Twitter vs. Facebook

I was in a meeting the other day and someone was talking about Twitter vs. Facebook.  A person in the meeting said the following:

"Facebook is where I avoid people I've known my whole life.  Twitter is where I fall in love with complete strangers."

Powerful.

In 2009, I joined the Twitterverse for the first time.  I was promptly confused by why anyone in their right mind thought it was better than Facebook.  Here's a screenshot of my first few Tweets:

So, as you can see, I tweeted on 8/27/09 and then was totally inactive for a solid half year before I decided to try again.  I was totally baffled as to why anyone thought Twitter was awesome.

Fast forward to March of 2011 (a solid YEAR later) and I'm at a conference in L.A. for work.  Everyone at the conference was Tweeting and there was a hashtag associated with the conference so people could follow the conversation.  I decided that since I had this membership, I'd go ahead and download the twitter app to my phone.  So there I was, I downloaded the app to my phone and it asks me if I'd like to search my address book for people I knew.  I figured, what the heck?  Why not?!

The app returned a list of results and I quickly followed a bunch of people that I actually know.  That's when things changed for me.  An old coworker of mine was one of the people I chose to follow.  Here's a glimpse into what happened (read from the bottom up):

 

 It turns out in order to find Twitter useful, you need to have followers and actually tweet.  So then the pressure was really on.  My former colleague and current friend has a small country worth of followers and when she says something, people listen.

In my time on Twitter, I have truly come to really enjoy what complete strangers have to say.  I wouldn't say that I'm addicted just yet, but I can definitely see things heading down that path.   So, I guess if you're on Twitter, say hi!

Like a caged animal...

Today started out as a relatively good day.  I went shopping this weekend and bought some new duds.  Nothing puts a spring in my step like sporting a new outfit so I was feeling good.  I facilitated a focus group this morning.  I was really nervous about it but it went spectacularly well, thereby adding to my good mood.

At about 1pm, I realize that I'm starving, haven't had lunch, and should probably do so before my 2:30pm meeting.  Typically, I grab my phone, wallet, and ID and head down to the cafe on the 1st floor (I work on the 6th)  Today, since I planned to be extra swift, I grabbed my credit card and ID and headed to the elevator.  I press "1" for the first floor and ride down alone.

The elevator begins its descent.  When I get to the first floor, the doors do not open.  The number 1 on the digital display begins to flash and all the lights on the button panel go out.  Laughing, I hit the door open button (aka the two arrows pointing away from a line in the middle) Nothing happens.  I then scan my badge and hit "7".  Nothing happens.  Then all of a sudden, the lights on the panel come back on and the elevator starts going up.  At the 4th floor, it stops.  Again, the doors don't open.  I play with the buttons for about 5 more minutes...the panic is slowly starting to rise.  Also, I started to feel hot (it's like 94 degrees with 80% humidity today).  I stare at the buttons on the wall.  I don't see anything that says "call" or "emergency" or an icon with a phone or anything.

The only thing that looks remotely useful is an icon of a bell.  I push that.  An alarm clock noise proceeds and remains for as long as my finger is pushing down the button.  I'm not sure what that actually accomplished so I start knocking on the door to see if anyone is outside.  I hear voices...there's gotta be someone out there.  There's a door at the bottom of the wall with a knob, so I try to open that.  It's locked.  Okay...now what?  I'm basically starting to talk to myself and tell myself I'm an idiot for not bringing my phone.  I stare at the buttons for about 10 more minutes trying to figure out what I should do.  I hear some people outside again so I start banging on the door, yelling for help, and telling them I'm stuck.

I mean, I can hear them!  Surely they can hear me too, right?!  But if they hear me, why is no one saying anything back.

