I love the walk of lights and all, but after a long semester I could feel my brain begin to unpack as soon as I left school. I visited a friend and saw a new city. I caught up on Bones. I rode my bike from my house to the beach. I worked my way through the contents of my stocking (chocolate tastes better when it is shaped like Santa Claus). I read books that weren’t for class and breakfasted with real news instead of Gawker. This is all a big step up, sanity-wise: I am a decent specimen of my suite in that by the end of exams, I could work only while listening to YouTube recordings of the Red Army Choir. I’m not sure whether this came from the feeling that I could write papers if they could march across the steppe or from the conviction that they would find and kill me if I slacked off. Life is better now.

But since the ball dropped, stress has been creeping back in. Gchat bubbles reappear and shift back toward red. “Zoe has seven internship thingies to finish ACK.” “Andrew where is my calc grade????” I’m the same—although there’s a still a trip between me and the start of classes, I’m flying back to NYC tomorrow. My parents and I spent yesterday driving around depositing paychecks, buying triple-hole-punchers, and replacing the battery in my watch (that store also sold throwing knives and hip flasks, but my father did not seem to think either was a worthy investment). My to-do list grew by a foot, and I am suddenly rushed. Among the people with whom I’ve spoken, there’s an emergence from cocoons. I don’t know if I’d actually wish the break longer, and there’s still a big chunk to go, but… it looked more like nirvana on December 17^th.

I will not join your facebook group. Nor will I play virtual scrabble with you or pay $1 to facebook.com to send you an image of a cup of a panda as a virtual “Gift.”

I admit that I do have a facebook account, but I would like to add that, in spite of this, I am not, in fact, a loser. Since I signed up, I have received thousands (or at least tens) of invitations to groups dedicated to worthy causes. Save Darfur. Stop AIDS. Cure cancer. NAMBLA*. But I never accepted a single one. I felt no need to publicly declare my acts of philanthropy.

But some people seem to have an incessant need to add applications that organize a list of favorite “causes” such as the number one most downloaded application, “Causes,” which 52 of my current Facebook Friends have. Joining groups and applications, however, does nothing to actually feed the starving children of Haiti. The rainforest in the Amazon doesn’t care if you “accepted an invitation.” The starving children don’t really give a crap, either.

But the “Causes” application is not, in my opinion, the most egregious to grace the network’s pages. The worst facebook application has got to be “Top Friends,” among the top five most popularly downloaded additions to one’s profile.

The premise behind this application is that is allows the user to select a large group of friends who are his favorite and share this list and accompanying photographs with the world. The thing is, that I find this to be completely pointless. Even more pointless than “Causes.” You won’t be any “less friends” with someone if your friendship is not made known to everyone who views your profile. Thank you, “Top Friends,” for creating gaudy, flashing backgrounds that looked as though they’ve been ripped from an eighth grader’s geocities website. You really can’t help but look. And then cringe in response to the sparkling lights that threaten to give you a seizure.

“Top Friends” is ugly. It is a huge design flaw. It is the pimple of facebook. People who do not know that potentially life-threatening animated gifs are not (and were never) in vogue should not have control over designing part of a website to be viewed by other people.

I don’t know why anyone would want to bring the worst of myspace.com, the worst of social networking sites, to facebook, which may not be the pillar of the community, but, hey, at least it’s not myspace. Read the rest of this entry »

Bill Gates has just realized that Google is dominating the web searching world and wants to get in on some of the action. Having seen Microsoft’s $41.7 billion bid on the table, Yahoo has some serious decision-making to do. The bid itself values each Yahoo visitor at around $1000/visitor. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the last time I used Yahoo, which means I ain’t worth bollocks). But comparing the bid to Yahoo’s market capitalization of $37.1 billion, Gates isn’t exactly being stingy–surprisingly, investors are predicting a rise in the bid.

Now with all the cha-ching being thrown around, there’s got to be some real value in this move. But the numbers don’t exactly tell the whole story. Both Yahoo and Microsoft have witnessed falling share prices, a 13% decrease for the latter company while Google is boasting a majority in the online search market. As an aside, I say invest in some Microsoft a little before the merger is made (that is, if it looks like it’s going to be made) in hopes of catching it on it’s way back up from slump-town. So despite the not-so-fabulous statistics, there must be a good reason for all this and there is. Bill Gates wants to own as much of the world as possible. And while he cries out for more competition in one of Google’s many fields of expertise, he continues to tell everyone else in the PC operation system world to shove it.

Also, I take no responsibility in the outcome of the financial investment advice given above. Good luck.