Everything you do will eventually offend someone...

There is this tool at work where you can go and create a "community", it can be a community that is open to anyone using the tool, and through it, you can send messages to the entire community and do all sorts of useful things. Give people the power to do this and they go wild! The second most active community that exists is one about football (I think it's actually soccer football, not NFL football). And everyday, new ones are created that have to do with sports or music or alma maters or religion or anything else you can think of. It's hard to tell people to not create these communities that aren't business related, because people will argue that work-life balance has a lot to do with business, if you're not properly balanced, then you can't conduct business well, blah blah. There's really no way to force people to stop being people and to just be corporate tools.

Because I work in the group that wrote the tool that enables all this chaos, I feel somewhat obligated to "police" activity if it gets bad, since in the end, our group is the one that gets criticized if people abuse it or offend people, or whatever. Basically, people make us responsible for any bad things that happen because we gave people the ability to do so. Hmm...kind of makes you wonder if God really is the one responsible for man's original sin because He is the one that put the apple and the snake there in the first place?? Hmm...

I found out today that a new religious community was created sometime this week. Since I hadn't heard the normal backlash from users, I was curious and decided to join the community to check it out. It turns out that they are being forced to change the name of their community from "Christian Workplace" to "[some company] Christians" because some people were offended that "Christian Workplace" may connote that the company is a Christian workplace. It's all about semantics, isn't it? The Christians were mad because they felt like if they were a sports group or something else, they wouldn't be "treated" this way. One person even said if there were a community called "Gay Workplace", he would be offended, but then he'd be accused of being a bigot.

I think non-religious people are afraid that religious people are just out to convert or to preach to them. It's no different from fanatical vegetarians. It's really annoying trying to sit there and enjoy your 16 ounce prime rib while sitting next to a vegetarian who keeps telling you how many animals died to make you happy. People aren't afraid of a community about football because it's not like they are trying to force you to play. Gay people don't go around trying to get straight people to become gay. But part of religion is to go around spreading your knowledge and to help people become enlightened. It sucks, but it comes with the territory I think. No one said it was easy helping people find religion.

I'm not a religious person, but that doesn't mean I don't like religious people or I'm intolerant of religion. I'm not one of those people who would sue the school district because they made me say the Pledge of Allegiance that has the word "God" in it. I think people have the right to think and to believe whatever they want. Hmm...the problem with that is then people have the right to be offended by religion. But being offended and being intolerant or ignorant are different things.

"Disclaimer: This is who I am, deal with it."

It annoys me when people come with disclaimers attached to them: "I can be obnoxious sometimes...if I ever say something that offends you, I don't really mean it. That's who I am, I can't help it." That's basically giving people the right to be jerks but because they apologized in advance, it's ok. Is this how the world works today? I guess so. That's all I'm going to say about that. I'm curt, so just deal with it.

I am an amateur paparazzo

A few weeks ago we were in Central Park, just taking a stroll, when we spotted Nick and Jessica. I quickly whipped out my digicam and snapped this shot, right before their bodyguards appeared out of nowhere and rushed them into a limo that then drove away...

No carb life

I went grocery shopping yesterday and I came home feeling really bad. Not because I spent almost 100 bucks on food, but because everything I saw there made me feel like I was unhealthy or fat. Low carb, no carb, no trans fats, low salt, low fat, non-fat...everything has some sort of "healthy" version. What happened to those days when we could just eat anything and not worry about it killing us slowly?

I figure, if I'm going to die, I'm going to die. How will I know that eating this low carb low fat stuff is really going to help me in the end? I see it as a huge gimmick for the food industry. The fact that they give you this "healthy" option for their unhealthy products makes sure that health-conscious people will still buy their stuff. But the thing is, you really shouldn't be eating processed foods period. But sometimes I can't help it.

I mean bread for example. Do you really expect bread to be bad for you? Now, there are a million options for bread (I ended up with a heart healthy Oat Bran selection, complete with 0g trans fats...how does bread end up with trans fats anyway???). Are there really breads out there that have more than 0g trans fats? Or did I just fall for a huge marketing ploy?

"Celebrities I hate...a Listmania list!"

I was looking through Amazon.com today and I saw this Listmania list about Avril Lavigne, just another poser/loser. Someone hated Avril Lavigne so much that she searched through Amazon for every single product available featuring Avril and took the time to make all these nasty comments about it (although some of them were like, "This was the only near-decent song that Avril released, and now that the radio has killed it, I hate it more than ever"...uh....what???? sometimes 14 year old girls confuse me). I thought it was pretty pathetic. If you hate something so much, why go through that much trouble? It sort of made me want to buy some Avril CDs.

But then again, I can go on and on about celebrities I hate, and maybe that will prompt people to go out and watch their shows or movies. Like Ben Stiller for example. I cannot think of a more annoying talent-less clod. I really don't know why people think he is funny! I'm only assuming people think he's funny because he's in so many movies. Or maybe it's a stupid Hollywood nepotism thing where people want to hire Ben because his dad Jerry (hey, that is pretty funny, Ben and Jerry...I hadn't thought of that before) is so funny. Actually Jerry Stiller is pretty funny, he's got that senile old man thing going for him, it works. But Ben does not have anything. And pair him up with "powerful" actresses (what is everyone's problem with using the word "actress" so they have to use "actor"?) like that Rachel lady from "Friends" or Cameron I'm a total flake Diaz....oh boy...can Hollywood get any worse?

It's a blog now

My diary used to be a Flash thing that I wrote myself, the pages turned just like a real book. I thought it was cool at first but I kind of wanted to do more with it. And if people actually read it, I'm sure they were annoyed with the whole Flash interface...for some reason people aren't into Flash-y things as much as I expect. And plus, I wanted to try out Blogger.

It seems like most people in the world, give them the old school text based bulletin board readers and they're happy with that. I've seen those websites written by experts on visual design or user experience, like Jakob Nielsen, and they talk about what is good for the web and what isn't. And I look at their sites and I don't feel compelled to read the stuff there, it doesn't look visually appealing, it's not even THAT easy to navigate through. I think people just proclaim themselves as experts and the rest of the world (because they don't know any better) strive to follow anyone that says they know.

And from what I've learned at work, there are so many different kinds of people with different preferences, some people are going to like what you do and some aren't. Most of the time, you only hear from the ones that don't like it. It sucks, but oh well.