Yeah, right.

While working today I had to edit some code and because I’m not a programmer (duh) I had to get a little reminder for a snipped of html code that will not show up in the browser but that will be there when someone looks at the code. It’s basically used to exclude some elements that you don’t need but might need later so you don’t want to delete but you just want to hide.

Or to include snide comments. Programmers are famously snark-y people.

So I did a search for “comment it out”. The default search engine at work is Bing (brilliant partner marketing strategy by them) and this is what came up:

Did the same thing in Google and this is what came up:

See Bing? I don’t need you to make decisions for me because your decisions suck. I can make up my own mind, thank you very much.

Thank you Google for figuring it out that what I’m looking for was the snipped of code and giving me relevant results without trying to decide for me that I’m interested in Will.i.am’s featuring Nicki Minaj’s Check it out video. Really?? Blah.

I lost my phone a couple of days ago.

Now I realize that in general this may not sound like a big deal but the thing is, I live by my phone. It is the last thing I see before I fall asleep and the first thing I check in the morning. It is my alarm clock, my compass, my map, my connection to the world, my camera and my blanky when it’s cold outside. OK, it’s not my blanky but you get the idea.

At first I didn’t notice that I have lost it. I was in a store, I was walking around trying to find my husband when I reached in my purse and realized that I could not call him, I could not ask him where he was because I didn’t have my phone. I probably left it in the car as I often do.

A couple of hours later, when we got back to the car, we tried calling my phone to see if we can hear it ring underneath the front seat maybe? But we didn’t.

That’s when I knew I was in trouble. We try calling again and while we’re holding the other phone away from our ear to better hear the buzzing of the lost one, someone answers my phone. Holy cow! Someone has it.

“We found this phone in a parking lot” someone says, “can you help us find the owner?”. I am the owner, I say. Where are you? “We are at home”. And she gives me the address.

I punch it in the GPS and, bingo, the place comes up, it is maybe ten minutes away from where we are. We drive over, a gentleman comes out with my phone, introduces himself and asks us if we want to come inside for some water or tea. No, we answer, we have a car full of groceries but thank you for rescuing my phone, thanks so much for returning it! You really made our day.

We drive back, phone in my pocket, talking about how lucky I am for having recovered it.

The man’s name was Sayed. He was from Afghanistan. I think it was his daughter or his wife who answered my phone and talked to me when we first called and gave me directions to their house.

They sort of restored my faith in humanity that day. Sayed not only crossed a busy street to pick up a phone from the middle of the road but he tried to find me (I later found out that he texted a friend of mine asking about the owner of the phone), he answered the phone when I called and, more importantly, he gave me his home address where I could go and pick it up and invited us into his home when we showed up to collect the lost item.

I have to say, he’s a better person than I am. Finders keepers they say, no? Why would I try to find the owner of a lost phone? Who has time for that? Why would I take that risk?

I was an airhead, I never noticed when this thing fell out of my pocket and in the middle of a busy street. But he did go through all this trouble, he tried to find me, he returned my phone to me and was incredibly gracious about it.

So I want to say thank you, Mr. Sayed. Thank you for showing that people are still capable of selfless acts. I truly hope that, if something like this ever happens to you, you will have the same luck as I did. What goes around comes around. And I really hope that, if I don’t get a chance to return the favor then someone else will in the same way you did.

Thank you.

I love Facebook. I’m a fan. I found long-lost friends who moved to my area through Facebook and reconnected with people that I would have never otherwise been able to find and keep in touch with otherwise.  But I’ve found that not all Facebookers are made equal. Some are more fun than others. For instance:

Sleepers - Sleepers are people who got a Facebook account maybe because someone sent them an invite when they were doing that whole “find your friends on Facebook” thing and they wanted to check it out or maybe at some point they wanted to see a picture that someone uploaded to Facebook so they created an account, looked at a thing or two and then forgot about it completely. They are non-users but don’t want to go through the trouble of deleting their account.

Verdict: meh. Keep’em. Just in case sometime, in the remote future, you want to tell them: you can check it out on Facebook.

Lurkers - the Lurkers are not as passive as the Sleepers but they are not active either. They do sign in from time to time but they don’t post pictures, don’t comment and, most of all, they don’t set or change their status. They do, however, check out other people’s stuff so that when you see them and start telling them what’s been going on they tell you “Oh, I know you’ve been to Somethingville, I saw it on Facebook”. Thank you.

Verdict: Love’em. Keep’em. They’re harmless and, most of all, you know that with the Lurkers you’ve done your job of keeping your friends in the loop and can be the laziest friend ever without feeling guilty.

Scoopers - This is one of my favorite categories. The Scoopers give you the scoop. Only what matters, only the interesting stuff. From the Scoopers you can find out if the restaurant that opened up on the corner of Old Street and Weird Street is good or not and you get the scoop on the latest, greatest viral videos on the Internets. They tell you if they ate something amazing (and where exactly) but they don’t give you a constant stream of food information like, for instance, “Eating a cookie” or “Drinking some wine”. Who cares that you’re eating a cookie? But, on the other hand, if you just ate the most amazing cookie in the world, dammit, I want to know where I can get one and how much it is.

Verdict: keep’em. Love’em. Give back every once in a while. Seriously: come out of your lurking and tell us about your favorite place sometime.

Blabbers - Oh, the blabbers. The blabbers are putting out a constant stream of unfiltered information – most of it stuff that you really didn’t need or want to know. “Drinking my morning coffee”. “Eating lunch”. “Going to the gym”. “Watching a movie”. “Going to bed”. And back to the morning coffee again. In case you haven’t noticed yet, nobody cares. Tell us something we don’t already know.

Verdict: hide’em. Don’t unfriend them yet – hopefully at some point they will figure out the fact that Facebook can do other stuff too like link to articles, post pictures, or poke someone. Ok, forget the poking…

Twitter blabbers – “@someone Haha!That’s a good one #funnythings”. “@someonelse totally #uninteresting #notfunny #whocares”. The Twitter Blabbers are worse than the Blabbers. They put out a constant stream of consciousness but from Twitter. They rarely ever check Facebook and are probably very proud of themselves for covering all bases from one app.  Congratulations. You’ve managed to involve us in your Twitter conversations that we don’t give a crap about AND managed to annoy everyone in the process. Do us a favor and install selective twitter status. The world will thank you.

Verdict: unfriend. Or hide if you really care about them. Oh, and tell them to install selective twitter.

Narcissists - We get it. You’re pretty. But trust us: nobody wants to see more than five pictures of you at one time – even if they are in various poses and with various backgrounds. Well, unless you’re Heidi Klum and/or naked. Are you naked? Nope. Are you an actress/model? Nope. (or if you are, congratulations: there’s a thing called “portfolio” for your pictures and it’s not on Facebook). So maybe limit your self-pics to one a month? Mkay? Thanks.

Verdict: hide. Don’t burn bridges but don’t keep on your stream.

WhoTheHellIsThis?-es – So there’s this guy you think you knew in high school (or your former job, or your previous life) and you don’t really know his name but you think you recognized his picture so you accept his friend request. And he lurks for a while but then he occasionally turns into a babbler. He’s got over three thousand friends but never says anything remotely interesting. And every time he goes through the babbling phase you go “WhoTheHellIsThis? Oh, right. That guy”. Believe me: he doesn’t know your name either. He has no idea who you are. He just friended you because he saw on his stream that another one of his friends he doesn’t know friended you so you’re just another step towards his four thousand friends-goal and nothing more than that.

Verdict: unfriend.  You’ll never miss them.

Players - SuchAndSuch is looking for a contract killer to take out Such in Mafia Wars. Nobody cares. Move on.

Verdict: undfriend. Unless you like to play in which case I can warmly recommend Second Life.

Stalkers - OK, stalkers are a bit more difficult of a category. Maybe because they are an ex and you feel guilty about how things ended (did you REALLY need to have them arrested for trespassing when they came to pick up their stuff from your place after they dumped you?) or maybe you need to thread carefully because, well, they’re your boss or an extremely nosy co-worker. They love to post awkward comments on your wall or press “like” on a depressing post. They also love to remind you that you should be working rather than posting an article from Perez Hilton in the middle of the afternoon. Like that ever made anyone less productive…

Verdict: add them to your limited profile. I know, I know, it’s a pain in the butt and there’s a lot of RTFM but it’s worth it.

I’m sure there’s a few that I’ve left out. If you have some categories of your own you think I’ve missed, feel free to add.

Also, I’m sure I’ve fallen in one or more of these categories myself. Eh. Whatchagonnado, right?

Every once in a while you stumble upon something amazing. The other day I found a reference to this website via BoingBoing - A directory of wonderful things. BoingBoing always has amazing things but this one was an especially exquisite find.

The website offers a special service to all believers in the Rapture who are worried about the fate of their pets once they are transported to heaven. The website is run by a group of atheists looking to alleviate these worries. The service guarantees that the providers will retrieve and care for the dogs, cats, birds and pet rabbits of those raptured for a small, nominal fee.

Now for those who are unfamiliar with what The Rapture is, you can find the definition here. What you need to know is that, when the time comes, those worthy will be raised to Heaven and those unworthy will be left behind.

As far as I can tell this service is for real (the first question in the FAQs is “Is this a joke?” with the answer “No”), they have a PayPal account where people can send money and a straightforward contract complete with disclaimers. They save the first pet for $110 and ask for $15 for each additional pet. Quite the bargain.

I think this is brilliant. First, it  gives peace of mind to those worried about their pets once they are saved. Of course, pets will be left behind, only people can go to heaven. Second, it gives the opportunity for atheists of all walks of life to do something good and contribute in their own way to the Rapture. So any way you look at it, it is a win-win situation.

The best part is: you need to do nothing until the Rapture actually comes. After that, of course, you will be extremely busy but you have all this time to prepare for it.

Why didn’t I think of this?