[NTLK] OT - Off Topic - Facebook (was: New twist on Poutine)

[Ronnie Simon]

Frank
          I am in complete agreement with you particularly as we now  
have free calls or free text msgs with VIBER, WHATSAPP and SKYPE for  
example.

Ronnie Simon

On 9 Mar 2013, at 22:44, Frank Gruendel <newtontalk at pda-soft.de> wrote:

>> I AM on Facebook
>
> I'm not. For a variety of reasons. Explaining them all would take...  
> well...
> long. So allow me to explain at least the most recent one.
>
> Ah, by the way: This post is not in the least Newton-related. This  
> is why it
> says "Off Topic" in the subject line. So you might want to skip it.
>
> You're still with me? OK...
>
> This year, we won't be spending our summer vacations with the  
> friends we've
> been spending our summer vacations with for years.
>
> You are wondering where on earth Facebook enters the picture? Well,  
> if four
> people, along with three children, want to spend their vacations  
> together,
> this requires a lot of synchronization. Especially if they don't  
> exactly
> live next door, which can result in the children's school holidays  
> falling
> in different time periods. Each parent having a different employer  
> doesn't
> make things easier. So far, though, we've always managed. Even  
> though our
> friends' youngest son is a boy scout who usually spends two weeks  
> with his
> fellow boy scouts during his school holidays.
>
> As usual we managed to synchronize things nicely. Unfortunately, the  
> boy
> scouts' trip had to be postponed, which happened way before we  
> started the
> synchronization process. Our friends weren't aware of this change  
> during the
> synchronization process because the boy scouts' leader only posted  
> this info
> on Facebook.
>
> Normally, this wouldn't have been a problem since our friends' son  
> monitors
> Facebook regularely. But he had rocked the boat the month before by  
> spending
> almost 150 bucks on internet access from his smartphone. Our  
> friends, who
> are a) not very rich and b) the provider's contractual partner, were  
> fairly
> annoyed, so they seized his smartphone and his computer for a month.  
> The
> pitiable boy had to spend his life literally Internet-less for a  
> full month
> in order to give him time to contemplate if money really DOES grow  
> on trees.
> This is why we were all blissfully unaware of this change for almost  
> three
> weeks.
>
> When our friends finally learned of it, they managed to talk their  
> employers
> into postponing their vacations. Unfortunately, my wife was not as  
> lucky. A
> hospital staff schedule has to be organized months in advance, and  
> shifting
> your vacation simply isn't an option once it has been set.
>
> I might be a dinosaur, but if I've learned one thing in my life,  
> it's that
> if you want people to know or to do something, you absolutely MUST  
> TELL them
> face to face (or what used to pass for "face to face" not so very  
> long ago,
> like e. g. a phone call) what you want them to know or to do. And,  
> just to
> make sure, you should better ask them afterwards if what they  
> understood is
> what you meant.
>
> I admit that it's not Facebook's fault that this annoying issue  
> happened.
> I'm just extremely pi**ed if people I don't even know take it for  
> granted
> that I'm doing things the way they think they should be done, but do  
> not
> even bother to make sure I'm actually DOING them that way, let alone  
> tell me
> at least one single time what they expect me to do in the first place.
>
> I have relatives who fire up Facebook or Whatsapp on their  
> smartphones if
> they want to know where their 16 year old daughter is. Hello? Ever  
> heard of
> "where are you going", "when will you be back", and "I expect you to  
> be home
> by midnight at the latest"?
>
> What the f*ck happened to good old phone calls and letters?
>
> Modern times do have their benefits. Without the Internet, letting  
> off steam
> the way I just did would have been much more difficult. But I very  
> often
> wish some things, front and foremost TV sets and Facebook, had never  
> been
> invented.
>
> Hgrmpf...
>
> Frank
>
> -- Newton software and hardware at http://www.pda-soft.de
>
>
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