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Facebook messaging is a lot like email and an online forum rolled into one interface.  You can send your friends a message and they will all see it and each others replies to it – but what happens when you get added to a message you don’t want to be a part of?

I recently was part of a message thread with family when one of our family members used foul language in his reply – which went to everyone in the thread.  Some of the more conservative members of the family were offended and hit the reply all button to say so… As you can imagine – the messages started flying back and forth about not being so easily offended and not being so offensive.  Most of us just wanted to ‘opt out’ of the thread (even the person that started it).

Hitting the delete button removes it from your inbox – but a few minutes later and there is a new reply to the thread and its like you never clicked delete.  You may think this is an issue that Facebook should solve (and you may be right) but its not as simple as you might think.  Sending a message in facebook isn’t ‘like’ email – it is email.  You can’t connect to your mail box with Outlook or Apple Mail – but its a simple mailbox just the same.

What does that mean, you might ask?  Lets walk through it as an email – when you send an email to a bunch of people – they all get a copy in their inbox.  You know that if you then delete your copy – their copy doesn’t get deleted, just your copy.  If they hit reply to all – everyones name in the original message will get their reply – including you.  You can’t ‘opt-out’ from your friends and family sending you email (and you likely don’t want to).

Now – back to a Facebook message – the same technical processes happen as when you send an email – only the user interface (Facebook’s website) shows your inbox to you in a manner that looks like an online forum.  We call them ‘threads’ when in reality, its an email chain.  The one big difference from Facebook and your email inbox – with your email program (gmail, outlook, hotmail, etc) you have the ability to remove people from an email before you hit send.

In Facebook – you can reply to a single person or to all – nothing in between.  Which is the one thing facebook could fix easily – but then it becomes difficult to know if someones name was removed from a message and are no longer getting replies to all (this is the same with email).  For example – you send an email to 10 people. When anyone hits reply to all, all 10 people get the email.  But your friend Bob doesn’t like your friend Bill – so Bob removes Bill from his reply to all.  Now only 9 people get Bob’s reply.  When any of those nine people hit reply to all – Bill won’t get a copy because he isn’t in Bob’s message.  Without looking at who is in the “to” field every time you send a message – you wouldn’t know when this occurred.  I suspect this may be why facebook’s approach is to make their version of email more “user friendly”.  In my experience, “user friendly” equals less functionality.  Removing options makes it simple to use – but with less options!

I think I may have lost most of you by now – but I hope this has helped…

Have you ever tried to call someone that you haven’t talked to in months just to find out that the phone number you have is no longer in service? Or send someone an email to have it bounce back? Maybe they called or emailed you their new contact information and you forgot to update your contact list and now you can’t find that email (although with gmail its almost impossible to lose an email if you know how to search). A lot of phones now are synchronizing their contact information with online services like Facebook and Google. I’m a HUGE Google fan – I use gmail, google calendar, google docs, google contacts, and google voice. When I got the Palm Pre – I fell in love with its ability to sync with Google services for email, calendar, and contacts. On a sidenote – the Palm Pre doesn’t sync google docs YET… So, as a huge Google fan, why do I think Facebook contacts are better? Its simple – Facebook contact information is managed by the contact. With Google – you have to update your contact list when a contact changes their information. With Facebook, however, when a friend of yours updates their facebook contact information – you automatically get the update. If you have a smart phone like a blackberry, iphone, or the superior Palm Pre – then you automatically get the new number and/or email address right to your phone! There are a couple of cons to this – if your friends don’t put their information in Facebook or forgets to update it when a change occurs, you won’t have their info unless you continue to use another contacts program (like Google). And here is why I wrote this article – now that you see how Facebook contacts is superior to other contact

management solutions – you will go update your facebook contact information! You may be concerned about security – you have the ability to set who can see your information – you can have family see all of your information while co-workers only see your cell phone number, etc. Tell me – are you going to update your contact information today? Tell your friends too!

