With One Click

In this room on my personal computer, I am always just one click away from being able to log into Facebook. I never ever have done it on this computer, and I never, ever will.

This room is my private sanctuary away from work. As much as I hate it, my personal Facebook has become completely wrapped together with work. There is no way to separate the two from each other.

Thus the only place I will log into Facebook is on the work computer. And when I am on the work computer, I do not have time to be scrolling through my newsfeed looking for updates from friends and family, as few and far between as they would be.

If I get up from this chair now and go into the other room to look at my Facebook, what will I see?

I will see a lot of posts from local businesses. I will see a lot of posts involving Hawaii. I will see posts from zoos. I will see photos of landscapes and animals and flowers. I will sometimes see a post from family or friends.

BUT..

If family or friends post something I don’t like, I will snooze them for 30 days. If when they are un-snoozed they post another thing I don’t like.. I will click “the button” to stop seeing posts from them in future.

I won’t see any conspiracy theories because every person/business I know who has ever posted one, I have clicked “the button” to stop seeing posts from them.

I won’t see any political posts because every person/business I know who has ever posted one, I have clicked “the button” to stop seeing posts from them.

My Question Is –

Why haven’t Facebook come up with a way to separate out business from personal? Probably because they don’t care or they don’t see how much of a problem it can be.

Until they fix this, I’ve had to take what I consider to be pretty extreme measures – separate laptops, separate phones, without Facebook on any of the personal devices – to separate work from personal.

internet, work

Snoskred & Social Media

sm0

I don’t use Twitter, Instagram and Facebook like normal people do. Yes, you might ask what does Snoskred do like normal people do, and that is a fair question too!

What concerns me the most about these forms of social media is – I am not in control of what I am seeing in my “newsfeed”. Some computer algorithm built by some random person who does not know me or what I want to see is in charge. And that is not cool with me.

sm4

If I want to follow someone, I want to get everything they are putting out there. I do not want the occasional post. I want it ALL. AND I want it in the order that it was posted. I mean seriously, Twitter, you want to give me something from 2 days ago, then something from 35 minutes ago, then something from 11 hours ago? That is not how this is supposed to work.

sm1

Unfortunately what I want is getting more and more difficult to get these days. :( Truly it seems like the only way to get the content I want is to bookmark all the pages and visit them regularly.

westwing1

So what I’ve done for Twitter and Instagram is to bookmark the people I want to follow and open them in new tabs. This also allows me to sort them into groups, so I can have a folder for the TV shows I love filled with the people I enjoy who have a twitter account.

sm3

This takes you to their actual profile page, and that is how I like to read things. Because if I follow someone on Twitter, I want to see what they have to say when they say it.

I would not even bother with social media at all, if it did not allow you the occasional opportunity to connect – even just for a moment -with people you are a fan of. I use my rewatch breaking bad twitter account for most stuff these days because it is the one I remember the password for.

sm2

I do not tweet very often, when I do tweet I tend to tweet directly to the person I am wanting to speak to and somehow those tweets just vanish into the ether, I never see them again. Perhaps I do not know how to Twitter. But occasionally, something a bit special happens, like someone I am a great fan of replies to me or likes my tweet. That kinda makes it worth it.

bdwong

I don’t Instagram at all, I do not even have an account, but you can find me on Facebook here. Not that you should, because my profile is not public and really I just share my blog posts on there, with an occasional post when I can’t quite keep my mouth shut about something. But I save most of that for the blog, anyway!

I do not have any social media on my phone at all. I used to have Facebook on there several years ago but when they added Messenger into the mix I used to get freaked out by the little profile photos of my friends being all over the place. I uninstalled it and have been very happy ever since. I do have a few games I can play if I am waiting for an appointment but these days I just sit and be for the most part. It is pretty nice sometimes to just sit and be in the world.

internet

Phone Addiction

flower4

I made a comment on Ask A Manager a while back.. Part of my comment said –

My thought is – pick up the phone and call to schedule interviews….If you suffer from call reluctance or lost your tongue to a cat, at the very least, TEXT these people.

I had ticked subscribe to comments when I posted so I knew I would receive any replies.. I certainly did not expect very many.. And I went to bed because it was bedtime.

