People You May Know (Or Not)

"Add this person, you have 17 mutual friends!" Facebook tells me. But is that really a lot? I mean, 17 friends in common is only about 5% of my 300+ Facebook friends, and an even smaller percentage of her 600+ friends. Facebook recommends I add a lot of people I've never even met just because we have more than two mutual friends. And half the friend requests I get nowadays are from people I'm not eve sure I know--I have little doubt it's because people flip through their recommendations and add anyone with a seemingly large amount of common friends.

Facebook could curb such confusing instances if it based those friend recommendations on percentage of mutual friends, not just the number itself. For instance, it makes sense to recommend someone who shares 47% of your friend list, doesn't it? That could be hundreds of users, depending on your activity on the site. But what about someone who shares 47 of the 1028 friends on your list? That isn't even 5% common friends. What's even the point of saying you might know each other? Why doesn't Facebook skip the recommendation and find someone with higher percentage chance of you knowing them?

Of course, the percentage system isn't perfect. What may be only a handful of friends on your list could very well be half of someone else's. That's really the biggest problem with basing recommendations off of percentage of mutual friends: users with hundreds of friends could possibly see fewer recommendations than those who are new to the site or those who are stingy with the Add Friend button. And the likelihood of users finding it harder to expand their friend list after it grows beyond a certain point poses a great threat to a site that feeds off user connectivity as voraciously as Facebook does.

I suppose that's why Facebook bases friend recommendations on number of friends in common, though. =/

Messages Unsent

I made it a new year's resolution to write more often, thinking that I hadn't done enough during 2011, outside the writing required for classes. But writing is more than pencil and paper. I looked at my phone's drafts folder, where it saves text messages I type up but never send, and it turns out there are quite a few. They're mostly ideas for tweets that don't turn out as funny or witty as I intend, or one-liners for songs/poems I want to remember for later. Others are just thoughts and oddities I should write more to. Point is, I wrote more than I expected, even if it wasn't in my usual medium.

So, I thought I'd share a few of these drafts with you. Enjoy!

Songs that sound ineresting: An American Elegy, To Challenge the Sky and Heavens Above, Shenandoah by Frank Ticheli, The Whistler and His Dog

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A pastor doing cartwheels. That's hilarious.

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"If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it." ~Matt Taibbi, on Occupy Wall Street

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URGENT: Do NOT walk past band room between 1 and 2. Nick Shannon encounters imminent.

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Overheard at MAC: "Junkyards are so existential."

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11:11 is for people who can't count. It's their favorite time because it's all ones.

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>People playing music from their phones and singing along to it.

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Reminder: draw a P.O. Box

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For some context, the songs that sound interesting are pieces of music I filed while working at MAC, and P.O. is supposed to stand for pissed off. I later drew a picture of a box yelling at the world. Yeah.

Also, mini tangent rant, I put the > < signs before the phrase, like in the ">People playing music..." draft. That's the way I first saw it done. Now I see tweets and Facebook updates like "Stepping out of a hot shower into a cold room<" where the signs come after the phrase. To me, it looks STUPID that way. I don't know why it started being done the other way around, but it needs to stop. Thank you.

To end this on a better note, I did get my hands on some new(ish) music. I got a Best Buy gift card for Christmas, and I spent some of it on the re-issue of Lagwagon's album Let's Talk About Feelings. Here's a track from it I've really been digging.

Music for Christmas

Hello, my avid readers (all two of you!). I've been blogging rather infrequently, but I hope to increase my blogging consistency in lieu of having more time due to the ending semester. Which was actually a pretty good one for me. Starting my second year at MAC, I found myself greeting a ton familiar faces--friends I had made because of classes, theater, and other such connections. I just wish there was more of me, so I could give my time as many of those friends as possible, but c'est la vie.

Anyway, Christmas is drawing nigh (and Hanukkah is a week from tomorrow!), but I haven't yet had my yearly surge of Christmas joy. It's something that sort of happens in my mind where I just think, "Man, this is Christmastime. How awesome!" And seriously, Christmas is the best holiday all year. I don't care where you live or what your religious beliefs are--nothing can top it (although Hanukkah comes close; Hanukkah could be a bad-ass holiday).

I'm particularly liking that I actually have an income this Christmas (I'm on the work study program for MAC's music department--got my first paycheck last Friday!), and I can go out buying gifts for people. I've been trying to mentally compile a Christmas shopping list of things to get my family and at least a few of my friends; again, I wish there was more of me to spend money on all my friends, but oh well.

What I'm not particularly liking is that I'm having a hard time imagining what I would like for Christmas. The same thing happened for my birthday (which was ten days ago today). I just didn't really know what to ask for. Maybe I'm just content with all that I have, or I figure if I want something I should just go get it myself. I don't know.

But I did have a realization. It occurred to me as I was in the green room waiting on the elevator. My friend Spencer was talking with the other theater kids there about the kind of music he was listening to lately. I wanted to pipe in and say something before I had to leave--the elevator was being particularly slow, anyway--but that's when my mind hit a wall. I tried thinking of the newest music I was most recently into, but nothing came to mind. The last musical kick I went on was when Thrice released Major/Minor, but that was almost a month and a half ago. Since then I've been recycling the same 2000+ songs in my iTunes library, hitting the shuffle button every time I plugged into my iPod, passively listening to whatever came up.

Finally the elevator door slid open, and I stepped inside asking myself, "Why haven't I been trying to find any new music?" Well, I wrestled with the question the rest of that day, and I realized that music just hasn't been that accessible to me for the past few months. I only recently started working in the music department, and up til then my funds had been draining slowly. I couldn't really afford to spend money on anything besides food and gasoline, so I had to give up buying any music for a while; I made an exception for Thrice's latest album because they're one of my top two favorite bands. Other than that, I've been in a musical drought.

But that brings me back to Christmas, and I realized what I want is music. For me, the easiest way to access music is by downloading it through iTunes (I'm such a good little boy, getting my music legally), so although iTunes gift cards have gotten a bad rap as being the I-didn't-know-what-else-to-get-you gift, some iTunes money would make my year. I even have my eye on a few albums that would be so much easier to find in an online store than at Wal-Mart.

So yeah. I don't want this blog to sound like I'm just pouting about what I want for Christmas, so let me conclude by drawing your attention to my blog's shiny new title! Ooh, ah! Okay, so all I did was take out a few words, but I like the change. The way the title was before, I always felt like it was too wordy, too cluttered. But now it's cleaner, more efficient, and hopefully easier to remember and more likable, too.

Golf Course Kamikaze: Hi, I'm Timmy

Deep within the oceans of YouTube, I found a legendary video of Golf Course Kamikaze playing the first song we ever wrote: Hi, I'm Timmy--AKA, The Timmy Song. There's even some pre- and post-song banter included. This was at a show in March earlier this year, the last one we played before our drummer Henry left for military basic training. Good times, good times.

The video was uploaded by a friend named Jason after being recorded in his basement; check out his YouTube channel thedeadpawns to hear his band and the countless others he records and helps out. He's done a lot for GCK, and I owe him more than a shout-out on a blog, but it'll have to do for now. Enjoy!

Why I Should Stop Ignoring Facebook Chat Windows

So last night I was working on homework, or at least trying to--it's hard when all you want to do is update Twitter and make a good play in Words With Friends on Facebook. But as I was on Facebook, I get a chat notification from a kid named Ben, who is the little brother of my friend Adam. Last time he talked to me on Facebook, it was kind of an annoying conversation, and this time I was expecting the same thing, so I didn't reply back to him, didn't even open the window. I just closed Facebook and told myself I really should get back to my homework.

I just now opened Facebook a few minutes ago, and Ben wasn't online (he's no doubt in school right now), but the window was still there. I opened it to read the message, and it said, "happy early birthday."

I feel like a douche. :(

Spring 2012

I met with my adviser last week and set up my schedule for next semester at MAC. Here's what classes I'll be taking:

MWF

10:00-10:50  Foundations of Education

11:00-11:50  General Biology

12:00-12:50  Jazz Ensemble

TR

9:00-10:50  General Biology (lab)

11:00-12:15  General Psychology

2:00-2:50  Beginning Jazz Dance 2

A few things are different about this semester's schedule than for any of my previous semesters. For one, this is the first time I don't have a single English course in schedule. But once the semester gets started and I get an idea of how tough my work load is going to be, I might try to add one. There's a Creative Non-Fiction course I'd like to try, and Mr. Jaycox (my adviser) said he teaches a poetry course.

But the other major change is that I changed my major (DOHOHO!); I'm now getting an Associate of Arts in Teaching English, instead just an Associate of Arts in English alone. That's why I'm taking Foundations of Education this semester. It's also why I'll be at Mineral Area College even longer than I first anticipated. Before, I thought I could graduate during summer 2012, but with the extra education courses I have to cover, I won't get to graduate until at least next fall.

=/

But at least it's just a minor setback. And in the long run, getting a job with a teaching degree will be easier than getting a job without it. And next fall my friend Corey will be attending MAC, which is great because I haven't seen him much at all since we graduated high school. Plus, I have more time to set up courses that transfer to SEMO, which is where I want to go after MAC.

So hey, it looks like I've got a little bit of future lined up for me.

"We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket."
 ~Matt Taibbi