Yosemite snow

Just beautiful...

Are you my friend?

What exactly is a friend?

The world of social networking has radically altered how we use that word. It used to be a lot easier to know if someone truly was a friend or simply an acquaintance, a classmate, a coworker, or a neighbor.

I’ve been grappling with this issue in Facebook as I’ve “purged” some people from my list of friends. Is everyone on my list truly a “friend” or have I sunk to the level of using that word to describe anyone with whom I have some kind of interaction — even if that interaction hasn’t happen since we worked together a decade ago, attend class together in junior high, or interacted a few times when I was a staff pastor?

So far, I don’t have any solid answers. I know that I’ve dropped some “friends” on Facebook who might be hurt that we aren’t “friends” anymore, but did we really still have an ongoing friend relationship? If we visited each other’s city, would we call or email or text in advance so we could get together? If we lived in the same town, would we go to dinner together or hang out with the same group of friends or invite each other into our homes? If one of us was facing a terminal illness, would we spend time with the other or take the family meals or do something else tangible?

In the year 2010, I’m afraid we’ve dumbed down the word “friend” just like we previously dumbed down the word “love.”

How do YOU know if someone is truly a friend? How do YOU differentiate between friends and acquaintances? Do YOU think we’ve dumed down the word “friend”?

Why purge?

I’ve had a few questions about my recent “announcements” to purge some of the books from my collection and some of the friends on Facebook. Why am I doing this?

The answer: I’m bored.

Just kidding.

I’m getting rid of some books because I have too many. I’ve bought and acquired books that I read once and will never read again — but they sit on my shelves collecting dust. Why keep these? Like many people, I battle the temptation to accumulate “stuff” and it isn’t a healthy habit that I want to maintain. I want to purge the excess stuff as much as I possibly can. I will keep certain books — reference books, key resources, books I’ve not yet read, books that hold long-term meaning or value — but I need to release the temporal more.

And as far as friends on Facebook, I have too many people to keep up with anymore. Some people on Facebook never update their statuses, and some people were great to connect with at first, but we don’t have any ongoing interaction through wall posts or status update comments. You got married, have three kids, and successfully lead company XYZ? Awesome! Let’s catch up again in another five years! It’s nothing person; just a need to “clean house” digitally, too.

New Year's Eve thoughts

Some “live” random thoughts I wrote while at a band’s show on New Year’s Eve, taken straight from my PDA:

OK, I’ll confess: I really don’t get screamo music. Heck, I don’t even know if that’s still the word used to describe the genre anymore.

I’m at a show right now, and I left and will return to a NYE party where I only knew a handful of people. One person, Heather, encouraged us all to say people’s names several times as a strategy to learn new names. We'll see how well that ends up working for everyone.

I have a tough time getting into music when I can’t understand the lyrics. Does this make me old? Or some kind of music snob?

Just sent a tweet: “I’m at a concert where I don’t stick out like a sore thumb… just an old thumb…”

For some reason, my gf didn’t see this as a romantic part of the evening. She stayed at the party.

There’s a crowd here of maybe 100. I dunno. I’m not that good at counting crowds. I always think there are fewer people than there really are. I’d make a lousy senior pastor or evangelist.

Did anyone ever tell Mozart or Beethoven: “I just don’t dig your music. It all sounds the same as all the other composers.” Not that Beethoven would have heard the criticism or anything.

Culture is so diverse. As followers of Christ, can we really connect with culture? Or just a certain slice of culture?

No one has ever accused me of having radical musical tastes, though enjoying and appreciating (and playing) classical music in high school certainly wasn’t the norm.

My ears hurt.

10 Random New Year’s Resolutions

1. Avoid giving magnets and bookmarks as Christmas gifts
2. Complain no more than once (per day) about the summer heat
3. Read more of the books I already own
4. Watch my Kansas Jayhawks have another stellar basketball season
5. Watch my hapless K.C. Royals have another hopeless season
6. Buy a new pair of sneakers
7. Pay off my “new” car that’s now 5 years old
8. Wear a tie at least once
9. Create a way to save a table at “my” Starbucks
10. Blog more than once a quarter

Top 10 Reasons I Like Fall (a.k.a. Autumn)

10. It immediately follows summer.
9. It's the only season with two names.
8. It's a nice change of pace from summer.
7. It isn't winter.
6. It's a season of moderation, not extremes.
5. It's something nice to think about in the middle of winter.
4. It means summer has ended.
3. It's cooler than summer yet warmer than winter.
2. It's the most wonderful time of the year.
1. It isn't summer.

