Back from the Dead Zone

Miss me?

I was on a corporate retreat last week, except it was more of a strategy session (retreat sounds so “relaxing”) and little did we know the remote bunker we were hunkered down in had no cell – or email – service. Needless to say it was rediculously stressful. I found an area that gave me those two ‘essential’ services – a five mile drive on top of an old ski hill – and once a day I would fire up there, retrieve all messages and emails, bang off emergency replies as necessary, and go back into hiding. Unfortunately my ‘blog’ didn’t fall into the emergency (or essential) category.

It was a big eye opener on the dependency I have on my devices. I hadn’t been without them for years. A lot of my friends were claiming “how nice it would be” to get that “break”, but really all it did was pile up 400+ emails and 70+ messages that needed to be responded to when I got home. Not nice one bit.

I did get a break from gaming, and find myself even less excited to log into <insert MMO> here, and last night instead of taking a much needed “play games” break I just caught up on work and played little flash games. Non-commital stuff. I realize I enjoy dating my games much more than marrying them. Video game divorces cost a lot less than real ones (or so I hear).

Now back to our regularly scheduled program.

5 comments / Add your comment below

  1. I’ve gone a bit the other way. I’ve recently signed up for Facebook (after resisting for over a year) to promote my company’s products. I’ve also been able to get in touch with a friend whose email stopped working and my brother in law who uses Facebook for his Wing Chun Kung Fu contacts. It’s nice… but ergh, it can be a time sink. Plus, there really are some people from my high school days that I’d rather forget.

    I’ve settled for just posting my blog link and my portfolio link in my profile, and only answering when “spoken” to. I actually do get tired of computers once in a while.

  2. I was on Facebook for a few weeks a couple of years ago. Suddenly I had 300 “friends”, and it was a rediculous time sink. My wife also took exception to the number of unknown women that asked to be “friends”. (Honey, it was way back in High School!). I ended up turning it off.

    She now has facebook (peer pressure) and since we share a lot of the same current friends I find myself checking hers daily. It really is a great tool for keeping up to speed with people in this crazy world of instant gratification.

    I may, *may* turn mine back on. Now that my wife has it she isn’t quite as uncomfortable with it as she used to be.

  3. Heh, I’m being proactively aloof. I find the dearth of information that I’ve got on my Facebook account means I don’t get a lot of unsolicited attention.

    A bit like high school, actually. Hrm…

  4. I haven’t had too many unsolicited Friend requests. I had one person send me a message asking if I was a Friend they used to hang out with in High School, but it wasn’t the High School I went to, it wasn’t even in the same country. At least they took the time to write an introductory message with the Friend request. I rejected their request, but replied that I was not the droid they were looking for.

    I also got a Facebook Friend request from a friend of a Facebook friend. Actually our mutual Facebook friend is my younger sister’s sister-in-law, who I’ve never been friends with and haven’t even seen for 15 years (the SIL, not my own sister), I just accepted her Friend request so as not to appear rude, and because she’s my sister’s sister-in-law. But an out-of-nowhere Friend request from someone whose name I don’t recognize, with no introduction message, sent possibly for no reason other than we have the same Facebook Friend? Rejected!

    This would be why I only have 66 Facebook friends. Not everyone in my Friends list is a real friend, someone I’ve met, some are fellow Bloggers, and some are friends of friends, but none of them were added via random Friend requests. I had at least had some contact with them prior to making them a Friend, even if it was just an exchange over a posted article, a photo, etc.

  5. I think that the only ones on my friends list are either real friends from school or family, with a smattering of neighbors for fun. Even so, much of what I see there is static. Speak when spoken to, I guess. 😉

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: