Reviewing old Thoughts

I have maintained a blog on BobBreedlove.com for a number of years. I'm going through old blogs to either remove them or add my thoughts for them today. You can find them here and probably see some of them on my Twitter that I feel are worth the comment.

I'm doing this because I think that my thoughts and the environment change over time and, perhaps things that I thought and said in past years just don't apply to today's world -- or maybe they do, bummer!

The Rapture - May 21, 2011

The Rapture is due to start today. My wife tells me the news said around 6:00 PM. But 6:00 PM where? Here in the U.S. most time references on the TV are for Eastern Time. Even if something is happening on the west coast (3 time zones away), they state the time in ED/ST. I suspect this is because people on the East Coast can't make the translation, but I can't prove it. Anyway, it seems a bit strange that God would be tied to a timezone. Unless maybe he is spending his summer in the Bahamas, Hawaii or some other exotic locale.

By the way, as I write this it's already 11:20 PM in Hong Kong and I haven't heard that they have ceased to exist.

Something's Wrong and Blogger's Back

I wasn't really sure where to put this as I wanted to comment about Blogger being back -- obvious since I'm writing this on Blogger -- and make a comment about something I just saw. A photograph just sold for over $3-million dollars (source). A photograph . . . imagine what good you can do with that type of money . . . how many people you can feed, clothe, house . . . and someone paid that amount for a picture. What's wrong with this picture?

By the way, I decided to put this here because the fact that I'm just blogging about it and not shouting in the front yard at the top of my lungs is indicative of the times we are in.

How do you keep up?

I know that people are all over the place on social media. I'm on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, as well as several blogs and my own site. And this doesn't count the number of sites that I follow. Just reading Twitter and news feeds takes time to keep up. So how do you do it?

Perhaps the more pertinent question is

It is worth it to do all this?

Sometimes I wonder. I have continuous contact in my work life and in my home life and I wonder, sometimes, if that really makes work-life balance. I feel pressure on both sides to make these things interesting and to keep up with all the things which are going on. Unfortunately, I don't have a staff of hundreds to keep up. There are just three of us -- me, myself and I -- and sometimes, it seems overwhelming.

So how do you do it?

Facebook . . . OK, I'm there . . .

I finally broke down and joined Facebook. Not because I wanted to share something, but because others are using it to share things that I want to see. It's frustrating that I have to sign up, but, it is apparently the reality of the information landscape today. I give up . . .

Coverage in a Time of Conflict

I was listening to developments in Libya, I heard coverage of Qaddafi's comments about the no fly zone enforcement being "terrorism". It struck me as incongruous that we are seeing the conflict from both sides. Today, conflicts are carried out in the media, including the Internet, as much as on the ground. But coverage on the Internet is international and seen from both sides. So as much as it might encourage one side, it convinces the other that there point-of-view is spot on.

Why do you follow (friend, favorite, . . . ) me?

Although we all tend to think that the words we commit to our blogs are golden, I have been wondering why people follow those of us who are not the opinion leaders in a particular topic. I have done some looking and found that, generally, these are people who are hoping I will follow THEM in the hopes of selling me something.

I suspect that they search for tags, keywords which relate to the product/service they are pushing and friend/follow a user in the hope that they will, in turn, follow them and purchase their goods and services. Oh well, there goes what little hope I had that someone actually cared what I think!