Sep
30
2009

I miss you too, mom!

I’m taking a social media class, and we have been assigned to blog at least twice a week with “significant” posts on the class’s private social network. I’ll be reposting my articles (with some edits) here on Tumblr for all to see.

So I’ll be the first to admit that, yes, I’m a bit of a loser being 23 and still living at home with my parents. But taking 21 credit hours and keeping up two part-time jobs, one could understand that I am never at home. Literally, during the week I see my sisters and parents for the hour or so before they go to bed at night, and maybe in the first few minutes of the day before I leave for school.


This morning I woke up, dropped my youngest sister to school, came back home, and did my morning routine of preparing for today’s classes. As I was leaving the house, my mom was on Skype talking to our family in the Philippines. When she discovered it was me leaving for class for the day, she came to the door and gave me a little hug, and said, “I miss you Tom!”

Oh dear, that just about broke my heart.

The kicker was when I get into my car, and 89x Morning is on. At the time they were talking about boyfriends being too attached to their mothers. I got a little laugh out of that, what are the odds that my mom would tell me she misses me, and they’re talking about sons being too attached to their mothers. It was kind of like hearing the perfect song on the radio for a certain situation.

I don’t think I’m especially close to my mother, no more so than some of my other friends. I don’t tell her every secret, but I keep her well informed about what’s going on in my life. But I think that feeling, even though I don’t miss her all the time, just adds up over time. Family’s important, and that will never change with me.

posted 5 months ago

Sep
15
2009
Sep
14
2009
Sep
09
2009
Aug
31
2009

A Brief Story of Recent History (Abridged)

I’m taking a social media class, and we have been assigned to blog at least twice a week with “significant” posts on the class’s private social network, hosted on ning.com. I’ll be reposting my articles (with some edits) here on Tumblr for all to see.

My name is Tommy.

Now that the hard part is out of the way, let me tell you about myself. I am currently 23 years old and born in Detroit, live in St. Clair Shores (“the SCS”), and work at a video game retailer that many people stop at. I’m also working at the school’s eLearning office, where I generally am awesome. I’m half-Filipino, half-American/German/Russian/Prussian/Polish/etc. but usually just default to the possibly-racist label of general “Asian”, which I’m moderately comfortable with.

When I’m not being awesome at school or work, I’m out being awesome just hanging out with friends getting into debates over ninjas vs. pirates or sharks vs. cats, traveling across state borders, and listening to rock music. As much as all that sounds awesome, in actuality I’m probably reading or reblogging posts on my Tumblr, or playing Team Fortress 2 with real-life friends online.

I originally started at this school in Fall 2004 after graduating high school. Back then, and up until spring ‘07, I was enrolled in the mechanical engineering program. Late-06 into early-07 I realized how much I wasn’t into engineering at all, and I discovered (re-discovered?) a kind of passion I have for video. In December ‘07 I began classes at Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts, graduating from the TV/video broadcast program the following August. I returned here in January ‘08, enrolling in the Media Communication program, bringing me to today, with the lovely people all around.

Since then, and even before then, I had a certain interest in video, and the literal explosion of video sharing services online, and mainstream media’s response and attempt at integrating new media into their programming has absolutely piqued my interest. In an interesting turn of events involving podcasters and beer (more on that in the future), I discovered the video sharing site Vimeoand its great community of videographers. Coincidentally (or not), I also found out that Vimeo was owned by a parent company that owns CollegeHumor.com, which I loved visiting back in the ol’ high school days. In 2007, a Vimeo meetup in Brooklyn led me to meeting many great people, even having some CH guys serve me beer (thanks fellas!)

Many videographers on the site continue to inspire me, although I’m a little shy with posting work of my own. The little work I’ve done I’m proud of, and from what I hear from friends, it’s not bad.

I spent a month this past summer in the Philippines, meeting family I’ve never met before, and experiencing another culture, and indeed another world. I’m still going through the 3,000 pictures my family took, along with the hours of video as well. Eventually I’d like to do something with all that. The experiences there were worth more than money, and helped to ground me as to how lucky we are in our Country, and how lucky I am to be able to experience all that.

Although it still perplexes me how I could readily get Wi-Fi in the Philippines, yet none in Alabama.

I stand today on the edge of what I call my Death March to Graduation™. The DMG™ this semester is 21 credit hours of class, in addition to my aforementioned on-campus and register-jockey jobs. But with the majority of my classes being involved in my field, I feel little anxiety, and even excited for those classes. I get to play with the internet and video cameras, come on, how awesome is that?

And as for anything related to this class, my writing style is random, sporadic, and very very sarcastic. So yeah, suck it (don’t).

posted 6 months ago

Mar
19
2009

Facebook Rant: Why they’ll never charge (and why people are dumb)

Originally posted as a Facebook note entitled: “Why Facebook will never charge (aka you’re all stupid)”

Recently, I’ve seen a number of friends join the “Don’t charge for Facebook” groups. First off, you’re all idiots, and that’s okay, I still love you. I actually did join one of these groups, only to post a very similar rant on their forum, but my post was either lost or deleted. Meh.

Facebook will never charge you to use their site. It is far from their best interest to do so. See those completely unrelated boxes on the right side? Those are ads. Advertising pays for Facebook, the same way it pays for 90% of the content on the internet, all of your network and non-premium tv, your magazines, your (dying) newspapers, and your morning radio shows. Essentially, all of the media around you.

