Dear Facebook,

What the hell happened? I feel like I don’t know you anymore.

What ever happened to events like “Teen Booze Party” to be held at “On a motherfucking boat” at “Drunk oclock so get your cute ass over here”?

I was cool with letting all the colleges in, even the community colleges and DeVry. The high schoolers really pushed it. Now that my mom has a profile too, I really wonder what’s the point.

I was okay with these things, a bit more, when they were blocked out from my the poor decisions that I was making and that you were enabling. Then there were privacy controls. Slowly, the controls faded. You’ve decided for me that my profile needs to be more public. I know, I can use the help in meeting more people.

We used to be able to communicate openly, freely. Remember when the wall was just a single input field? But, over the years, your UI designers have put some pretty close walls on things. These days, I’m encouraged just to like things.

In fact, that’s pretty much all that’s left to do on the site these days. Your current site feature set: “Like” things, be shown badly-targeted ads, and play badly made games whose goal is to just show you more badly targeted ads. That’s cool and all. Ads are your thing now, I know. I’m sure you have bills to pay.

Here’s the thing though. Remember when you, well – you and I, were about using the internet to stay in touch with your real life friends? Those were the good times. I know — the strategy now is ‘connecting’ and ’sharing’ with people. But, well, I really have no idea what that means. The focus may as well be ‘leveraging communications synergies and revisiting operational efficiencies’.

Having thought about it though, while I feel like Ive kept in touch with people, I haven’t actually said anything to them in quite a while, if ever. There seems to be a growing disconnect between what you say you do and what you actually do. In the same way McDonalds is sold as food and tastes like food without providing any nutritional content, it seems your version of communication is lacking in whatever it is that provides the enrichment of friendship.

I’m going to give up this ruse, and go back to actually emailing, calling, and possibly even seeing the people I care about in person. Feel entitled to not friend request me.

Regards,
Matt

For those of you not from the US, I would imagine ‘Black Friday’ to be a rather strange phenomenon.  Ive described it below as best I can.  I hope this helps.

After watching many hours of football and falling into a tryptophan-induced coma at 7PM,

Americans will wake up at 4AM tomorrow, shocked to find their homes filled with unwanted relatives.

Panicked consumers will flee homes to the only non-home, non-work places to which they go:

stores.

Shop owners, fearing the worst, will attempt to placate the the calorically-overcharged consumers the only way they know how:

with deep discounts on electronics and cotton- and wool-based garments.

To the teenagers who stole my 2008 Schwinn Prelude,

1. Yes, I know it was you. It takes a certain kind of person to hang around the train station during the summer; I was one of them. So, I know that when a group of fourteen-year olds scampers off, it means something. Moreover, I know it means something when a group of teenagers scampers off without exchanging more than glances, when a man who looks something like how I do has his heart torn out and realizes his bike has been dispossessed.  And to scamper off twice more, unfortunately fleeing to places on said man’s walking path home.
2. Best of luck riding or selling the bike.
   1. Just so you know, the front derailleur tends to over adjust, unchaining the rider rather unexpectedly. It does this at random intervals, so changing the markings on the grip or changing you usage pattern is no help. Also, the rear ring tends to pop lose when downshifting the lower gears and on an uphill grade of >1%. When it does this, there is also P(~.3) that it will get stuck between the first gear and the frame of the bike. Good luck getting back on the road if you haven’t brought a wrench with you.
   2. In case you hadn’t noticed, we live in an incredibly small town. Population 21,000 and declining. There are rather few places to ride a road bike on the south side. I also happen to live in this 1.4 miles squared area. And so God help you if you put this on craigslist.
3. If I find my bike, I will be forced to harm you. Not because I’m particularly rageful or not a nice person (though, perhaps guilty on both accounts), but because at certain times in life, lessons must be learned. For example, if I find you’ve sold this to the local delivery place at a particularly cut rate, I am going to repossess it from said liveryman, buy his current parcels from him, and come to your house and beat you with your neighbors sweet and sour chicken.  I just cant wait to see the look on your face and the duck sauce in your hair.
4. Regardless of outcome, I’ll see you in hell.

-Matt

Dear Schwinn Prelude,

I’ll see you soon.

-Matt

Yes, the blog is back.  As some of you may know, matthew-ford.com functioned¹ as a landing page for prospective web clients.  After doing little with it for quite some time, I had resolved to bring it back to a working blog some time ago.  However, what started off as a two-week coding gig has turned into my becoming creative director at bookswim.com

My web clients page, if I am to ever get the proper free time, will be moved over to designdevelopdeploy.com.

Why return to blogging?  Well, while the recent trend towards microblogging seems to be taking over many lives, this writer’s included, there is just something to be said for full-form thought and discourse.  While keeping ‘in touch’ with a number of acquaintances can, and in some cases should, be done in a short span of charaters, exchanging thoughts, ideas, and experiences has little comparable substitute to prose.². Having said that, the hour is a bit late, and my first substantive post may not be for a considerable amount of hours. Until then, enjoy the rest of the internets.

nb: previous blog posts are currently not being displayed. due to a botched upgrade attempt, they are currently bottled up in an sql file on my laptop. I’ll work to insert them back at a later date.

—-

¹ in only a completely orwellian concept.  the page in fact did anything but function.

² rhyming verse proponents may disagree, but when was the last time poetry was on the bestseller list?