Is it fall yet? :)

Is your Starbucks closing?

I have a friend in Turlock who works at one of the Starbucks targeted for closing. I didn't realize they'd made the list public yet. Here are two URLs for the list, if you want to see if "your" store survived the cut:

PDF version/download

HTML version

The location I visit nearly every day isn't on the list, which is good news for me. But it's a bummer about the Turlock store.

Time to garden?

I've thought about creating a garden in my back yard to help cut down on food costs. Of course, "thought about" is a wildly different stage from "did something about." Came across this piece on cnn.com about growing gardens during tough economic times:

As American families try to stretch their food budgets during the recession, some are turning to the backyard, rather than the grocery store, as the place to look for produce.

Recession gardens are catching on with many first-time planters who want a healthy meal at an affordable price.

The gardeners are following seed-strewn paths laid by Michelle Obama and Eleanor Roosevelt, both of whom have used the White House lawn to show the value of a garden during tough times.

The scope of today's trend is shocking even to those in the gardening industry.

W. Atlee Burpee & Co., the largest seed and gardening supply store in the country, says it has seen a 25 to 30 percent spike in vegetable seed and plant sales this spring compared with last.

Look out for the Cult of Snuggie

I asked for one of these for Christmas but was denied. Just kidding. I don't think I'd ever be caught in public wearing a Snuggie... but some people in San Francisco didn't mind:

The faithful lined up, two to three deep at the bar, looking like Druids in electric-blue fleece. Tim Jester and Brian Griffiths, two young San Francisco guys in polo shirts, leaned against a railing, surveying the scene.

They had gone to the Rouge nightclub on Polk Street on a Friday night without any idea that it was the starting point for a 200-person Snuggie pub crawl and were a bit confused.

"I think they need more colors besides blue," Griffiths said. "It needs more diversity."

"It looks cultish. Very cultish," Jester said.

Dedicated wearers of the fleece-blanket-with-sleeves would have a hard time disagreeing with that statement, seeing as many of the hundreds of Facebook fan groups set up to celebrate Snuggies list it as a "religion."

The Snuggie is not the first product to imbue fleece with robelike properties - figure-obscuring leisure wear has been knocking around catalogs for years - but since hitting the market in October, Snuggies have hit a cultural nerve.

Twitter vs Facebook

I use both Facebook and Twitter, although for very different reasons. Twitter can be a fun immediate tool for finding out what friends are doing, but I have a lot more "friends" on Facebook than "followers" on Twitter.

Anyway, I came across this article on SFGate (website for the SF Chronicle) about the relationship/competition/overlap between the two networks.

Increasingly, Facebook and Twitter are overlapping, setting the stage for one of the biggest Silicon Valley rivalries over the next few years.

Both companies want to play a major role in how people communicate online, a potentially lucrative business but one that is hardly settled given the ever-shifting online landscape.

Although different in their approach, both services enable people to post updates about their lives. Did your baby make a funny face? Did you enjoy "Slumdog Millionaire"?

The budding rivalry between the two companies heated up last week when Facebook introduced a major redesign that makes it more of a destination for real-time posts, turf that Twitter is famous for.

There's gonna be a strike in Paris.

So, wouldn't you know it? I'm going over to Paris next week with my dad and stepmom, and it turns out that on Thursday there will be a major strike. If you read French, you can go here and see more. My French is about as rusty as a nail that's endured a dozen Minnesota winters. (I don't know how rusty that nail would be, but it sounded like a good analogy.) All I really know is that Thursday, March 19 will be a great day to WALK around Paris instead of using public transit. And who knows what else will be closed for the day!

I've returned to "my" Starbucks.

After a multiweek absence, I've resumed using a local Starbucks as my office. A few weeks ago, I decided to turn a vacant room in my house into a home office. Within a few days, a guy at church had asked me about the possibility of renting my empty room. After some words of wisdom from my girlfriend, I decided I would sacrifice the home office. With the new roommate's arrival just a couple weeks away, I figured I should get back into the habit of working from Starbucks.

