Tag: Friends

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Painful Reminder

Being in a different country, away from family and close friends, for the little things doesn’t bother me as much any more as when I first moved but for the bigger things in life, they still get to you.

After hearing some terribly sad news from a very close friend of the passing away of his mother, I wanted to write something but simple words just don’t do it justice.

She was a wonderful person from the few times I had gotten the chance to meet and talk to her. She was funny, caring, and always wanted to see how you were doing.

It is painful how we are reminded just how fragile really life is and that we all have to go at one point or another.

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Facebook Privacy Settings

I have been hearing and reading from a lot of different people about the growing concern regarding privacy on Facebook and wanting to quit. First of all, if you don’t want to share something that might be a little compromising, do not put it up online in the first place. It would make your life a whole lot easier.

However, if there are things you share that you want to limit who sees them and how they can share them, hopefully this post helps you accomplish that. In order to update your settings with the new Facebook Privacy Settings, just follow these simple steps and you should be able to restrict what you want, from who you want.

Note: If you click the image, it will actually direct you to that page on Facebook.

Here is a step-by-step instruction guide on how to reduce the amount of information you are sharing to third and unwanted parties but as I said earlier, the best protection against shared information is to not share it at all.

1. First on your main profile page, select the “Account” button on the top right corner of the page and select “Privacy Settings“.

2. Now select the 4th item down on the list, “Applications and Websites“.

3. Once you are on this page, there are a couple of options for you (“What your friends can share about you” and “Instant Personalization Pilot Programs”) but I would certainly recommend both of them. If you only want to do the first one, go to step 4 but skip 5. If you only want to do the second one, go to step 5 and skip 4 — but again, I would recommend at least taking a look at both.

4. For “What your friends can share about you“, you can see that Facebook lists a whole range of items that you can grant access to your friends and whatever applications they use to share those information. Go through the list and anything you feel comfortable with being shared across applications, check away and naturally, uncheck anything you don’t want shared. Make sure to hit the “Save Changes” button on the bottom of the page to ensure your selections are saved.

5. Now select the “Applications and Websites” button on the top left corner and select “Instant Personalization Pilot Program“. Facebook connects with many websites so you can quickly connect with your friends and see and share relevant content on their sites. If you don’t want to share such information or don’t want to have the personalization and information sharing across many of these sites, just uncheck the box below the image on the page.

Now you have taken steps to share less information but I’ll reiterate for a third time, don’t post anything you don’t necessarily want to share with the rest of the world. With the constant privacy policy changes by Facebook, I would consider nothing safe and they keep a copy of all information on their servers anyway.

Any comments, questions or suggestion on this post or any other, feel free to leave me a message below or contact me in any other form that you know. Happy Surfing.

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Change Doesn’t Happen Over Night

Just background information for those who don’t know me that I went to a relatively small high school (graduating class of about 35 kids) and I met some of the people I graduated with back in 2005 today over lunch. Some I had kept in touch with more over others, then there have been some who I saw maybe once since graduation.

It was quite a small community, our principal would even love to call it “a family” all the time but it was quite something. I used to have informative, often heated debates with some people on questions varying from social to fiscal issues. There were just some that I thought I would never see eye to eye with, or some that would never switch their party lines to vote for another candidate – even on a more local ballot, never mind on a national scale.

One of the friends I met today was one of those people who I always argued against but continuously ending up respecting because they stood for their beliefs and stood firm on it. As an opponent in those arguments, you always felt they gave you a fair shake in listening to your points and rebutting things they disagreed with in a rather calm and respectful way – at least most of the times. To be quite frank, on the political scale we were as polar opposites as one could be without falling off the scale.

That same friend, who was always an avid learner certainly pulled a fast one by me today when they said they had voted for Barack Obama in this past year’s national election. In all my years of personally knowing someone who fundamentally stood on issues that were slightly more conservative than they were liberal, I did not see this one coming. They had been reading up on several social issues for some part of their studies and that in turn led them to vote the way they did. (By the way, the person did end up voting conservative down the ballot for every other candidate. haha)

I’m not saying voting conservative is a bad thing, actually a couple of my better friends would probably lean more right than left but I am certainly glad to see more and more people shedding the party label and voting for what they believe in and what they think is right. I certainly would think that even my friends who are liberal hippies would be able to vote for a Republican if it was clear that, that candidate would certainly put the country in a better situation than their opponent.

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Virginia Trip and a Question

Question:

Suppose your find out your very best friend killed someone (either from him/her, or you saw him/her, or whatever). Would you tell the police?

That’s a random question I’m going to ask if you read the start of the post… but if you want the story, continue reading below.

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So I had an impromptu trip to Virginia earlier today (technically yesterday). This trip had been planned to happen almost every day over the course of the past week and it sort of just happened. Of all of the days to travel 4 hours South while West Virginia beats Duke, Kansas State falls to Wisconsin, Pittsburgh is defeated by Michigan State and Stanford and UCLA barely hold on to win their respective games against Marquette and Texas A&M. A special thanks to my official score-updater-texter-caller-person with a pink eye. Anyone who wants to update me on the games tomorrow, I’d appreciate a text every now and then.

Right now two of my cousins along with my sister and brother are randomly talking about something and what makes someone an accomplice if someone stole something or robbed a bank, I don’t really know and I’m not really paying attention.

It leads me to ask a question that a friend of mine asked the other day. Feel free to answer it in the comments. I just want to see what people would say, I’ve asked a couple of people already and the answers range from yes to no but its the reasoning that’s always intriguing.

Question:

Suppose your find out your very best friend killed someone (either from him/her, or you saw him/her, or whatever). Would you tell the police?

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Umm… What Happened?

Chris Matthews on MSNBC is still trying to figure out what just happened tonight. What underlying factor played a role in all of these polls being incorrect and not just by a few points here or there, but 10-15 points. Was it race that played a factor where a predominantly White state told pollsters they would support Obama but when they went in to vote… they, as I had originally thought, that Americans just are not ready to support an Black man…

Congratulations to the Clinton camp who have certainly found a second wind early on where it seemed like she was dead in the water. I am certain this puts the African American vote in South Carolina up in the air whether they will go back to supporting the Clintons or can they support “one of their own”.

Now there are talks about a union nomination that Obama was supposed to get from Nevada is being put on hold which could have devastating repercussions to the campaign but as we found out tonight, it is way to early to announce anything. As of today, less than one half of one percent of the American electorate has voted… why not give the other people some say as well before jump on a nominee.

P.S. up to day four now on the MIA amigo