Bloody vandals

Someone just wrote on my wall and someone else poked me. What's more the first I knew anything about it was when I got an email.

Yep I'm learning a new language that you probably all recognise as face book. Don't laugh but, when you don't know how it works it's all a bit bizarre.

When I got back from the caravan I thought I'd check out Poet and Zoe's blogs to see what had been happening. Nothing it would appear. I am beginning to suspect from Zoe's last post that someone has indeed seen her with a ciggy and shot her. Only herself to blame really because that what she said they should do. As for Poet! I became concerned that she and K had become locked out of their house. I thought they had maybe gone to the deck, forgot their keys and were now fighting off bears.

In Poets post she had mentioned face book. There was a link to it on her site. I clicked the link but it took me to a log in page. Now I've been confronted by this sort of skulduggery before. My wife once wanted to check someones BEBO page so we had to create a log in and then delete it afterwards. So this was to be my cunning plan. Create a log in, see what was there, and then leave.

Now normally if I'm doing something like that I have the foresight to use my gmail address that I created when I created this blog. It's a legitimate address but allows me to remain anonymous. If I hadn't mentioned it T isn't my first name and Quittin isn't my surname (I'm truly sorry if I've burst any ones bubble with that information). Anyway without thinking I entered my actual email address and clicked the 'create account' button or whatever it was called. This took me to step 2. Step 2 still puzzles me a wee bit so if someone can tell me definitively how it works I would be interested.


Step 2 was to add friends. What surprised me was that there were three photographs of three people I knew already there to get me started. One was my aunt, another was a mate from the pub where I used to stay and still catch up with every so often and the final one was a bloke that I went to college with to do a course in 2005/06. Whilst all three have now received a 'friend request' (only my aunt hasn't accepted. What is it they say about blood being thicker?)but I have to say that they were an odd collection to turn up by default. How did it know that they knew me? I think these three may have allowed face book to access their email contacts and I've been lurking there from some dark and distant past.

The next bits were also about adding friends. It offered the option to raid my email contacts (no thanks) and then also showed me pics of folk I might want to add based on the three amigos that we started with. Great idea this; If I like someone and they like someone then the someone they like will like me, I think. I'm not sure that my aunt would be all that interested in my mate from the pub or that he would take to my mate from college. Maybe I'm wrong and this is how great friendships now start. It could also start a lot of random stalking me thinks.


Anyhow being a miserable git I declined all future friend requests until I found out what happened with the first three. So I was now live on Face book (did I ever mention the danger of leaving me bored at a PC?). I had assumed that, since I'd used a link on Poets site that I would be taken to Poets page but I wasn't. Instead I had a rather bald looking profile page called after me.

Now I should have just left it that way but, what about the friend requests that I had sent out? They would need some details to identify me. What I should do therefor is check out their pages to see what sort of stuff you should put. This I did. Why does everyone else seem to have a great photo for these things and I never do? Even as kid anything that needed a pic just got a randomly cut out pic from a holiday snap. My driving license has one that I photo shopped the background out of. Anyway I found a pic of me looking a bit dishevelled and dodgy on a bench by the sea. If you knew me and half shut your eyes you'd recognise me. If you didn't know me then you would probably pick me in a police line up anyway. I do look a bit criminal.

OK so now I had a profile that Interpol and the FBI can look up when they want to create criminal personality types. Now I could track down Poet. Might even send a friend request (get me with the lingo already). Nope. Couldn't be found. Searching Canada on foot might have been quicker. Hmm that makes me think of someone else I could look up.... Yep that's what happens. You just keep thinking hmm that's someone else I could look up. I stopped myself from sending bizarre friend requests (based on the fact that I might have had a drunken conversation with you once in a pub but your friend didn't like me)and only sent one friend request to a pal I had lost touch with. I spent about an hour in all and then gave up.

Sometime later when opening outlook.... Between the spam for the Orleans Casino Vegas (why can't they just f**k off) and the job sites that completely ignored the job specs I gave them and send me totally inappropriate jobs I found the following;


'Brian has accepted your friend request' and then another saying that 'Brian wrote on my wall'!!!!! At this point I was only aware of certain walls belonging to me and I really didn't want anyone writing on them. What the hell? Gavin had also accepted me as a friend but had the decency to leave my walls alone. Well I thought he was decent until I got to my home page and discovered that he had 'poked' me. (Couldn't they have come up with a different term? Nudged? Nodded? Poked just sounds wrong). I had the option to 'Poke back'. I selected this option assuming that it would open up a message box for me to write something witty. Nope it just said that I had poked Gavin. I feel a bit guilty now. Should I have said something? I've no idea? How do I even know if he's online or if he poked me hours ago

To make matters worse I then wrote on Brian's wall. I tried to be witty but then thought.. He'll see the funny side but will everyone else who ever views his profile? I haven't found a recall button yet.

I also discovered that you can 'like' things in face book (FB to it's friends). Around 2 million people apparently like Cheryl Cole but I settled for liking a site called Big on Glasgow. What happens is that it and another site that I've mentioned on here, Redmond Pie, appear blog like as news whenever I open Face book. I must sound like someone from the stone age here but it's all a bit confusing. If I wanted to see those blogs I'd just go to them via favorites. Why do they appear in my news.

I'm filing this post with tags for both blogging and PC in the hopes that anyone who uses those links at the side of this blog feels my pain and leaves me some tips to help me out.

Later

T