Apparently, I'm one of the "Norms" for this location. They still remembered the details of the drink I buy (venti unsweetened iced green tea, with 5 splendas), and I feel right at home once again. For three days straight, "my" spot has even been open. Sweet!

I need to buy a CD...

In a few weeks, I'm making an international trip, and I need your help. One of my personal traditions is to buy a CD before a trip overseas and listen to it a LOT during that experience. Then, once I'm home, I've made an emotional/memory attachment between that CD and that trip.

The first attachment was accidental, during my first trip with the fam to Europe back in high school. I only had 2 tapes with me (CDs recorded onto tapes, old-school style), so I listened to those 2 tapes for the entire trip. It's been 20 years since that trip, but anytime I hear either CD, I'm reminded of the experience.

So, I'd like your suggestions on a recent/new CD that I should consider buying for my trip in mid-March. No boundaries, no rules on the suggestions. Maybe I'll pick a suggestion that falls way outside my usually tastes. We'll see!

Blogging from the NYMC.

Apparently I'm part of the "official" group of bloggers from this weekend's National Youth Ministry Conference in Columbus, Ohio. Josh Griffin has the whole list on his blog, where I previously made this short, simple statement:

Rob C
i’ll be there but no guarantees on how much blogging or twittering i’ll be doing…

In any case, I'll try to post a few things during the weekend. I'm going to be doing some behind-the-scenes type work, so I don't know how many sessions or workshops I'll be attending. In any case, I'm looking forward to the weekend, seeing a bunch of youth ministry friends, making some new connections, and seeing God do some cool stuff in people's lives.

A cartoon for addicts.

ht to my dad for this cartoon...

Snowy Yosemite.

Yep. A storm came through. That means I must post new pics from the webcams up in Yosemite. Enjoy.

If you Twitter...

Interesting stuff on CNN.com about some awards given out to top Twitter users. If you're like certain people I know, you'll love this info. And if you're like other people I know, you'll run to the hills to avoid it.

LPP: Language Pet Peeves

OK, this won't be a daily item (I hope), but every now and then I run into personal pet peeves in people's language. I'm pickier about written language than spoken language, and a news article is the source of today's LPP:

Fred Karger, founder of Californians Against Hate, said The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints deliberately covered up its financial role in backing Proposition 8 by failing to file timely campaign finance reports as required by California law. Karger said it's possible the church spent millions more than it actually reported.

"I'm calling this Mormongate," Karger said. "I think there's been a massive cover-up."

My comment has nothing to do with Mormonism or Prop 8 or anything along those lines.

I get annoyed by the use of "-gate" for political scandals. It's one of the most cliched phrases out there. Yes, Watergate was a significant event in American history. But come on. Do we have to slap the "-gate" suffix onto every big scandal? Want to see how bad it's become? Check out this link on wikipedia with a whole long list of the "gate" scandals. Absurd, people. Stop it. Now.

Home values stink.

Found an interesting article online this morning. If you don't like reading about bad economic news, don't read this or follow the link to SFGate.com... just a warning.

More than half (57 percent) of 1,573 homeowners surveyed now believe that their home lost value in 2008. That still lags the reality that 76 percent of all U.S. homes declined in value in 2008, according to Zillow's figures.

A full quarter of homeowners had the sunny view that their home's value had increased; in reality, 20 percent of homes did increase in value during the year, according to Zillow's reckoning. Another 18 percent insisted their homes' value was the same, while only 4 percent of homes actually kept their value, Zillow said.

Previous surveys showed homeowners mired deeper in denial, convinced that their own homes were immune to the nationwide plunge in real estate values that started about 2 1/2 years ago. Just six months ago, only 38 percent of people surveyed believed that their homes were declining in value.

AP Stylebook

I bought a new Associated Press Stylebook online today. For those of you who know what the stylebook is, my purchase probably seems odd because I no longer work in the newspaper business. But I need an updated copy because I do freelance for a company that uses AP as the go-to style (not Chicago Manual of Style), so I need a new one readily available.

And for those of you who care, yes, I bought the spiral-bound version.