Shared Videos

As I was scrolling through my Facebook feed earlier, I came across a video. You know the kind, the sweet, emotional tear-jerkers that someone originally posts, and then others share them over and over and over, possibly going "viral."

There have been many debates, especially regarding adults of my generation, about 'living in the moment.' As in Put your phone down, dummy, and enjoy this moment before it passes. A few months back, there was an article about people at a parade. Every single person (really, every one of them) was holding their phone up to take a photo or video as the parade came down the road. Everyone except for this one little old lady, who was smiling and actually watching the parade. I can say I'm guilty of this occasionally, though not nearly as much as some.

Thanks to our readily available smart phones, we've turned into a culture that wants to document EVERYTHING. And in some ways, this is arguably a good thing. Children born these days will have way more photos of their growth and development as they get older than any generation before. I take photos of my dog all the time. Do I need to take that many? No, but it makes me happy to look at them sometimes when I'm down.

On one hand, this doesn't seem all that far off from days gone by when a designated family member held the camera, looked through the lens, and took our pictures. I don't think I would have said they "weren't living in the moment" by being the family photographer for the day. But somehow it does seem a bit more extreme now, doesn't it? Way more narcissistic, when you add in the element of posting it online. I know some people who seemingly can't have a family get-together without taking multiple candid and posed photos. It's not like they're crazy people, they're just obsessed with holding onto those moments, capturing them for all time. Funny though, I think it's safe to say that never before have we taken so many photos, but had so few physical photos to show for it. For all these photos we've taken, we sure don't print out many of them. (Hey, remember the days of photo albums? That you actually flipped through, like, with your hands, haha?)

I certainly understand wanting to preserve memories. I'm nostalgic for the past, love looking at old black and white photos, and am a bit of a pack-rat when it comes to being sentimental about things. But I also believe that some moments should simply be enjoyed between the people in the room. There is something beautiful about that. Not everything needs to be documented, and beyond that not everything needs to be shared for everyone to see.

I should make a point here to say that I find a big difference between 'sharing things with only your friends' and 'sharing things publicly online.' I still don't feel everything needs to be posted, but I really don't understand the people who share things for the entire world to see—literally.

So as I was scrolling through my Facebook, there was a video of an old lady. She had just been given a very special gift. Her husband had passed away, and she was given a pillow that was made of an old shirt of his, so she can always "have his shoulder to lean on" or something along those lines.

Grandma was crying, obviously. It was a sweet moment, but this is just one of probably hundreds of videos now that I almost wish I didn't see. It feels awkward. I don't know these people, yet I'm somehow peering into this very special, very intimate moment in their lives. I almost feel bad for the grandma, that one of her family members is shoving a cell phone in her space like a television reporter so they can record every second of her reaction.

There was just something about it, the invasion of privacy, that led me to write all this. I think we could all use a moment to re-examine how we view our world via our phones. Take pictures, sure, but keep them to yourself and your loved ones. You don't have to invite the world into your living room.

Sorry, the address you entered does not exist

So in a bit of weird news, it has come to my attention that our new house cannot be found on the two most used map search engines, Google Maps/Earth and MapQuest. First time this was a problem was with my friend Becky using MapQuest, and just now with my friend Marie on Google. Sure enough, I looked into it, and our road shows as a road, but it has no name! It's a no name road... we don't exist.

Fortunately, Bing has our road in their map, so it is searchable on there. I also decided to try my Garmin and double-check that, and it did pull up Jessica Hills Court in the correct spot. Phew, thank goodness on that one.

But I wonder how to go about contacting Google about the no name road? Even with Google, there has to be a way to correct their map stuff, or email them with issues, right? If anyone knows this, let me know. I'm going to try to do some digging myself.

In other quick news, we are moving tomorrow. I'm just ready for it to come and go. I'm excited, because I like taking on semi-large tasks of this nature and planning them out. But I'm just so tired of packing, as Jarrod is so tired of painting, and I'm so tired of shuffling stuff over. I'm ready to be done.

Going from mega-fan to ticked off user

(I'm up coughing... so what do I do? Blog! Haha.)

Apple is bothering me these days. What was once a wonderful producer of a wonderful alternative to a Windows computer has become a cocky industry leader forcing its users to go places they don't want to.

Personally, I do not necessarily agree with the path that Apple is planning to take me down.

I read a great editorial on Engadget saying how Apple is done with the optical drive. Yes, it was an opinion piece, but his argument was laid out well and it all just made sense. The evidence here is in two recent releases from Apple, they have gotten rid of the CD drives in their machines. With the laptops, you now have options of a MacBook Air, which I personally find pointless, or the MacBook Pro, which is overkill for most people. The Air has no CD drive, and never has, so no surprise there. But the thing is that they dropped their lesser laptop so you now only have those two options. Previously, you had the option of the MacBook. Now that no longer exists. But the one that confuses me most is the new Mac Mini's do not have CD drives. How do you get any programs on your computer you ask? Well, in Apple's world, you would buy them from the shiny App Store and simply download them. Or, you could download them somewhere else, put them on a flash drive, and get them on your machine that way, or you could buy a separate CD drive to hook up to your Mini externally. And what if someone wanted to burn a CD or a DVD? I still like to make CD mixes for my car, or iMovie projects. I guess they assume I'll just use my iPod and that I hate home movies and will watch them... on my Mac. Pretty ridiculous, isn't it? So there's that.

I am also very bothered by this because this can only mean one thing in the long-term: to the cloud. By slowly removing our abilities to use computers like we always have, they are channeling us and preparing us for these new methods. Apple made a huge push with iCloud when it talked about it at WWDC. In theory, it sounds great. [Send your files somewhere in North Carolina and have them automatically push back to ALL of your devices... what could possibly go wrong? Oh, and don't worry, no one's going to pay attention to the files you send us, either. Yeah, right.] But I am just not a cloud person; I don't like the idea, I don't want to partake in it, and dammit I don't want Apple to force me into it.

But mostly I'm upset over Lion, their new operating system. At first, Lion sounded awesome, I admit. It is very 'flashy' in its capabilities. But now, I don't really want anything to do with it.

For one, I feel that Lion is directed at laptops and laptops only. With so many functions that rely on multi-touch, (translation: using a touchpad) they would not work much for me. Plus, I don't know that I really care; I'm not sure that it matters to me if I can swipe a program off and on my screen.

But my biggest gripe, and it's a really big one, is the hoops they make you jump through to upgrade to it. My dad has a laptop, I can't remember how old, but it was some of the best specs at the time as far as what Apple offered in MacBook Pros, and he can't upgrade to Lion because his hardware is not good enough. You need so much RAM to run the darn program, and he physically can't upgrade. So he's just stuck with Snow Leopard until the machine dies.

Me, on the other hand, I have the RAM, but I don't have Snow Leopard. In poking around Apple's store, I just found this lovely little piece of information:

The fact that they made their new OS solely dependent with the most recent OS is f'ing outrageous. And the second fact that they expect me to buy Snow Leopard for $29.99 and then buy Lion for another $29.99 is an f'ing joke. This is pretty much the nail in the coffin for me NOT buying Lion. I don't want it now. I think I'll upgrade to Snow Leopard, because there are a few things I'd like to do with that, but then I'm done on this computer. I also found out by chance in a CF blog I was reading that Lion is not compatible with 2004 Microsoft Office. Awesome. And to fix THAT problem, the latest version of Office is $150.

Total cost to make Jamie's computer run Lion and act like it always has: $210.

No thank you.

Jarrod is getting pretty pissed off at Apple, possibly more than I am, for many of the same reasons. He is really into learning Linux more and maybe we'll become a Linux household, who knows. The thing is, though, that my career depends on Apple computers, so I will always be using one whether I like it or not; the Adobe Suite simply does not work nearly as good on a PC as it does on a Mac.

I have a feeling we're not alone in our unsettled issues with the giant Apple, either. Even in Popular Mechanics' piece comparing tablets, in the "Who Is It For" description, under the iPad they said 'Anyone who doesn't hold a grudge against Apple' and for the Samsung Galaxy it said 'Anyone who wants to break free from Apple's walled garden.' It made me laugh, but it also verified how I'm feeling. So I'll wait and see where Apple tries to push me next, but I'm no longer just a blind sheep following along.