A Day Long Date...

Yesterday Claude and I had most of day away from the house and together. Most of the time we have two cars for a reason. We are both headed in opposite directions. But yesterday was a perfectly wonderful day with the two of us doing things together with the Jeep being our carriage of choice for the day.

Claude heard about a class on 'social networking'. It was lunch and training at the Georgetown College Conference Center. That was our morning project together.

Claude headed to City Hall in Sadieville to take care of business while I got ready to leave. I had it in my head we needed to leave at 11am. I was wrong...can you believe that. We were to be in the car and headed to Georegtown at 11am. Because of my miss cue there I called Claude at City Hall at 10:40 and said, "Don't you think we should be leaving now?" He assured me it started at 11:30am. I checked my calendar and he was right. Oh the humanity!!! So I headed downstairs to get a bit more computer work done before he came home to pick me up.

Now, I have several projects I'm trying to complete before Bonnie arrives next week and I got immersed in one of them and completely forgot what time it was. I heard Claude's footsteps upstairs when he returned. I just kept on working until I heard this bass voice call down the stairs, "It starts in 13 minutes...think we should go?" Oh my heavens, now I was wrong two times in one morning!!

I ran up the stairs and got in the Jeep and we headed to Georgetown knowing we would now be late. As we left I realized I left my 'crackberry' charging on my desk in the basement. I really missed the little thing. I'm more attached then I thought I was. So now I would spend a full day without my new little friend.  Is that the third thing I did wrong in one morning???

We were a few minutes late to the center. Everyone else was eating. We quickly got our food and found at spot a table in the front. The lunch was great, a big sandwich on a croissant. I LOVE croissant sandwiches. I bet peanut butter & jelly would even be more elegant on croissants. They even had a pickle spear that was the kind of pickle I like best. We ate quickly to catch up to where everyone else was at.

When we sat at our table I asked everyone if they watched 'Criminal Minds' Wednesday evening. No one but Claude and I had. We found it amusing that the night before training on 'social networking' the premise for Criminal Minds was the criminal used social networking to lure his victims. By-the-way, there was NO training on this concern during our session. However, they did have a quote from the TV show. Criminal Minds starts with a quote and ends with a quote spoken over the pictures of the show by one of the characters in the show. This was one of the quotes used Tuesday evening on Criminal Minds, "The Internet is the only thing man has created that he doesn't understand." Hmmmm...

We were informed:

• There are at least 200 social networks worldwide and more added all the time.
• Facebook was started in 2004 by a college student (Mark Zukenberg) in his dorm room. It was originally only accessible if you had a '.edu' domain in your eMail address.
• The fastest growing group using Facebook is 30+ years old now.
• We spend 3,000,000,000 minutes a day on Facebook.
• Facebook is the most mainstream of the social networks.
• Facebook is the largest website for uploaded pictures.
• MySpace is really where all this started.
• 1 in 4 Americans is on MySpace.
• There are 50,000,000 mails sent a day on MySpace.
• MySpace is now owned by Rupert Murdock (I'm thinking Eagles singing Dirty Laundry, one my favorite songs of all time, here)
• The bad thing about MySpace is that it opened being public to everyone, no real controls when it started.
• In February of 2009 they found and removed 90,000 known pediphiles from FaceBook.
• LinkedIn was a site I knew nothing about but it turns out Claude has used it since his Peace Corps days.
• LinkedIn is more of a professional person/company site.
• LinkedIn was founded in 2000 and has 40,000,000 members.
• LinkIn is a great free way to market yourself for a job and your company.
• The information on LinkedIn is ALWAYS public.
• LinkedIn is a great place for a non-profit to be.
• Twitter tells people everything you do using your cell phone or the Internet and only 140 characters.
• Georgetown College has someone that Tweets each play of their games.
• They spoke briefly about Digg and Blogs.
• Problems with social networking are: Identity theft, Predators, Cyber-bullying, Posting of embarrassing photos and comments (once something is posted it NEVER goes away), and the release of sensitive corporate data.
• We should ask ourselves before we post anything these two questions: 1) Can a stranger find private information about me? and 2) Is there anything you don't want your employer or grandmother to see?
• They spoke a bit about corporate usage of social networking. Even a CEO having his own spot on FaceBook should be monitored before he posts.
• There were obviously several people in Human Resources there who were interested in the affects of people's Facebook (and other accounts) and using that data in hiring situations. Hmmmm...I never thought of that one.
• Norton/Symantic has identified several scam concerns when using social networking: chain letters, cash grabs, websites to click on and the site is actually a mechanism to troll for your personal data, and hidden charges.
• Remember that the employer owns what comes from their site and on their time.
• There are libel cases pending in the Supreme Court for statements made on people's personal blogs.
• The Library of Congress is archiving all public Tweets from Twitter. There are 50,000,000 of these each day!! (I'm thinking Dan Brown is writing his next novel on the Library of Congress and Tweeting. Really.)
• We were cautioned to go to spokeo.com and check our own name to see what information has been pulled and is out there about us and available to everyone. There are websites like Peoplefinders and Peoplesearch that collect your personal data and display it for others for a fee. They also get public records from court houses about your home, etc. One man in the audience suggested we also google our home phone number and be amazed at what we find.
• We were cautioned to check our Privacy Settings in FaceBook regularly. You may have them set the way you want, then you get a note from FaceBook that says they have made a change or upgrade in how they do things and that could pop your Privacy Settings back to default and not what you selected. Check the privacy settings regularly.
• We were told to have a junk eMail account for ordering things that can't be tracked back to your kids eMail if the family all uses one eMail account.
• Parents should all be aware of togetherville.com where parents can check what their kids do and say on the Internet. Not sure how that works but it was very strongly recommended.

It was a good class. Claude and I were happy with the meal and the training.

Then we hopped in our bright yellow carriage and headed to Frankfort. Our destination...Buffalo Trace Distillery. We wanted to add a case of rootbeer at our home and we needed candles for Jake and Nissa.

Then we headed to Lexington for a meeting Claude had in the afternoon. In preparation for this time together, I printed possible big trips for us in the future. I had about 7 or 8 possibilities. As Claude drove I read them in 'date for trip' order. We talked them over and narrowed it down to 3 possibilities. Claude carried them in with him to his meeting and had a minute to review them before the meeting started. I stayed in the Jeep with the windows down, enjoying a nice clear day and a Spring breeze, and read my Ensign.

Claude was about 1 1/2 hours in his meeting. I enjoyed the quiet reading with no phone or ability to do anything else or be distracted in any way. I need that every now and then because I seem to have no ability to create that setting myself.

When Claude came out he had picked the one he felt best about. I agreed. Now we just need to put that plan in motion.

Then we both agreed we should complete our day together with dinner and dessert in Lexington at someplace we don't have to eat in Georgetown. We settled on BD Mongolian Grill. It was a great meal. Then we headed to Coldstone Creamery for an ice cream dessert. Yummy!!!

We got back to Sadieville about 6:30 in the evening and then settled down for an evening in front of the TV. It was a great date day together.