The next morning, I was somewhat shocked to receive a large number of replies and the majority of people were saying they would never text someone to schedule an interview. As the conversation went on, I became aware of a large gap between how Australia does things and how America does things which was deeply surprising to me.

I think I have managed to identify some of the reasons for this gap thanks to the discussion.

Firstly, you can easily tell in Australia if someone gives you a mobile number. The prefix will always be 04XX. In the US, they cannot tell – mobile and cell numbers look identical.

Secondly, it appears that some US plans charge people to receive SMS – I get free unlimited text with my phone plan and I have never heard of anyone being charged to *receive* an SMS here, though I know people sometimes get charged higher SMS fees for sending them to competitions.

Thirdly, it seems from the replies I received that not everyone in the US has a smart phone and many people are still using older style phones. Here in Australia out of all the people I know, maybe two of them have older non smart-phones. It is easy to update your phone here without having to pay any up front fees, you just go on a contract for 12 or 24 months.

Fourthly, some employers in Australia are using SMS to communicate with their employees. There is a system called MessageNet which allows employers to easily set up rostering, sms groups and reminders.

This concept seems complicated so I will give you an actual example – let us say the local Mcdonalds wants to let all their employees know when a shift becomes available. In the old days, a staff member would have to call every staff member and let them know, and ask them if they wanted to work the shift. They would have to leave voicemails if someone did not answer. If you have 60+ casual staff members, calling all of them can be time consuming.

With MessageNet, you can easily and quickly send one SMS to all your staff, saying “Shift available 12/4/15 from 4pm to 10pm call X number to claim this shift” – and within minutes of sending that SMS, it is likely a staff member will call in and claim it. The other possible business uses for SMS are enormous and potentially save time, money, and hassle.

And finally, SMS confirmation has become a big thing in Australia. It started out mostly with banks and online transactions sending confirmation codes to your mobile, but it has not ended there.

I now get many appointment confirmations via SMS. My hairdresser, my doctor, my psychologist, my employment agency.. all of them will send me an SMS on the day before my appointment. I have to reply with Yes to confirm my appointment. This is actually brilliant and something I encourage greatly. I am certain this has cut down hugely on missed appointments and helps businesses to reschedule when someone has to cancel.

I track my prescription medications via a phone app that my pharmacy uses. I find most pharmacies now have one of these apps. Not only does it alert me when I have 7 days left of medicine, but within the app, you can set up a daily reminder to take it.

These days, I even order our pizza via a phone app. Our local wood fired place has an app of their very own, and it is brilliant. I can even order salad at a local healthy food place via an app.

I Am Not A Slave To My Phone –

But even with all these awesome apps and sms notifications, I am *determined* not to be constantly tied to my smart phone. How does one manage this? I try to keep some degrees of separation. Here’s how I roll –

– I don’t use my phone in the car when I am driving. EVER. It only takes a few seconds and you’re dead or you’ve killed someone else. If you do use your phone in the car, please, I am begging you, STOP doing that.

– I don’t have apps like Facebook or Twitter or Instagram installed. I did have Facebook once but I uninstalled it when they updated their messenger app so it would put peoples profile photos on my phone desktop, which was downright spooky and a bridge too far for me.

– I don’t have a lot of games installed on my Samsung Galaxy. I still have my iPhone and that contains my phone games – but that phone does not have a sim card. I find it useful to have degrees of separation between games and phone – this is very awesome for me.

– My phone does not go to my bedroom. It has a home and a charging station next to my recliner. This gives me sleep time free from buzzing and phone noise. It also means when I wake up, I get me time instead of phone time.

– I have a block on my phone between 10:30pm and 8am which turns all noise on my phone to silent without vibration, so there is no way I can hear any phone noises or buzzing from the bedroom.

– I have a camera ability on my phone, but I also have a cute little Panasonic Lumix which I use for photography, so I can keep photography and my phone separated when I want to.

– I deliberately do not have every email account I use hooked up to my phone. I select which email accounts I want to be able to reach me if I am out and about and I can turn them on and off easily.

– The Other Half and I use an app called Kakao Talk to communicate with each other for free. There are other apps you can use for this, too. The major benefit for me is this – messages from him have a very specific tone alert so I know when he is messaging me.

