Frankly, the internet in 2014 kind of sucks.

While I don’t think that we need to go back to the days of the Prodigy internet message boards or the original America Online, I do think that as we’ve moved further down the path of “Social Media Life” we’ve actually removed much of the interaction that we used to have with our online friends. Even as close as 10 years ago I could log-on to the internet and have my Yahoo Messenger load up as well as my AOL Instant Messenger and immediately engage in any number of one-on-one conversations with both my “real life” friends and my internet friends. And the conversations weren’t useless or the type of silly drivel that you read on these humor websites. No, we were making connections and having real conversations. It was fun!

Today, everything seems to need to be filtered through a Facebook or other social media-like portal and I don’t like it. I want to be able to log-on and talk to the folks who originally made the internet fun for me. I also want to be able to pick these people’s brains in a more readily available manner than sending a message into a seemingly black social media hole. There’s no connection in that method of communication.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that we’re ever going to get back to that level of meaningful one-on-one interaction on the internet. I think we’re stuck in a mess that doesn’t allow people to grow real friendships through shared online interactions. And given the friends that I’ve made through these online interactions, I think that’s a real shame for future generations of internet users.

Which brings me to one of the two social media platforms where I do maintain accounts: Facebook.

Facebook seems to have become "Happy Birthday-book"

I’m sure that most of the folks reading this entry have a Facebook account – it seems like most people on the planet have a Facebook account these days. And, if you’re like me, then you’ve noticed something weird about Facebook in the last few years. No, it’s not the fact that Facebook seems to constantly change their layout without the consent (or considered happiness) of their users. And no, it’s not the fact that spam-loving companies have found a way to breach even Facebook’s strong security measures. Instead, if you’re like me you’ve noticed that Facebook has been reduced to a single phrase for most people…

“Happy Birthday, buddy!”

I can’t tell you how many of my Facebook friends only interact with me on my birthday. And, admittedly, there are scores of my Facebook friends who I only interact with on their birthdays. Over the last year, I’ve made a conscious effort to not send happy birthday greetings to people who I wouldn’t go out of my way to call or text with the same message. Sometimes, I find that there are social strictures that require me to send someone a happy birthday note. Other times, there are folks who I would go out of my way to say happy birthday to if I saw them during the day, but I refrain from doing so online because it seems somewhat weird.

But more than any other observation about the oodles of birthday messages that are flung around Facebook, the most pressing observation is just how weird the whole exercise is for everyone. I mean let’s be honest – how many different ways can you say, “Happy Birthday, [INSERT NAME HERE]! Enjoy!” or something similar each year to the same person before it gets redundant, repetitive, and just bizarre? With some of my Facebook friends I’ll go in and check what I wrote on their wall the prior year and most of the time the message that I’m crafting for the new happy birthday message is eerily similar.

The whole thing is just bizarre to me. However, the weirdness factor aside I have no plans to get rid of my Facebook page. The truth is that Facebook is too ingrained in our society today and we are all too reliant on that particular social media platform. So, while I may be a little exasperated with the happy birthday messages that I see on there every single day, I think it’s just part of the platform that we’re going to have to accept.

By the way, my birthday is next Tuesday, January 31st… and I’ve grown to expect many birthday greetings on my Facebook wall!

Read my babblings all day today on Twitter @JVince81

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, then you know that I don’t like this Twitter stuff. However, it’s one of the “in” things right now, so a few months back I put together a JerseySmarts.com Twitter account. Typically, it’s just an update whenever there is a new entry on the blog. However, I thought I’d spend today updating that Twitter feed with a bunch of my random thoughts. No, I don’t intend on doing this everyday like some vapid teenager, but I thought it might be fun to engage in this Twitter stuff for a day to see how it worked out.

So if you have a Twitter account, then now is the time to follow @JVince81. And feel free to tweet along with the insanity!

Frankly, it’s one of the dumbest things that I’ve ever done online. You get 140 characters to say what you’re doing or to give an update on what’s going on in your world. My response to this is – “Who cares?” Honestly, who cares what you’re doing right now in 140 characters or less? Seriously – get a job. Anyway, since this Twitter thing is taking over the world and it does seem to be pretty relevant in the grand scheme of social media, I opted to start a Twitter feed for JerseySmarts.com.

Honestly, I started the feed because I wanted to make sure that I have the “JerseySmarts” user name (which wasn’t a problem). Right now there are two tweets on the Twitter feed (how ridiculous of a sentence was that, by the way?). I’m going to incorporate some software into the back end of JerseySmarts.com that will allow for an automatic update of the Twitter feed each time there is a new entry on JerseySmarts.com. I think that’s the most productive use of that social media client for this website.

What do you think?

As you ponder that question and if you have Twitter, you should head over and follow JerseySmarts.com. You can use the button embedded in the right sidebar or you can click here. Enjoy!

The first and most exhausting issue (and the focus of this entry) that presented itself last month was grading my students’ research papers. Holy cow. What a mess some of these things were to read (if you can call trudging through these papers “reading”). I’ve been teaching a course at the local college for the last three years. This Thursday will be the beginning of my fourth year teaching at the college and each year the writing gets worse and worse. First, I thought it was bad when one of my students spelled “before” as “b4” (yes, someone actually did that). Then, I thought it was bad when my students submitted works cited pages on opinion papers! But 2009 was a banner year for outstanding displays of ridiculousness.

I had students copy and paste directly from Wikipedia when they are submitting opinion papers. I will repeat that – and expand – for your delight. I assign a two page opinion paper to my students and ask for their feedback on certain issues. This paper is worth 5 points on their final grade. And some students used this as an opportunity to go to Wikipedia, copy and paste an entire entry on a topic, and submit that entry as their opinion. Are you serious?! Has the age of the internet and social media destroyed the minds of America’s youth to the point where they can’t form a fucking opinion?! Good grief!

