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JerseySmarts.com

For Those Of You Who Enjoy Playing Around In The Outdoors

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One of my friends loves going camping. She and her husband are constantly going away on vacation to exotic places and spending their time away from the office sitting in snowy mountains, tropical jungles, amid the ruins of ancient civilizations, or just hiking the trails along some of our own country’s magnificent natural environments. When you stop to think about it for a moment, America really does have a beautiful landscape which is comprised of a variety of diverse landscapes. We have majestic mountains, grassy plains, scorching deserts, beautiful forests – heck, we even have a volcano over in Washington state!

Personally, I’ve always enjoyed seeing pictures of these places instead of getting out there and experiencing them. And I think the reason for that is because I generally have never had the proper equipment to actually get out there and enjoy the experience. When I see my friend come back from her trips she has bags of hiking equipment and different gear that she uses to make her time in the wilderness not just enjoyable, but safe and productive, too. Even her camera is a top of the line item!

And while anyone can just go to a random store to buy outdoors equipment the truth is that you really need to get high quality gear in order to make your excursion worthwhile. The savvy shopper will find a high quality store like The Clymb and see what they have on sale in their camping tents department. The next step would then be to find the items that work best for the experience that you’re attempting to create. For a guy like me, I’d be focused on my feet. I find that if my feet are getting battered and bruised out there, then I just can’t enjoy myself. I’m sure that many of you are the same way.

I wouldn’t be opposed to even getting a higher performance pair of shoes to spend some time out in the wilderness. So I’m sure it’s no surprise that my first purchase will be from The Clymb’s trail running shoe section! It’s really all about quality for me – particularly when purchasing equipment that is going to have to stand up to the elements.

Since I’m not teaching during the coming semester and since I will have a little bit more free time, I fully expect that I’ll schedule more time to enjoy the wilderness. And with some high quality gear backing me up, I’m sure that my experiences will be just as exciting as my friend and her husband’s experiences!

What Constitutes a “Friend” on Facebook These Days Anyway?

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Over the last few years, I’ve written several posts about the dwindling functionality and, ultimately, usefulness of certain social media platforms. For example, some three years ago I noted that I closed down my MySpace and LinkedIn accounts. And here we are – three years later – and I have no intention of opening up either of those accounts again. Sure, a lot of people tell me to reopen my LinkedIn account so I can shore up certain professional contacts in a worst case scenario (i.e. if I need to find employment quickly), but I have no interest in maintaining a presence on that platform at this time.

Which brings me to one of the two social media platforms where I do maintain accounts: Facebook.

Facebook seems to have become "Happy Birthday-book"

I’m sure that most of the folks reading this entry have a Facebook account – it seems like most people on the planet have a Facebook account these days. And, if you’re like me, then you’ve noticed something weird about Facebook in the last few years. No, it’s not the fact that Facebook seems to constantly change their layout without the consent (or considered happiness) of their users. And no, it’s not the fact that spam-loving companies have found a way to breach even Facebook’s strong security measures. Instead, if you’re like me you’ve noticed that Facebook has been reduced to a single phrase for most people…

“Happy Birthday, buddy!”

I can’t tell you how many of my Facebook friends only interact with me on my birthday. And, admittedly, there are scores of my Facebook friends who I only interact with on their birthdays. Over the last year, I’ve made a conscious effort to not send happy birthday greetings to people who I wouldn’t go out of my way to call or text with the same message. Sometimes, I find that there are social strictures that require me to send someone a happy birthday note. Other times, there are folks who I would go out of my way to say happy birthday to if I saw them during the day, but I refrain from doing so online because it seems somewhat weird.

But more than any other observation about the oodles of birthday messages that are flung around Facebook, the most pressing observation is just how weird the whole exercise is for everyone. I mean let’s be honest – how many different ways can you say, “Happy Birthday, [INSERT NAME HERE]! Enjoy!” or something similar each year to the same person before it gets redundant, repetitive, and just bizarre? With some of my Facebook friends I’ll go in and check what I wrote on their wall the prior year and most of the time the message that I’m crafting for the new happy birthday message is eerily similar.

The whole thing is just bizarre to me. However, the weirdness factor aside I have no plans to get rid of my Facebook page. The truth is that Facebook is too ingrained in our society today and we are all too reliant on that particular social media platform. So, while I may be a little exasperated with the happy birthday messages that I see on there every single day, I think it’s just part of the platform that we’re going to have to accept.

By the way, my birthday is next Tuesday, January 31st… and I’ve grown to expect many birthday greetings on my Facebook wall!

Joe Biden + CNN = Low Brow

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Last month Joe Biden took to the microphones and commented about how something President Bush had done was “bullshit.” Interesting that a sitting Senator would use that term in a public. If you don’t believe it’s true, our friends at CNN.com actually repeated the comment on their website. Take a look:

Because that’s really an appropriate word for a respected news company to post on their website…

It’s all about the new media these days, folks. Everyone start looking for a new news source because if CNN is going to this type of sensationalism to get hits on their website, then all hope is lost in the traditional media outlets (which I’ve believed strongly for quite some time now).

My Second Day at Work Out World

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After working out at my new gym yesterday morning, I refrained from writing anything about it on the blog. I did this, mainly, because I wanted to have a second day under my belt before I began to write about my experiences. Some of you may remember the completely ridiculous experiences I had at my previous gym a few years ago – back when I was going to the gym in full swing.

Unfortunately for you, but fortunately for me, I have not had any ridiculous experiences at Work Out World (WOW) in Ocean Township. I’m sort of sickened that I’m going to another gym in Ocean Township since I do everything I can to NOT contribute to the town’s economy (I’ll always be bitter from how they treated my friends and I while we were college students – police brutality and destroying civil liberties definitely leaves a mark on you). The new gym is nice and I’m amazed at how packed it is at 6:30am in the morning.

One of the complaints that I read about WOW before signing up was that there are too many members and that there are times when the lines for equipment are half an hour long. I thought that I would experience this problem yesterday morning when I pulled up to the gym early in the morning and I saw a packed parking lot, but I didn’t have a problem getting on a treadmill at all. The early morning workouts have been nice so far, but I think I’m going to change up my training schedule each week or every other week so I’m not always working out first thing in the morning or later in the evening. I guess it depends on my schedule at work.

One weird coincidence popped up this morning, though. Yesterday I thought I saw some kid (I say “kid” but he’s got to be my age) who used to hang around one of my ex-fling’s houses. He looked different (older), but after Day Two at the gym I’m pretty confident that it’s him. So that was sort of weird.