I picked up the new Palm Pre on launch day last month – its the first time I have owned a smart phone – and the first time I have owned the latest phone available. I recently found myself wanting a computer that was more portable than my laptop and I debated Apple’s iPhone (including the new 3Gs), Google’s G1 (the G2 was too far out for me to wait), and the Palm Pre. My contract with Sprint was up at the end of May, so I was truly free to pick any phone. The iPhone is with AT&T and the G1 is with T-Mobile. So why did I pick the Pre and stay with Sprint? One factor was coverage – all three of the carriers have adiqute coverage in my area and in the areas I travel to (N. Carolina, Ohio, California) – none of them have good coverage in Maine or Alaska (I have family in both states). Ok – next is the plan – I’m on the Sprint Simply Everything plan (which should be called the not-so-simple-not-so-everything plan). Its $99 a month and comes with unlimited voice, text, and data (including Sprint Navigation). It doesn’t include phone as a modem (tethering) and you can’t buy the tethering add-on even though they offer the add-on for other plans. But what do the others offer? AT&T has an unlimited plan for $99… plus $30 for iPhone data plan… plus $20 for unlimited texting… plus $10 for AT&T Navigation… that’s a grand total $159 a month! Oh and no, AT&T doesn’t allow tethering either. In their defense, AT&T does offer roll-over minutes and I don’t use more than 1500 anytime minutes often but the two times I did in the last year, I was at 3800 and 3900 mins – maybe they have a plan that is not unlimited that would cover me using roll-0ver for those months, but I don’t want to risk it. And T-Mobile? They have an ‘unlimited’ plan for $99… plus $34.99 for text and data… totalling $133.99. I’m sure I could get a cheaper plan that covered my needs, but what if I found what looked like the perfect plan for 11 out of 12 months? And that 12th month I used 100 or 200 or even 800 minutes over at 25, 35, or 40 cents a minute? Ah… no thanks – I”m not going to risk it. Sprint is the clear winner when you compare plans for a heavy phone user. Most of you guys never go over your 500 or 800 minutes – but I do. Now the phones themselves. The iPhone is nice and has more apps than anyone could ever use, but I don’t like that it doesn’t have a real keyboard – and yes, I’ve used the iPhone software keyboard many times – its not good enough for me to give up a real keyboard. That alone was enough for me to look hard at other phones. The G1 – I’ve only had my hands on this phone a couple of times – I like the flip out landscape style keyboard – but the user interface is rigid and stiff compared to the iPhone. It seems like a silly thing, but the way the iPhone moves between pages is fluid – when you swipe your finger across the screen, the page moves as fast as you swipe, continuing even after your finger is off the screen and when you hit the end of a view and try to keep moving, it does this bounce like thing (sorry for the crude description). The G1, from what I remember, didn’t have that fluidness. I did however love the trackball (similar to what you find on most Blackberry’s today). The Palm Pre – doesn’t have the trackball despite the fact that early images made me believe it would. It does have the fluid movement that the iPhone has but goes way beyond the iPhone with the card view. The new iPhone can multitask but lacks the

flash that the Pre has with the card view. And Pre brings a brand new feature with the gesture bar at the bottom of the device. This is how you can quickly switch between apps without going to the card view, you can go back (like a browser back button), scroll in landscape mode, and bring up the ‘wave’ feature of the quick launch bar. Truly a new feature in the phone market. Bottom Line Sprint has really really bad customer service (from experince) but I rarely need customer service – they have a great price point for the everything plan and the Palm Pre is a much better user interface than any of the other smart phones on the market today. It needs applications – there are only 30 apps in the app store today, the app store is still listed as beta, and there is no clear path to get an app included in the app store for developers. But for me – its still the best phone on the market today!

UPDATE: This method is no longer working. I believe it broke when Facebook moved to friendly names. If I find a working method – I’ll write it up and link it here. ————— I’ve been playing a game on Facebook called Mafia Wars by a company called zynga. Its pretty fun and I’ve learned a trick or two that I don’t mind sharing. The first way to increase your mafia is to invite your friends to start playing the game using the Mafia invites. But you will quickly learn that they limit the number of invites you can send and your friends might take weeks to finally get to your request – and they might still not join your Mafia. So what’s the trick? If you are already Facebook

friends, you can join someones mafia instantly – you don’t have to ask for their permission or wait for their response. Here is how: Go to their profile. It should look something like this

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1114591836

Remove everything from the address bar of your browser EXCEPT the number you see after the “id=” – this is their Facebook id number.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1114591836

Now you just need to add this to the url:

http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/status_invite.php?from=

