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PSA: Back Up Your Shit

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Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#131

Post by quantumpotato_ »

famousactress wrote: post #67
quantumpotato_ wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What was the bug?

Coincidentally, before the friend I mentioned in #2 passed away we were out at a bar together and he was really interested in this girl who was there. They'd barely met and I guess he'd gone home and chatted with her on myspace. When I got up in the morning (he was living on my couch) he told me to go look at her profile. While cruising through his friends list I saw my now wife. I recognized her as being a friend of…

That's quite funny. Deus Ex, perhaps? Congratulations of turning a glitch into something positive.

Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#132

Post by aaronem »

personlurking wrote: post #106
bruceboughton wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep letters? Actually: people write letters?

I went through a phase a few years ago where I actually wrote people letters. Since my friends are all over the globe, it sort of made sense. I did it because I personally liked the feeling of receiving a letter. The conclusion, after sending 20 letters to several people, was that receiving one is great but more often than not the person receiving it would thank me online and not write back on paper. If there were a…

> If there were a super-fast, cheap way to send paper letters

Don't they call that a "printer"?

More seriously, I haven't seen "Her", but isn't that the profession of its protagonist? -- hand-writing paper letters as a service, that is. Perhaps there's a market there, but I sort of doubt it; it seems to me that almost all the unique value of sending a hand-written letter would be absent in a case where the actual process of writing was farmed out to some random stranger.

Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#133

Post by philwelch »

GrinningFool wrote: post #130
philwelch wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad no one I know plays this childish game, speaking as someone who is occasionally on call, lives under the conscious commitment to always pick up the phone when my wife calls, or maybe just likes to check the time every so often.

It's possible that's all you use your phone for at the table, but if you take a step back and observe, is that really all you use it for? Do you look at that incoming email that isn't from the on-call address? Do you just check for new messages even when nobody is calling? Do you look at your twitter feed? Facebook? Just a quick check onto a favorite web site? Tap out replies to anything except on-call or your wife?…

When I'm on call all my pages come in over SMS so I'm generally only responding to alert sounds and only doing anything about it if it came from the pager gateway or my wife. Aside from phone and SMS I have all other notification sounds turned off. Unless it's my wife or a page I wouldn't even unlock the phone if I was genuinely spending time with people. The current time is on the lock screen so there's that.

A lot of times though, in a lunch-with-coworkers situation, we just run out of things to talk about and check our phones sometimes and that's okay.

Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#134

Post by philwelch »

gaius wrote: post #116
freehunter wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So he lists a couple of pretty reasonable reasons to have a phone (emergency contact/replacement for a wristwatch) and you immediately assume he's using Instagram instead? There are words to describe the kind of person you're being right now.

Yes, there are also words to describe seeing someone make a general point on the Internet and piping up why you are so special and unique that it doesn't apply. It's a game, nothing more. Snowflake.

I don't think I'm unique and special. A hallmark of a healthy marriage is that you're willing to drop everything if your spouse genuinely needs you, and lots of people are married. If you're a parent, you're going to drop everything if your children genuinely need you. Lots of people are on call in their professional lives.

To me, the biggest difference between childhood and adulthood is that adults have real responsibilities that are more important than silly games.

Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#136

Post by semerda »

steven2012 wrote: post #34

I think that the beauty of Snapchat is that it frees you from this ridiculous notion that a text, IM, Facebook message, etc, has any value. In my opinion, it doesn't. Also, in my opinion, I believe that feeling the need to save every single conversation you have fuels an over-inflated sense of self-worth, and that everything you say has value and needs to be saved. I never, ever peruse through my messages, to reminis…

Very interesting perspective. I like it. Our brains are also made to forget. People with hyperthymesia (autobiographical memory) are not better off remembering everything. So nature has fine tuned this system of engage and forget.

Re: PSA: Back Up Your Shit

#137

Post by BlackDeath3 »

tekacs wrote: post #91
BlackDeath3 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilization survived a long time without penicillin.

I know that this isn't Reddit, but I can't resist: nick relevant! (sorry, had to get that out of my system - am aware (AFAIK) that the black death was never treated with penicillin, given the dates involved)

Better than the racist/overtly-sarcastically ominous comments I usually get concerning my name.
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