At this point, I'm vacillating between this:

 

and this:

Since I had no watch, it's hard to say how long I did this.  After about what I think was 20 minutes, I decided that I should just ring the bell and pound on the door some more.  I intermittently pushed down the button and banged and yelled for a while (maybe another 10 minutes).  Then I started to feel hot, and sweaty, and like the air was being sucked out.  I retreated to the corner and rocked myself like an autistic child, wondering how long I'd have to sit there, wishing I'd used the bathroom before, and wondering if I got hungry enough, would I eat my shoe.  I really hoped not, because these are new kicks and I really like them.  After about 10 more minutes, I heard what sounded like really close talking.  I jumped up, pounded on the door some more, and shouted for help.  Finally, someone heard me.  They said they would alert security.  I sat down and waited some more.

Finally, some dude with a crow bar starts trying to break into the elevator.  I could see his fingers, but he couldn't get it open.  He asked me if "we" were alright.  I told him I was alone and he asked me if I was okay.  I told him I was going to throw up soon.  He said to sit tight and he'd have me out of there "quick as a bunny."  Now, I don't know about you, but that seems like it should be pretty damn fast.  Wrong again.  I sat there, slightly bouncing, praying that the elevator didn't plummet 4 stories where I would most certainly meet my untimely demise.  Luckily, after about 5-10 more minutes, he finally broke me out.  I ran out of that elevator like I was on fire, hiked back up the 2 flights of stairs, and went into the lab where I very promptly had a panic attack.  I was gasping for air, I felt like I couldn't breathe, and even worse, I was still hungry.

I had a meeting in 10 minutes so I tried to pull it together as quickly as possible.  When I get to my meeting, it turns out that 30% of the people in the meeting heard the alarm and were annoyed that whoever was stuck on the elevator kept ringing the bell.  I asked them why they didn't help me and they looked at each other and looked at me and had no good answer.  Most of them were like, "what was I supposed to do?"  Uh, I don't know...you're sitting in a conference room WITH A BLOODY PHONE!!!  Call security, dumbass!  Or, maybe...just maybe...GET OUT OF YOUR DAMN CHAIR and walk over to see what all the fuss is about?  It turns out, everyone thought someone else would take care of it, thereby leaving me a sweaty hot mess, huddled on the floor of an elevator for over an hour.

I might write into John Quinones and have him enact this debacle on an episode of "What would you do..."

Who's that girl??

In order for the title of this post to make sense, there are a few things you need to know about me.  I'll try to keep it short at sweet, but as you know, I'm prone to over-explanation.  I can't help it, I'm verbose.

The first time I ever sang in front of people, it was in the 8th grade.  I entered in the 8th grade talent show.  I was too scared to sing by myself, so I enlisted the help of a fellow classmate who was deemed popular at the time.  She happily agreed.  We practiced, I thought we sounded okay.  I actually thought I sounded okay but she was off key, mostly.  Anyway, at the try outs, she was sick so I had to audition all by myself while our algebra teacher (yeah, our music program was cancelled) played the sheet music.  I thought I did okay.  The reaction to it was pretty great though.  People thought I was so good that she actually blackmailed me into singing in our 5th hour Algebra class by telling the class she'd skip homework for the rest of the week if I sang.  It was mortifying, but I did it.

Later that day, I heard someone in my class saying something about how I wasn't "all that".  Whether or not he was trying to hurt my feelings or genuinely believed I wasn't "all that" is irrelevant.  This is what I like to call the seed of my insecurity.  Clearly at the age of 14, in what can only kindly be called my "awkward years", I was deeply hurt and confused and it caused me to have this total lack of faith in my ability.

I sang at the talent show.  It went fine.  People clapped.  People told me it sounded great.  But I had felt such panic before the show due to the comments I had heard, that I felt like I couldn't ever do it again.  It made me feel too vulnerable and scared.  I didn't sing again till 5 years later at my high school graduation.  Even then, it was only because I was voted "best singer" in our class.  I was again, totally terrified.  It possibly took years off my life is stress alone.

Since then, I've sang at a whole heap-load of weddings.  In college, I participated in a few open-mike nights.  I have a debilitating fear of singing in front of people.  It's truly terrible.  It's probably not rational for someone who has sung in front of hundreds of people to have mild panic attacks at the thought of singing karaoke in front of people.  But I do.  I can't help it.