In the end you should end up with something like this:

http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/status_invite.php?from=1114591836

If your friend plays Mafia, you will be instantly added to their Mafia (and they will be added to yours) without having to wait for them to respond! Now if you don’t have a lot of Facebook Friends or if your current friends aren’t playing Mafia – go to the fan page of Mafia and start adding friends that have commented on the Mafia fan page – add them to a friend list called Mafia with a comment saying Mafia – trust me, they will add you. Once they accept your friend request, you can add them to your mafia using the method above. And if you don’t mind – start with me! To Add me: http://www.facebook.com/addfriend.php?id=1114591836 http://apps.facebook.com/inthemafia/status_invite.php?from=1114591836

Over a week ago a friend of mine from church says – “Hey Dale, you wanna go hiking this weekend?”  I live in a valley where there are more than a few hiking trails available to climb mountains (Denver folk might call them hills).  I enjoy hiking but like the gym its getting to the trail that’s the hard part.  I quickly said yes.

That Saturday we met in the parking lot of Thunderbird Park and started up the trail – it was early in the morning (around 7am), the sun was already up but barely, and at just over 60 degrees, the air had a slight chill in it.  We talked most of the hike, I took a few pictures, and about an hour later we were back at our cars having hiked 2.8 miles.  I had a blast.

Saturday’s are weigh-in day for me on the Biggest Loser Blog Edition contest that I am in – so after the hike I weighed in and found I had GAINED a pound from the week before!  Truth is, I likely gained a few pounds but after a hike like that, I had sweat a couple off bringing my net gain to only a pound.  You can read more about that on my weight loss blog http://iquitagain.com.

Determined to NOT repeat last week’s gain – I decided to go hiking a few times before work.  So Tuesday, I went hiking by myself before work – same trail, slightly faster pace.  I really felt proud of myself at the end.  And even though I had missed working out at the gym on Monday (I’ve been going Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) because I was picking up a new gym membership instead, I still went to the gym that day for lunch – a double workout day!  Very cool.

Thursday I decided to take my son hiking with me.  We left a little early to allow time for a slower pace (he is only 5 after all).  That morning was amazing too.  Zander did great – we talked the whole time.  It was so enjoyable that I told him we would make every Thursday morning our time until it got too hot to go in the morning.  Now, the endorphins most have really been working because I was starting to crave the hike.  That night I convinced Stephanie that we should take the whole family hiking for our normal nightly exercise instead of walking around the neighborhood.  Something about the dirt under your feet is SOOO much better than asphalt and concrete.

I knew Stephanie at 6 months pregnant wouldn’t be able to hike up the mountain like Zander and I had – but there was another trail that looked like it was a bit less climbing and from my crude google maps check also looked like it was close to 3 miles long – only a little bit further than what we walk around the neighborhood.  I told all this to Stephanie and she agreed to go.

I strapped Lexi up using a baby carrying sling that made me look like a very fat woman and off we went.  For the first mile, it was exactly as I had sold it – flat trails with very little climbing.  But then… the trail took a swift turn up the side of the mountain.  I apologized to Stephanie, but since we were over ‘half-way’ and the trail was smooth hard rock (unlike the other trail that had a lot of loose rock you had to navigate) I was able to convince Stephanie that she could make it.  So we started the climb.

After about a mile, the trail that we had expected to make a quick turn down the backside of the mountain back into the parking lot, turned not down but up still again.  We paused.  We had already hiked 2 miles and the sun was starting to set – since I knew this trail was about 3 miles, we only had a little ways left so we pressed on.  When we finally reached the top – I could see the parking lot – but our trail did not head toward it.  It continued away from the parking lot.  So we stopped a hiker going the opposite way if the trail did indeed go to the parking lot – he said “Oh yes, its a loop that goes all the way around”.  Up until this point, we had seen several hikers passing us in both directions.  He was the last hiker we saw on the trail that night.

We pushed on and the wind (which had already been quite strong) picked up.  A wind storm was rolling in and gusts of over 40 miles per hour started to hit us with greater frequency.  The dust and dirt picked up by the wind begain to pelt our legs, back, face… It felt like we were being sandblasted.