Toxic Relationships

It does worry me that some phone-using people – in particular younger generations of people – seem to be heading down a potentially not great path into a toxic relationship with their smartphone and in some cases their tablet. I’ve been to restaurants where people are sitting there doing stuff on their phones instead of being in the moment with each other. I’ve been to movies where people cannot resist the pull of the phone.

Nev Schulman from Catfish wrote an article on this subject – The Reasons Why Your Cell Phone Is Slowly Killing You. Of most concern to me is the new generation of hunchbacks we are creating.

I also saw this article –Trying to Live in the Moment (and Not on the Phone) – after reading it, I decided to install the app Checky. It turns out that I check my phone on average 15-20 times a day. At least 2-5 of those will be replying to messages from The Other Half. One of those will be turning off my medication alarm.

Live In The Moment

I was already thinking about living in the moment for a few different reasons –

– seeing so many photos of the 747-400 coming in to land at Illawarra Airport where almost everyone there has a phone they are holding up, taking either still images or video.

– seeing people at various events using their phones to capture moments which they would never bother to get an actual camera out for.

– seeing people using phones in social situations like restaurants and cinemas.

How do you handle your smart-phone usage?

Aussie Culture, internet, life lessons, things to remember, Worried Snoskred

Generators

but7

This post has been sitting in my drafts folder since November 2014 and I finally got around to completing it. I love me an internet generator! Here are some of the more awesome ones –

Goth-O-Matic – my all time favourite generator – create your own darkly gothic poem! You get to choose from drop down options.

Meme Generator – With built in images and characters.

Internet Anagram Server – ever wonder what other words can be made out of your name? Use this generator to find out. :)

Strong Random Password Generator – if you need some new passwords this generator can help out.

Random Number Generator – need to draw a prize or choose your next lotto numbers?

Harvard Referencing Generator – This generator is super useful for those writing essays that need references.

Lorem Ipsum – generates random latin text.

List of Text Generators – want more generators? This is a good place to start. There are quite a few Haiku generators listed here. :)

This post about some of my favourite internet generators was inspired by this post from Heather Woodland – Marzipan cake fruitcake tart cheesecake sweet lollipop chocolate cake

funny, internet, Linkage, yay

Some Fun Time

lavender1

Recently here on the blog, we have seen a lot of very serious scam posts. However, I will like you to know that baiting the scammers can be a fun thing as well..

Today I have a blast from the past to share with you – please click through and read this blog post from October 2007 –

A Journey Along The Road To Stopping Online Scammers

I might consider doing this again – it has been a while since I’ve done much fun scambaiting stuff. ;)

funny, internet, looking back, scambaiting, Who Is Snoskred

Recipe Saves

Untitled - 106

Savory Saves –

Recipe: Oven Cooked Risotto – I am totally going to perfect this recipe and I think I will use my roasting pan.

Prosciutto, Pea and Lemon Pasta – I think I would try to use not frozen peas if I were to make this, and I would likely sustitute bacon in for proscuttio. But this leads me to ask myself why can’t I just make a recipe as it is written, why must I Jamie Oliver it up every time?

Eggs Benedict Casserole – There are times when I have a lot of eggs and this recipe seems like it was made for those times.

Sweet Potato Spinach Mac and Cheese – This is a recipe I will make but I will use A2 milk in place of almond milk. I have a stash of A2 longlife UHT milk as well, in case we ever run out. Yes, I am a believer, regular milk does not love me much. :(

cauliflower cheese – I deeply love cauliflower cheese.

The Best Guacamole Recipe. – I will make this and love it, sometime soon.

Sasha and Malia Obama’s Favorite Mac and Cheese – I am a huge Michelle Obama fan, I have a somewhat irrational love for her.

Seriously the base recipe is amazing *and* it skips making a roux, which was one of the first things I mastered in the kitchen. A roux is the base for several of my recipes – however there are days (especially hot days) when I just don’t feel like making one. You can easily use this as your base for all roux-required recipes if you so desire, I have done from time to time. This recipe is so versatile. Here are a couple of quick things you can add to the simple cauliflower, milk, cheese and herbs base to make into a meal –

Chicken, Bacon, Mushrooms, Spring Onion.

Tuna, Broccoli, Leek, put some tomato slices and Parmesan on top, bake for 20 mins till top is crispy.

You can find a couple more awesome Michelle Obama recipes here –
Healthy Recipes From The White House To You – the broccoli soup is great as well especially if you add some Parmesan or blue cheese.

