to click on it.  Now most of these are my fault, because I don’t use the captcha to weed out actual comments and other people’s comments.  And unless they actually start getting through the filters, I won’t use them.  The only reason people use them anyways is because of the afore mentioned asshole spammers.  So if you use the captcha, I implore you to get rid of it.  Your comments will be fine.  It’s just annoying to leave a comment and try to figure out what they are saying.

The last few weeks, anytime my wife or I post pictures of our cat on Instagram, we get spam comments about how to get more followers.  Guess what?  I don’t care how many followers I have.  These comment’s take advantage of those needy people who think the more followers they have on their various social media outlets, the more popular they really are.  So these spammers are created by you people who are stupid enough to believe, “I have 1000 friends on Facebook, I’m so popular”, morons.  Your as bad as the spammers, you’re the reason these spammers exist.  Because of your low self-esteem issues.  Get over it, there is probably a reason nobody likes you.

And there’s a reason I don’t like spammers.  You are no good to society, pushing your agenda on everybody else.  You can’t follow basic social rules.  You want to be popular or rich by taking advantage of other people’s stupidity or insecurities.  I have 2 words for you, FUCK YOU!

I am participating in the Dude Write Starting Lineup this week where you can find some excellent posts by bloggers who happen to be dudes.  Stop by, read them all and vote for me and 4 others.

Meh

I have some idea for some posts, possibly some good posts.  But I just can’t get in the mood to type them out.  I guess I’m not in the mood to have to use my head.  Just finished watching the Michigan game and now am catching up on a few shows on the DVR.  I guess this is what a writer’s block feels like.  I need to invent something I can wear while I’m at work that will record my thoughts, because that’s when I get the ideas.

The sad thing is, I’m not doing anything.  All day.  Literally sitting on my ass with no plans, and I still can’t get the energy to blog.  I guess it’s not energy I need, but I can’t get in the mood to blog.  I suppose I should go through my Google Reader being as that’s got over 4000 posts in it.  Meh!  I even have a bunch of sports cards posts for My Sports Obsession and some of them don’t take much effort to type out.  Most of the effort comes in the scanning and I did all that yesterday, so I really don’t have an excuse there either.  I just suck.

Maybe I shouldn’t be typing out posts anyways, it’s taken me an hour to type the above.  I was hoping if I started typing, it would get me going.  But that isn’t working either.

I’m out of here.  Enjoy your weekend.

What the hell are you watching? vol. 4

I took pictures of my series priority pages on my DVR and we’ll go through them. I’ll post the pictures at random because most of the top priorities are the first ones listed because they only show once, usually the local networks. Then all the cable network stuff is listed next because they replay them all the time. We record so many shows that some days and times there are 4 shows on my list but it’s only a dual tuner DVR, which means I can only record 2 shows at a time. It almost always works out that a couple of them are on cable networks and they replay them right after or a few hours after. If not, I catch the episode online or on demand.

#25 – the Ellen DeGeneres Show – I don’t generally watch this show but I don’t mind when I do.  She has great guests most of the time and she is so generous to everyone.  How can you not like this show.

#26 – Grimm – This is a decent show, I’m not majorly into it like some people are but I do like it.  It’s loosely based on the original Grimm fairy tales and not the ones you grew up with.  The main character is able to see the fairy tale creatures for what they are and with the help of one of those characters, hunts down the creatures who have gone bad.  I do like supernatural shows and this one definitely fits.

#27 – Fringe – Another science fiction show and I love this one.  My wife and oldest daughter can’t stand it but I think it’s awesome.  This season is it’s final one because it’s numbers haven’t been great but it does have a cult following.  This year takes place in the future where they are going to war with the see’ers.  Those who don’t get involved have decided to just take over instead of watching.  I’m really looking forward to this season.

#28 – Alcatraz – This show has already been cancelled so I guess I can delete it when I get around to it.  I enjoyed this show.  Another science fiction show where the prisoners of Alcatraz disappeared one night in 1963 and are gradually turning up now.  They track down these fugitives while trying to investigate where they have been for the last 35-40 years.  Plus it had Hugo from Lost in it and I liked him.

Summary – Other than Ellen, all good science fiction shows.  Although one has been cancelled already.  Have I mentioned that I love science fiction.

#1 – Person of Interest – I like this show as well, my wife likes Jim Caviezel even though he isn’t the best of actors and we both like Michael Emerson from Lost.  Emerson’s character created a computer that predicts what people are going to do and in turn spits out people who need protecting.    Caviezel’s character is making up for years of killing for money by protecting and helping those who the computer tells him to.

#2 – Take the Money & Run – Not sure if this one is still on anymore.  They gave 2 everyday people a bunch of money in a briefcase.  They had an hour to hide the money and then 2 cops pick them up and interrogate them.  They have 48 hours to break them and find the money.  If the cops find it, they get to keep it.  If the other people keep it hidden, they keep it.  We found it interesting.

#3 – Touch – Jack Baur’s Keifer Sutherlands new show where his autistic son communicates to his dad for him to do things which end up helping all kinds of people.  It’s pretty cool to see how him helping a guy in LA, helps a guy in Iraq and some girls in Japan.  It’s a good show, but it’s kind of the same story over and over with different characters.

#4 – Brothers & Sisters – I used to watch this show for the first few seasons and then got out of it but my wife continued to watch it.  I believe it has since been cancelled.

Summary – Person of Interest I really like and Touch I did, but it’s getting to be the same every week.  The other 2, 1 is cancelled and the other may be as well.