Communication...or lack thereof

Watching "You've Got Mail", I started to think about the way we communicate. I remember the days of keeping in touch with writing letters and mailing them with a stamp (snail mail), then it evolved into email, which is still around. I had a lot of correspondence with email since the beginning of the Internet. Lately tho, it seems that most of my communications with friends and relatives are thru Facebook. I can't remember the last time I got an email that wasn't trying to sell me something, or scam me out of something. I have phone conversations and text communications on occasion, but most of the contact with friends is thru Facebook. And not always Facebook mail, but posts to each others walls. It's almost as if people have forgotten how to communicate face to face. Sure, it's easier to just leave a post or send a text to get a quick message across, or call and leave a voice mail. But that eliminates an immediate response or reaction on the part of the recipient. This type of communication also leaves the option to the recipient of just totally ignoring the message/post/text and not responding. So you really don't know if they saw/heard it or not.

Back in the day of online chat rooms and IM's, you could get your point across and know that it was seen. There was nothing more rewarding than that chime on AOL when someone sent or answered an IM. I haven't been on AOL in quite a while, not even sure if the people I "knew" on there are still around, or use the same screen-names. I still have my screen-name there, and just might pop on there and see what's happening.

Keeping in touch is good, phones have "apps" that let you access email, instant messaging programs, Facebook, among other methods. Yes, I'm guilty of being connected to Facebook and several email accounts on the Blackberry, and sometimes even connected to Yahoo messenger. It's convenient when away from home and without my laptop or an internet connection. I have even been considering a tablet, or possibly a Kindle or other type of multi-functional wi-fi capable device that will just require a bigger purse to carry it in. I like to read and when we go camping on the weekends I have in the past brought several books with me. If I had one of those devices that let you download books and check email and check Facebook and surf the Internet, it would save a lot of room in the truck, plus my husband could put his books on it also. The only thing holding me back from buying one is the fact that I haven't had that winning lottery ticket yet. Someday, sometime, in the future I'm sure I'll get one, probably when it's out of "style".

Oh well, until I get the new stuff when it's new, I still have my trusty Sony laptop with Windows Vista, and my Blackberry Tour to get me where I want to go. I might be behind the times, but I'm an "oldie but goodie".

Monday Technology Quirks - Very Frustrating!

So it's Monday. Not a holiday for me, I have to be at work. Not sure what I will accomplish. Banks are closed, no mail, half of our job sites are closed down for the holiday, yet here I sit.

I had a brainstorm to create and upload a page to the sub-domain I created last week on our home site. Not being much with raw html code, I thought I did pretty good for a simple and basic page. Even did the background color, text color, etc. Ok, next step is to ftp it to the server. No problem. I even remembered my ftp username and password!! Wow, that's an accomplishment for me, since I have so many different logins and passwords for the many sites, programs, and other access points that I use. I've been meaning to create a wallet of all my logins so that I have them. Never fails, I try to login to one of my suppliers and I can't remember my login, then have to remember which email address I used to register so they can send me my login. Ok, I digress.

I was happy to see that the page I had just coded loaded and displayed as best as I can expect, considering I didn't do anything fancy, with the exception of adding my etsy mini. Now, when I signed up with the hosting server, I was given $75 in free google adwords. I figured I might as well use them, so I proceeded to login to my account (yep, remembered the login, this time!). Lo and behold, the server is DOWN! I managed to access the support page, of course THAT isn't down. It appears that their main server had a nervous breakdown and they are "working" on getting things up and running, but no word on how long it will take. Great! I get my site online, have it referring to my etsy site, and nobody will find it because I can't setup the adwords.

I am seriously considering moving my web to another host, but not sure which one is good. I like yahoo but it can be quite costly. But I guess you get what you pay for, huh?

If anyone has any suggestion for a web host, please, let me know! I am currently on powweb. I like it, there are a lot of features that make it easy for someone who hasn't kept up with her html coding that was learned many years ago, (Can't even do CSS, XHTML, or any of the other ones, just basic HTML), but what good is it if it's always down?

Oh, and if you want to check out the new page, it's at http://rukar.karuss.com/

Happy Monday!

NOT!!!!!