Maybe I just have less to say these days...

Well, I have been quietly waging my own personal war against social networking sites that look like bullshit pyramid schemes for the better part of the last ten years. What actions have I taken in the pursuit of this war? Ok, basically I just wished anyone who used Facebook, Myspace, and god forbid, YTMND, would become a miserable idiot.

In retrospect, this was a bad strategy. For one thing, these sites now boast something like a hundred trillion users all over the freaking world. Assuming my wish were granted, we'd have a world where total idiots get elected on a regular basis. And since we're winding down our second Bush administration, I guess I'm a freaking wish-maker.

The other reason this was a bad strategy is that it turns out I actually know a lot of people who are on Facebook and/or Myspace (I pretend I don't know the people on YTMND). At first I just made vomiting noises every time someone mentioned they had a Myspace or Facebook account, but eventually I realized that was just making me look like an idiot.

Even after realizing everyone I know is involved in this stuff in some way, I've generally snickered to myself every time I hear anything about these sites. After all, everything I've ever heard is bad. I mean, every damned MySpace page I've ever seen is a poorly designed wasteland that starts playing some stupid song without any prompting. And Facebook? Facebook stole their code from another company (and don't get me started on Secret Crush)!

So it was with a certain amount of glee that I read an article posted to reddit with the title: "Why I Will Not Be Using Facebook - Fierce yet detailed attack on the social networking site." However, upon reading the article, I realized a few things:

1. The author is an idiot.
2. I have no basis for my own dislike of this idea.
3. reddit titles kinda suck.

But basically, I realized I was falling into the same stupid trap that everyone falls into with music. You learn about something in a particular way, and you tend to start dismissing the new stuff without really thinking honestly about it. My internet life began before the web, when basically the interactions were through message forums and bulletin boards. Web-versions of those kind of interactions (i.e., IM, blogs, link aggregators, etc.) make sense and seem cool, while stuff like Facebook and MySpace just seem like more annoying versions of Geocities (and for those of you who don't remember Geocities, well, let's just say this is probably the coolest website for NBA 2k1 ever created!).

So anyway, if you're on facebook or myspace or orkut and I made little cough*idioti*cough sounds when you mentioned that: I'm sorry.

And no, this doesn't mean I'm going to create a facebook account.

Other stuff:

- I stayed at a hotel the other night that had a free-alcohol "happy hour". A FREE ALCOHOL HAPPY HOUR. And I worked through half of it!

- Speaking of that trip: You know what's worse than spending two and a half hours walking around in semi-freezing rain? Trying to explain to two skeptical consultants the difference between abundant and common in terms of leaf litter at the same time. I drove for an hour with the heater on full blast before I got warm. Why the hell didn't I try to get a job in Mexico?

- the NBA: Just off the top of my head everything we thought we knew about the western conference should be tossed out the window. Just forget it all. The three best teams right now are the Hornets, Blazers and Lakers (well, before Bynum got hurt). The Mavs and the Suns are apparently trying to pull a "spurs" by sucking early and getting great late. You know what they're missing? Tim Duncan. As for the East: Nobody in Miami should feel bad...they won a frickin' championship! You think I wouldn't trade a year or 3 of Dallas being miserable for a Dallas championship. And hell, Miami'll probably end up drafting Beasley, turning them right back into title contenders.

- If you like Carcassonne, you can play it online here (called Toulouse). And yes, we've probably played 60 games in the past three days.