Enough of the background.  Here's the good stuff:

My company just had it's client conference in Kansas City.  They threw an afterparty at the Midland theater and this year, they went all out!  They had dueling pianos, a comedian, and Matt Nathanson performed...

At some point in the evening, there was a huge opening right in front of the stage.  I seized the opportunity to take a killer shot from about 2 feet away from him...right in front of the stage.  I even have proof!  See evidence below:

So I'm standing like 2 feet away from Matt Nathanson and they've been hilarious all night, playing covers and their own music.  I hear this guy behind me yell "Hey, play something I can do the worm to!"  So Matt says "Hmmm...I don't know what I could play.  We don't do a lot of hip hop.  Unless you like Eminem..."  As a girl who is from the 313, I obviously heart Eminem and now all the words to most of his songs.  People start cheering and they start playing the opening riff to Lose Yourself.  Then he realizes he doesn't know the words.  So he asks "Does anyone here know the lyrics to "Lose yourself?"  Being Indian, and being genetically programmed to raise your hand when you know the answer to a question (because that's what our people do), my hand shot up.  I was standing 2 feet away from him so it's not like he could ignore it.  He looked down and started laughing and asked me to come on stage.  I don't know what I was thinking (I had not been drinking) but I quickly googled the lyrics to it (just in case) and brought my phone on stage.  He was very happy to also have the words to the song so we dueted to Eminem's "Lose Yourself."  SURREAL!

So there I am.  I don't look too scared.  I might even look like I'm having fun.  I'm horrified by the sheer number of videos being taken and I hope they never surface in some sort of public way.  Anyway, the point is that I think that what I realized is maybe it's a lot easier to get up in front of people if you don't give a rat's ass what they think.  The fact that I wouldn't be singing (which is something I'm self conscious about because I don't want people to tell me I suck) really helped me get over some of that initial fear.  Honestly, I don't even know what I was thinking...I don't know who that girl is because I've always been so scared of getting on stage.  I even just got a phone call from someone seeing this picture and asking me what I'd done with her friend... 

Maybe I've turned a page and won't be such a freak about it.  To conclude my story, I was able to score a backstage pass to meet the band.  The Indian guy in the band told me I did awesome.  I got a signed CD, talked to Matt Nathanson for a few minutes and got a free t-shirt and went on my merry way.  It was an amazing night.  One I'll probably never forget (hopefully not because the videos surface...)

This is the shot of me and Matt backstage:

Fair warning: This is totally my opinion

And it's probably an unpopular one, at that.  I can't help but express it though. 

With the recent capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden, you'd think that I'd feel secure and feel a sense of relief or even pride.  What I feel instead, is sad.  Don't get me wrong...I don't feel the slightest bit sad that he's dead.  That douchelord most definitely needed to get got.  However, what did we accomplish?  Really think about it...

President Obama said something to the effect that justice had been served.  Well, maybe.  But I'm not so sure.  There's been this war going on for almost a decade now.  There are hundreds of thousands (including 9/11 casualties, civilians caught in the middle, etc etc) that have lost their lives.  We killed this one guy.  Does this one guy being killed change any of that?  Probably not. 

I turned on the news the other night and there was a crazy mob of people waving flags and chanting "USA! USA!" outside the White House.  Call me crazy, but I'm pretty sure that I was nauseated and horrified when I saw the terrorists doing something very similar after the fall of the Twin Towers.  Sure those killed in the 9/11 attacks were innocent people.  And sure, OBL definitely had it coming...but if you really think about it, are we much better?  Is the violent death of a human being (no matter how badly he deserved it) ever a good thing?  Probably not.


Maybe it's just me, but I feel a little bit like maybe we killed the queen in a hornet nest, swatted the nest with a fly swatter, and then realized we're stuck in a glass case with it. Good idea?  Probably not.  I mean, there are a lot of hornets out there.

Mahatma (Mohandas) Gandhi once said "An eye for an eye makes the world blind." 

I couldn't agree more.

I guess I'll save my excitement, pride, and relief for when this whole war (and mess) is over with.