The sun was long gone but we still had faint daylight left and I still had hope we would get to the parking lot before it was too dark to see the trail.  On and on we went, a five year old, a pregnant wife, and a husband carrying a toddler on his chest, huddled together pressing on.  At one point I thought about the time Stephanie and I were stuck in Boston walking several miles in a blizard – I’ll save that story for another day.

I apologized profusely as we pushed on.  A few times, Stephanie would grab Zander for fear that the wind would knock him down – it was certainly strong enough to do so.  I had Lexi tucked under the sling to keep her face from the wind and she did not object.  This was incredibly stupid of me to have not properly checked the difficulty and distance of the trail before I put my entire family in the middle of it with fading daylight and incredible winds.

Each crest reviled another dip and another climb in the wrong direction.  After a while, all hope of reaching the parking lot before total night fall was gone – the stairs were slowly popping out of the darkness that decended over us and the fading sunlight had faded completely.  We were officially in the park after sunset which is against the park rules but with over a mile left of hiking there was no solution but to continue on.

We finally reached the point where the trail turned back toward the parking lot however we were now on the far back of the mountain and the parking lot was well out of sight and felt equally out of reach.  The wind died down a little bit making some of this portion of the trail bearable but my mind raced with scenarios where the police would be at the van waiting for us because we are there after dark and our van had an expired three day tag on it (which has since been addressed and now has fully licensed tags).  I thought of everything from getting a ticket to getting arrested for putting my wife and kids in danger.  My wife was thinking of the same scenarios – and every five or six steps, I was offering apologies.

When we finally did find the parking lot – there were no police cars, no flashing blue lights, not even a ranger or ticket under the window wipers.  Only an exhausted family – hungry and weather beaten.  I started to think of more superficial things like the fact that I forgot to bring my Nike+ to know exactly how far we had gone (it was about 4 miles by the way).

I took the family out to dinner that night to make up for my blunder in an effort distract my wife from real anger.  It seems to have worked – the kids quickly forgot about the affair while eating sweet roles before dinner and Stephanie’s only response to date has been “I don’t think I’m going hiking with you again any time soon”…

Put all three in the same room and you are bound to have a blast!  Well – that is if you are a guy that likes cigars and politics!

Tonight I sent Stephanie off to an evening for herself after dinner.  She needed the break – so I cleaned up from dinner, played with the kids for a while, got their teeth brushed, changed them into night clothes and put them to bed without their mommy being home.  I believe she went to a craft or scrapbooking class.  After I had put both kids to bed, I found myself in a quiet home with a mountain of school work, website work, and day job work all piling up, so I started in.

That’s when I heard it – the low humming whine of a sick child.  It was Zander.  The whole family has been sick lately – both kids were coughing and hacking tonight after dinner.  As I sat there deciding if I should go up to check on Zander or leave it be and let him fall asleep, I remembered a moment that occurred years before my mother had passed away, one I hadn’t thought of in years.  We used to live in a small house in Charlotte NC.  Jeremy and I shared a room and I think Mom and my sisters shared a room.  I was most likely 3 or 4 years old.  One night while in that tiny house – I found myself laying on the top bunk of our bunk beds feeling really bad from who knows what illness – and I was whining.  Not crying – not trying to get anyone’s attention – just low hum whining because I was very uncomfortable.

I thought I was being quite enough that no one could even hear me.  I didn’t want to get in trouble for staying up after we were put to bed anyway.  My mommy heard me.  I’ll never forget the light flooding the room as she came in, and how she stroked back my hair (which was likely wet from breaking a fever) and asked – not in the harsh angry tone I might have expected for staying up after I was put to bed – but in a soft loving tone, “Are you OK, baby?”  I felt her love wrapping around me like a big bear hug and all of the sudden I didn’t feel near as badly as before she came in the room.  She prayed for me, closed the door behind her as she left, and turned out the hallway light so that even the little bit of light that was leaking out from under the door was put out.  I fell asleep.

I remember trying to recreate the moment the following night after I was put to bed by humming and whining – but a mother knows the difference between a child in real need and a child seeking attention – she never came in the room that night despite my best efforts – I even found myself getting much louder than the preceding night.  My mother was wise to not come in or it might have turned into a nightly routine.  And I believe with all my heart that if she had come in that second night – I would have long ago forgotten the experience from that first night.  Forever lost would have been the memory of the warmth in her tone, the touch of her hand brushing away my hair, and the Love in her heart pushing away my fears.  I knew everything was going to be OK.