But that was a two page opinion paper. What exhausted me last month was reviewing and grading an 8 to 10 page research paper where the quality of writing was generally less than high school level and the overall grammar, spelling, and flow of the papers was just as bad. Granted, of the papers that I read there were definitely two or three home runs and another three or four that were at least written at a college level. But the rest of them… to say that I was disappointed would not be doing justice to the life-sucking exhaustion that I felt reading through these papers. And the less-than-college-quality of the work spread across a variety of issues besides spelling, grammar, and flow. One student – in a research paper – wrote that members of a certain religion (of which I am a member) and white people are generally not offended or annoyed by the Nazi party.

Go back and read that last sentence again. Yes, that’s right. A college student suggested that one specific religion and people of a certain skin tone would actually condone the Nazi party. Absolutely outrageous.

Almost none of the students knew what it meant to properly cite their sources and even more had no idea what MLA or APA format meant. It was an exhausting exercise reading their papers – absolutely exhausting.

But I can’t say that these students haven’t made an impact on me. No, in fact they’ve pushed me to the point where I’m strongly considering reducing the amount of written pages that my students have to hand in each semester. Not to worry, though. I plan on replacing those written pages with presentations – another skill that students sorely lack these days.

Who said being an adjunct professor was easy?

I’ve also darkened the background on which you are reading right now. For those of you that liked the brighter white background, I’m sorry – it just hurt my eyes too much so I had to change it. Chances are I spend a lot more time on this website that most of the readers so I have to be sure that simply looking at the website doesn’t bother me!

I’m always looking for new ideas, so let me know if you have any thoughts. Right now I think the site is somewhat boring in its approach, but that’s because I’m not currently integrating pictures and other multimedia into the various entries. That should be changing soon. Also, I have some graphics that I’ll be adding to the sidebar sooner or later (for example, the link to my Facebook pictures). I’m debating whether or not to even keep the Google image gallery, so I can’t guarantee that the Google images link will reappear.

Frankly, I wanted to do these revisions to JerseySmarts.com in November, right around the one year anniversary of merging JerseySmarts.com and Joe’s Journal. However, sometimes you just have to act on the momentum in your head and make the changes while you’re motivated!

Again, I’m always open to your thoughts and ideas, so please feel free to send them over.

But hang in there, I don’t think that there will be any major changes besides going back to a 2 column format for the time being (which is really a revision being made to the core design of the blog for better use with Facebook). Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns as I work out some of the kinks. Thanks!

What happened to AIM? Could it be that the rise of social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (with their built-in messaging systems) have rendered AIM, ICQ, and Yahoo! Messenger useless? Maybe the fact that text/picture messages and Blackberries are ubiquitous in today’s society also hinders AIM’s growth. Seems logical.

Granted, I understand that I first started using AIM over ten years ago (probably closer to 15 years ago) when I was a young teenager. Since I’m in my late 20’s these days, I guess that most of the people that I talked to on AIM are either now on my text message list or are a Facebook friend. It would appear that I don’t need AIM any more, actually, since I rarely sign on anyway.

And as I’ve written on JerseySmarts.com a few times already, I’ve been very interested in paring down the software that sits dormant on my laptop. In the last month I’ve removed a bunch of this unneeded software that has been taking up precious disk space. A week or two ago I uninstalled Google Chrome because I rarely used it (plus I’ve already become so accustomed to Mozilla Firefox) and earlier today I uninstalled Yahoo! Messenger since I haven’t used it in over a year. When looking around my computer, I found the old “AOL Instant Messenger” program which was replaced with AOL’s current AIM program…so I removed the old program since I hadn’t used it since the spring of 2006. Also, I purchased a discounted copy of Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007, which prompted me to uninstall OpenOffice.org from Sun Microsystems. Could AIM be next on the list of programs to be deleted? I’m not sure.

I think that I’d like to keep at least one of each of the major programs (one instant messenger program, one major non-Microsoft browser, one major office productivity suite, etc), so AIM may stay around on that fact alone. But the truth remains that even if the program does stay on my computer it’ll probably be a rarely used piece of software.

Isn’t it amazing how the internet and electronic communication have changed?

It wasn’t a bad event, in fact it was fun. I enjoyed seeing a lot of the people that I haven’t talked to since Project Graduation, which took place right after we graduated high school. Also, it was nice to meet the husbands and wives of some of my old high school friends.

When I was driving home, though, something did cross my mind. Namely, do reunions have the same value that they once had now that Facebook is ubiquitous? Granted, there are a lot of people who are not on Facebook, but the fact is that there are a growing multitude of people who ARE using this social media platform. And yes, while I understand that there is something special to be said about the face-to-face interaction that comes with a reunion, there is also something to be said about the ability to look someone up on Facebook and see what they’re up to these days.

Just something that crossed my mind as I was driving home.

The group that put the reunion together to an amazing job and I hope that they receive the credit that they deserve. I put a little note on the lead organizer’s Facebook page telling her what a great job that she did. Reunions are hard events to plan, so I hope that this team comes back again in 5 or 10 years for the next one!

I think this is a pretty good idea since between both classes there are some 700 or so students. If the classes manage to pull in about 10% to 15% of that number of graduates, it may not be such a bad turnout. You figure if 100 people come and half of them have a significant other than accompanies them, you’ve got about 150 people in one place – which would be a good turnout.

The group that the organizers put together on Facebook shows some 69 “confirmed” guests (with 105 invitees not attending and 117 “maybe” attending). Frankly, I don’t think that many of those “maybe” respondents will make it over into the “confirmed” column. That’s okay, though.

If I remember to bring my camera, I’ll try to take some pictures to add to my Facebook collection. Should be a good time – I’m looking forward to it.