Coconut Lime Baked Chicken with Coconut Mango Sticky Rice – Yes to this. One day I will make this. I think this would work really well with drumsticks and wings, too.

Slow Cooker Chicken Wings – 5 Super Varieties – Speaking of chicken wings.. :)

Blood Orange Thyme Roasted Chicken – This combined with my roasting pan would = epic win, I think. :)

Sweet Saves –

Booze Baking: RumChata Cheesecake – I do not even know what Rumchata is, which may impact on my success with this recipe considering it calls for 3/4 of a cup of it.

Christmas Pear, Cinnamon & Ginger Chocolate Glazed Cheesecake – This is a recipe I am deeply unlikely to ever make for us at home, but I like to think I could make it, if people in my house ate pears. I might make it if I am going somewhere that people will eat pears. But why on earth do I save these recipes knowing I am unlikely to ever make them? WHYYYYYY?

Gingerbread Heads – You will never believe me when I say this, but I *did* make this gingerbread. It is everything you want a gingerbread to be. I should have halved or even quartered the recipe, though. Anything that says 5 cups of flour is overkill in my house. So, There Was An Incident, which we will not go into the details of, when I tried to make it in my mixer which is not large enough for this dough. I still have two large logs of this dough which I froze. I did not decorate the results, because I am a terrible cake and cookie decorator.

key lime pie – I love Key Lime Pie. I have never made it. This year is the year, it will happen! ;)

Raspberry Chocolates – I will probably make this to take along to school one day. Though, as I have a chocolate from scratch recipe I love, I will likely stick to that one – Making Chocolate From Scratch!

Salted caramel pudding – I love Salted Caramel, so, so, SO SO much.

Salted Caramel Chocolate Cups – gorgeous pics. I will make this one day.

Blueberry Pie Bars – I deeply love blueberries. I will make this!

Healthy Homemade Chocolate Paddle Pops – I love me some Milo.. :)

Fudge for all – I have made this fudge many times now, however, I just make the cookie part and skip the chocolate. Bizarre, I know, but I have to tell you this is one of my all time favourite desserts and super simple. If you make it with Anna’s Ginger Thins.. swoooooon!

Just a side note, why are so many bloggers using all caps for titles on their blog posts these days? You can do that with CSS instead, so when people like me try to copy your title, we get it in regular letters. :)

cooking, get organised, internet, Linkage, recipes

My Saves

grev

My Next Confession –

I save links, to go back to when I have more time and/or to share them here on the blog.. forgive me internet for I have saved, bookmarked, and foldered my way into one heck of a mess..

I have already confessed to you that I save recipes. I usually try to have one folder for recipes and one for other stuff but lately I have been failing to keep them separated..

Here is my present saves folder – this one scrolls down for 3 more pages past what you see here –

saves1

Yes, I like my chocolate peanut butter fudge with a side of Confessions from a Mortician. Don’t judge me, mmkay?

Even worse, here is a folder from the start of 2013!

saves2

I don’t need to tell you it is now 2015. But perhaps I need to tell *me* that. :)

Anyway I think the time has come for a clean out. So over the next couple of weeks, I’m going to post a selection of my saved links along with why I saved them, if I can recall that. This week it is NON recipe links.

10 Snoskred Saved Links

1. 5 ways I stay sane online – I saved this because I think I could use these ways to be more sane online, especially the first one, pocket, that could be super helpful to me now I will be out at school. It is essentially my saves folder made mobile.

2. Last Minute Gift – DIY Coasters – I saved this because I think I could actually make this and it would be awesome.

3. This Woman Creates Something Phenomenal Out Of A Family Photo And Wood – I saved this for the same reason as above. Love!

4. Easy Valentine Necklaces – Speaking of love, I saved this because I had never heard of this form of Mod Podge before and I deeply love the form of Mod Podge I know about, so this is a reminder to hunt down this dimensional magic.

5. 25 plus size bloggers to follow on Instagram in 2015 – I saved this because while I do not instagram, there are some people here I have not seen before and they might have blogs I can subscribe to.

6. Mötley Crüe are calling it quits. – I saved this to send to The Other Half, plus, Tommy Lee has a drumming rollercoaster? I will like to know more about this! That shiznit I got to investigate further.