Thank you Mom for knowing when to step in and when to stay back.  I miss you dearly – until I see you there, your memories will stay with me here.

Ahhhh…. I guess I forgot to hit the publish button on this one – I noticed this morning it was in my drafts… Doh – its from the beginning of Janurary – enjoy!

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I cleaned out the garage today – well, it would be more accurate to say I tackled cleaning the garage today because I didn’t finish.  I found boxes that we didn’t unpack from the last move.  They are still packed today but instead of being on the left side of the garage, they are on the right side.  We had boxes that were partially unpacked, and some that were simply raffled through in an effort to find something missing.  It was a mess.

I’m sure the neighbors thought I was having a garage sale since I had everything strung out on the driveway for hours.  I want to get rid of everything – and I spent all day on craigslist posting ads to do so… I took pictures of the BowFlex that’s been in the garage since we moved, a painting that I’ve had since before I got married but will never go on our walls as long as Stephanie has a say about it, four chairs that don’t match anything we own since the matching table was destroyed in the move to Arizona 3 years ago, and another table and chairs that we don’t have room for since the move.  We have a washer and dryer that have seen two different garages over the last 3 years, but not a single a load of laundry… And my wife asks me if we should get a storage unit.

I don’t want more storage, I just want less stuff!

I don’t get people who pay for storage units.  If you can’t use it – get rid of it.  We Americans live in mansions compared to the rest of the world, but we still don’t have enough room for our junk!   I bet there are American’s in heaven right now saying “Really, 2500 sq ft!?! That’s not a mansion? Do you have storage units up here?”…

Ok – I’m kidding with that last one – but its hard to imagine that I live in 2000 square foot home and still have too much junk.

Yesterday was my wife’s birthday.  I normally take her to Red Lobster on her birthday because it is her favorite place to eat, but yesterday she mentioned a place we have never been together that she has wanted to try for a while; A place called Papadeaux.  I had been there a couple of times but always for lunch and never where I was paying the bill.  I knew it was a little more than Red Lobster, but it was Stephanie’s birthday and she had mentioned the place a few times over the last couple of years and we just never had an occasion or opportunity to go.

Now, Red Lobster usually costs us as a family around $50 including the tip.  I knew that Papadeaux was a considerable amount above that – maybe even as high as $75 or $80 for the family – so I was ready for a higher bill and prepared for the ‘sticker shock’ but what actually shocked me wasn’t the price – it was the wait!  The parking lot was packed – and there was a limo sitting out front as well.  A limo!  I thought wow, maybe somebody famous is here – I mean, in these tough times, its not likely that this is a group of prom kids, right?  Nobody famous – in fact most of the crowd there were wearing the same brand of Walmart jeans that I wear.

We had to wait an hour!  An Hour!  Now I know it was a Friday night – I wasn’t upset about the wait – just shocked!  At a place were the lowest plate cost is right at $20  (and that’s for the fried chicken as a seafood place), I couldn’t help but think – this must be a bunch of Rush Limbaugh listeners, because I remember a news headline where he was quoted as saying “I chose to not participate in the recession”.  Then again, it is the beginning of the month – these could be a bunch of Demecrates having just gotten their welfare check… Wow – I just realized – this place is a great example of our new president’s “Hope”, full of both Demecrates and Republicans coming together (at least at the beginning of the month).

PS – I tipped 20% which was pricey due to the overall ticket price – but I gotta say our waitress wasn’t as good as the ones we get at Red Lobster (she wasn’t good really at all) – and I have never tipped that much money at Reb Lobster – I don’t think we will be back to Papadeaux anytime soon – unless you’re buying!

I haven’t been posting as often here as I used to because I’ve been so busy over at http://iquitagain.com.  I want to ask you to join me in a challenge to LIVE better for one month – the shortest month of the year – February.  The challenage is called “A Month to LIVE”, and you can read all about it Here, but the idea is simple – Trade television for books and water for all other beverages; exercise every day; get at least seven hours of sleep every day.  Those four goals for the four weeks in February – 4for4.  I’m taking the challenge and I hope you do to… See you there!