http://www.sysadminday.com/
 

A couple of these buggers probably eat half of the seed I put out.

Anyway, I had no idea how pretty doves are until I saw this shot.

I mostly prefer birds that live outside to those that will live indoors with us – forever, it seems.

Here’s one I shot through the living room window.

http://theachieversmovie.com.

My favorite shot from Lhotse’s second birthday party.

I’ll admit it – I’ve been spending time on Facebook in the last week. (OK – I’m a little slow when it comes to adopting certain technologies.) I’m conducting a little research to see why this social networking site is so popular. What’s that? 200 million active users??? I’m slowly beginning to understand its appeal. It’s dead simple for anyone to “publish” their thoughts and whereabouts. It’s easy to share images and video clips. Grampa can see the latest image of the kids, we can all see what our friends ate for dinner. Long-lost friends can be located – and then (thankfully) just as easily removed from our Facebook feeds forever.

The question I seek to answer concerns the value of time spent on Facebook. I’m sure I have the world’s greatest friends and am subscribed to all the right groups, but still, less than one entry in twenty posts leads me to anything memorable or worthwhile. The rest of the time is well, I won’t say “wasted”, but something close to that. Sort of like the time spent watching YouTube Featured Videos – 20% entertainment, 80% annoyance.

Another problem with Facebook can be blamed on Twitter culture. Too much of Facebook content consists of 140 or fewer character rants or blurbs. Facebook and its ilk have sucked a lot of blogs dry as ex-bloggers now devote too much of their time to sharing iPhone snapshots of their pets.

Whenever I hear something described as the latest craze in social networking I’m reminded of the CB radios we all had to own in the seventies. We all loved imagining all those other CB’ers clinging to our words as we revealed the location of the smokey in the westbound lane. What power! What fun! Eventually though, CB channels became “intolerably noisy“, and the fad died out.

So, is Facebook a fad? Yes, but it will be supplanted by something similar. Intolerably noisy? Guess that depends on your friends. Does this sort of application have a role in the workplace? Most definitely!

Bottom line? Would I recommend Facebook? Yes, actually, I would! For most people – especially those who never will have a blog – it’s better than nothing.

New tile. Yay!

I’m trying desperately not to fall onto the great blog trash heap. So, here it is – a new post.

The buzz surrounding last night’s party was all about 200 tons of sand, five swimming pools and “swimwear encouraged”. Hm. Sounds like an indoor beach party, right? Well, the event resembled a beach about as much as I resemble Brad Pitt. Oh – there was sand scattered about the 250,000 square foot industrial space, but that quickly turned to airborne dust as it was trampled by the platform boots of 10,000 grungers. And, aside from the occasional fireball, the giant warehouse was as dark as night. If you imagined yourself sipping a fruity margarita under a fake palm tree on a towel in the sand at this “beach party”, you were sorely disappointed. Still, I do love Oakland. You won’t find parties like this in Burlington, Wisconsin.