And I did google that, and I found out it is the slowest rollercoaster of all time, but it does some neat tricks. I even have a video for you but I warn you of two things – the sound quality is terrible so turn it right down and/or hit mute – and there is some swearing at the end, which won’t be a problem if you did hit mute or turned the sound right down. Tommy Lee Drum Rollercoaster

7. Post Crossing – I saved this because it might be awesome.

8. Coronial Findings NSW – I saved this because these are always interesting to read and I did work experience in a Coroners Court, many years ago.

9. Emergency Department Waiting Times
– In Major NSW Public Hospitals – I saved this because handy to have just in case.

10. Boot Camp: About keyboards and key assignment for Microsoft Windows – I saved this back when I had a Mac. I think I can delete this now. But anyone reading this with a mac might find it useful.

And a special bonus link –

Who’s Laying, Who’s Not – for anyone who keeps chickens or is considering keeping chickens this is worth reading, especially the last two paragraphs.

Next week – Recipe links. I might post more than 10, because I have a lot of them. :)

About Snoskred, get organised, internet, Linkage

Confessional

20130111-175305.jpg

~ Coconut Mango Chicken ~

There is something you don’t know about me. I figure I should just come clean and admit it.

…………. drumroll

I secretly hoard recipes on the internet in my bookmarks folder.

Currently I have 170 of them.

And this does not count recipes I have printed and stashed in the kitchen in various locations.

I know. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. You probably bookmark recipes in your travels too.

What *is* wrong is, I rarely make any of these recipes.

I am essentially bookmarking them in the event that *one day* I might get around to it. Some of them are extremely complicated and demand kitchen skills I do not possess.

But one of the blogs I read – Casual Kitchen – posts a lot of easy to make, quick and simple recipes that I have made and do make. Today Daniel posted links to two really awesome posts which contain 25 recipes each and if you cannot find one thing there to try, then you are probably a kitchen wizard or a TV chef. :)

The 25 Best Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen

MORE! Top 25 Laughably Cheap Recipes at Casual Kitchen

Chicken Mole has been on my list for a while, I’ll give it a go and let you know. :)

About Snoskred, food, internet, Linkage

Keeping Confidences.

Some of you would know that I’ve been involved with AKMuckraker and The Mudflats since September, 2008. We’ve been through a lot in the past few years, many stressful situations which we have worked through together as well as the rest of The Mudflats Admin & Moderation team. I consider her to be a good friend.

AKMuckraker (Jeanne Devon) and her good friends Ken Morris and Frank Bailey (A former aide to Governor Palin) have collaborated together on a book. It was released yesterday in the USA.

51jmkbufu9l

Also released yesterday were several “tweets” from Rebecca Mansour, a current aide of Sarah Palin.

What a top aide to Sarah Palin really thinks about Mitt Romney, Bristol Palin, Erick Erickson and more

Though whether she is still an aide remains to be seen – Palin has a habit of throwing people under the bus for much less than Mansour is guilty of.

During the time I have worked with AKMuckraker, there have been times when she has shared confidences with me. Never in a million years would I think to share those with anyone else, not even the admin & mod team, without her express permission. Certainly not with someone I’ve never met whether or not I trusted them.

When someone tells me something and tells me to keep it in the vault, with me, it is LOCKED IN THAT DARNED VAULT and it isn’t coming out until that person tells me otherwise.

Mansour betrayed Sarah and her family, and thoroughly deserves to be thrown under the bus. When someone trusts you and allows you to be a part of their “inner circle” you have a responsibility to keep your mouth firmly zipped..

Even worse – if this is what she was saying to someone she never met, what the heck is she saying to people she knows?

Apparently the person who was tweeting with her had 122 tweets from her which he was willing to sell. The people he ended up giving them to (nobody would buy them) have not shared all of them but you can view the ones they did share here and here.

My personal favourites with the irony in bold –

19:23:35: Listen: I tell you things I wouldn’t tell anyone tho I have press hounding me for the info I tell you. I trust you even tho I’ve never met u

19:28:55: Nothing we can do when someone behaves stupidly.

Ain’t that the truth!

Angry Snoskred, anonymity, internet, Internet Safety, Sarah Palin, The Mudflats, The Vault, Who Is Snoskred