So we’ve established ads pay for Facebook. Duh. But wouldn’t charging a fee for an ad-free Facebook make more money than what the ads bring in? Not necessarily. While on the surface it’s a good idea, there are a number of things outside of money that would adversely effect the site. Facebook is a community, and charging users segregates the community. Not only that, paid users usually demand more than an ad-free experience, and if paid users were given preferential treatment, that would only serve to segregate the community more (aka “free” users asking why they’re not getting some killer feature in the “paid” version, etc.)

That paid model works in certain circumstances, such as Flickr or Vimeo, but on a site where people are to connect on a level playing field, again it just segregates the larger community.

Going back to advertising - it’s in Facebook’s greater interest to get as many users possible to sign up. More users = more eyeballs glaring at the advertising. With more eyeballs looking at the advertising, Facebook can then go to their advertisers and tell them that there are x number of people in this demographic, more than the competition (who is more Twitter now than Myspace), and charge the advertisers more money. Essentially, more eyeballs = more money.

Which makes me laugh when I see all these “Facebook will begin charging their users” groups popping up, because really what you’re doing is creating more attention around something, creating more page views, and more eyeballs on the advertising. In a kind of screwy ass-backward way, the “No Paid Facebook” groups are keeping Facebook from going the paid route, but the issue is that it’s not an issue in the first place.

And that bring up my biggest pet peeve - all the “I hate the new Facebook” groups that inevitably occur when Facebook makes a change. If you really, really dislike the way it is, leave. The complete irony in using a service to talk down upon it boggles me a bit. No one is forcing you to stay on Facebook. By not only staying on Facebook to complain about it, you’re actually giving them page views, your eyeballs, and money to complain.

The more activity you have on Facebook, the more you ensure it’s survival. A few years ago, LiveJournal made a change in their Terms of Service that its users did not like, and the community there came up with a site-wide day where no one was to post. That day, traffic on the site spiked as thousands of users posted, “I’m not going to post for 24 hours.”

The point of my rant? Complain more. It amuses me and keeps the site running.

posted 12 months ago

Mar
16
2009

The Cruiser is dead. Long live the Compass!

(note: originally posted on Facebook with tagged friends, since I had alot of friends asking about it.)

Yes, my beloved PT Cruiser is dead. That poor old vehicle has transported me across the midwest, Chicago to New York, Toronto to Alabama. Needless to say, I’ve had many many memories in the old girl, from friends to lovers. Killing the Cruiser is like killing a part of me - I’ve been driving her for the better part of 7 years, up until last Sunday. I’d like to say that she went down in a blaze of glory, but that’s not the case.

My sister was in the blind spot of a merging car on 696 eastbound just before the 94 interchange. She swerved out of the way, but lost control of the Cruiser, spinning out of control, and going up the grass embankment. Overall she didn’t hit anything with the body of the Cruiser, however she caught the edge of a concrete barrier, hitting it with the front left and rear left wheels. This flattened and severely dented the rear left wheel, and flattened the tire as well.

The mortal damage, however, comes from the rack-and-pinion steering being destroyed from the front left wheel impact, breaking the tie rods, and puncturing the transmission. With the steering rack destroyed (one super-expensive repair job) and the transmission also destroyed (another super-expensive job) the insurance company declared the old girl a loss, as the repairs cost more than the book value of the vehicle.

This was all last Monday, the first day of my Spring Break.

Wednesday and Thursday I sadly emptied out the Cruiser, removing all the buttons I had attached to the headliner, and the junk that sat in the back of the car (including a George Foreman Grille that had been in there for nearly a year.) What got me most was when I realized that the dead Cruiser sat behind the Chrysler bump shop, only a few hundred feet from where I first saw her, as a 14/15 year old about 9 years ago.

It’s sad, and I’ll miss the poor girl like I miss old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time… except I’ll never see the Cruiser again.

Compass?
My dad has been working with Chrysler for over 30 years now, and has had money invested in the company for the greater part of that time. However, with the uncertainty of who/what will be owning the company in the next few years (or even six months), my dad was offered to either collect his investment in one lump sum, or in payments over the next few months/years.Again, due to the uncertainty, my dad decided on the lump sum.

His plan was to either buy my mom a new vehicle, passing her current van down to my sister, or buy a car for my sisters, sometime in the next few months.

Well, this screwed up his timetable and the overall plans. We dropped by the Chrysler/Jeep dealership on Thursday, and we picked out a mew white Jeep Compass. Even though my dad suggested picking up another PT Cruiser, I said no… you can’t replace the Cruiser like that.

So the Jeep Compass is the closest thing to a Cruiser without getting a Cruiser, in my opinion. We pick up the new car on Monday.

One thing, though, is that I don’t really feel deserving of <i>another</i> car for me. In reality the Cruiser, and the Compass, are “family” cars that my sisters and I are to share, but for quite a few years, I was the only other driver in the family besides my parents, more or less making the family Cruiser my own for that time.

I still feel undeserving of a new car, and I feel like maybe this entire entry is just one long White Whine. While friends of mine are having much bigger difficulties… I don’t know.

Nevertheless, I’m gonna miss the Cruiser. So many good memories made in that car, and made possible by that car. The Cruiser is dead. Long live the Compass!

posted 12 months ago