Stop clogging my inbox

You know how there are certain people that love to fwd you all the stuff that they get forwarded? I've told my father a thousand times that 99% of those things are hoaxes but he still doesn't believe me, and forwards me stuff in a panic about how I might get my kidneys harvested or some sh|t like that. I used to get so angry that noone would get the message when I asked them politely to stop sending me this crap but then I had to resort to using more forceful words and even capital letters. So thankfully I don't get many of them anymore ;) On another note - I wanted to see how long I'd last having a funwall or superwall on my Facebook. I think I did quite well.. lasted a few months but took it down recently as it was full of more of this forwarded crap!

Many many years ago I found snopes.com and it was a godsend and my 'bible' to all things forwarded.

Anyway I was just searching google for images and came across this by accident. I wouldn't read it but I find the idea very clever and concept amusing. Someone has blogged about all the stuff they get sent!

stop clogging my inbox

Orkut - Google's answer to Facebook

I consider myself a fairly net savvy person. I usually know most things going on around the 'net, web, or whatever you call it.. Anyway, I happened to see "Orkut" mentioned on some forum I found through Google. Curious, I went to look it up to see what it was all about. I had never heard of it before.

According to Wikipedia Orkut is a

social network service which is run by Google and named after its creator, Google employee Orkut Büyükkökten. It claims to be designed to help users meet new friends and maintain existing relationships. Similar to Facebook, Friendster and MySpace, Orkut goes a step further by permitting the creation of easy-to-set-up simple forums (called "communities") of users...

Orkut is the most visited website in Brazil, being more visited than Google Brazil, number 2 on the list. In total visits, Google is probably still more popular since it appears as the second (the Brazilian version) and seventh most visited site (the international version).

The initial target market for orkut was the United States, but the majority of its users are in Brazil.[2] In fact, as of January 2008, 55.32% of the traffic come from Brazil, followed by 16.53% from India.

Hmm... I signed in through my gmail account and see who on my contacts list (address book) it could find) - one Indian person and one Brazilian person! Haha! I don't think many people in Australia have heard of it, and I don't think anyone (that I know of) in the Australia or US uses the site. I'm wondering for something that come from Google why it isn't more popular?

Weird...

EQ Tests

Related post: IQ Tests

Well I said I'd do an EQ test and little did I know it'd be sooner than I thought! I think I have done them maybe once or twice before and it was such a long time ago. I had no idea how I'd score but I got excited when I saw that two of my friends on my Facebook list had added the test to their profile. I had no idea an EQ test on FB existed (and I never searched for one) so I was pretty excited to do it (even though I know it's only a bit of fun and games)...

I was actually quite shocked to see that I scored highly. (my friends scored medium). It said:

You have high emotional intelligence. You are very aware and understand almost all social situations. You are able to have deep and meaningful relationships. Your life is very social and you can get along with other social people very well.

I am shocked indeed because I have been told by those close to me (not mentioning any names hmmm) in the past that they thought I had low EQ.

The test is a bit weird as it consists of a series of pictures and you have to guess the relationship or emotions some of the characters are feeling but firstly you have to figure out who they are actually talking about! I feel it would've been easier if they just labeled the pic with names of the characters. Anyway You can find the test here.

Here is the IQ test.

IQ Tests

Frankly, I think IQ tests are a load of codswallop. They don't really measure intelligence in my opinion. Because - What is intelligence? I'm sure there are plenty of people smarter than me with lower IQ scores than me.

I remember the first time I took one very clearly. I was 15 and my dad borrowed a book from his colleague and photocopied the entire thing at work, then brought it home. From memory it was a very lengthy test and took forever to do and at the end of it my score was 130.

I have done lots of IQ tests over the years (just for fun and interest) and my score has always been around the same, it really doesn't change much. I recently did the Facebook one and got 136. Yeah it was flattering for my ego to get a higher score than almost everyone on my friends list - but so what??

I noticed that friends I considered more successful than me all had lower scores than me. Friends that had done PhDs, were doctors, lawyers, accountants, etc.. ALL scored lower than me. And I'm a mere housewife! Why? This is crazy. I have a feeling that intelligence and 'studying ability' have no relationship whatsoever. I am willing to bet that my sister (currently doing a PhD and tutoring at university) would also score lower than me. I hated studying and was pretty bad at it. It was a miracle I that I did fairly well in high school and finished my degree. Yes I'm proud of the fact that I score relatively high but to me it doesn't mean anything because it doesn't guarantee a great life, great career and wealth, great health, great relationships, etc. Now if there was a test like that and I scored highly on THAT then I'd be a very happy camper indeed. :)

I think I'll go and do some EQ tests now... ;)

Facebook mania

What's the worse possible thing you could do to someone who is already internet addicted?

1. Pull the plug on the internet connection (OK some would say that's the BEST thing you could do...)
2. Give them something else to 'play' with that uses more of their time.

Well, a few days ago, for the first time I experienced stupid internet drop outs. It was very painful not knowing whether it was going to work or not. A technician even came and checked it out and it was fine. Then, a few hours after it left that dreaded flashing light came back - ARGH! I am not sure but it might also have something to do with the modem overheating in this crazy heat. It has been hot for about about a month now but only this week has it gotten really hot. The last 2 nights were the first time I actually could not fall asleep because it's too hot. I usually turn on the air-con 10-30 mins before bed, then leave it on as I'm drifting and when I find myself almost falling asleep I turn it off. However, it hasn't worked the last two nights because it's just too hot! ARGH. Anyway...

I have finally entered the FaceBook world.

I was a bit 'slow' given I practically live online. At first I had no clue what it was about. It seemed you needed to register to see anything and at first I just couldn't be bothered.

Then a few months later I decided to check it out again and registered a bogus name. Prior to that I looked at screenclips I found on Google images but it wasn't enough so I decided to join up and have a poke around. Nup, still couldn't do anything! You need to add friends to see their pages and they need to accept you. OK so I started small and added 2 friends. Now I was finally getting the idea of what it was all about!

I never joined up the myspace craze because I just hated the page layouts. I hated the loud designs and the music and photos slowing the page loading down. I couldn't even stand to look at anyone's myspace page. However, facebook is much nicer. The design is clean and easy to understand and navigate.

A week or two after my initial poke around (where I was only looking and not doing a great deal) I decided to search for people. A few weeks prior I had already done a quick search for some people but it was a pain in the butt because a lot of my friends have common names so the results turn up 50 or 100 results and I have to sort of guess which one is them?? Or make them out from a tiny photo! So that kind of put me off. It was another reason I kinda didn't want to use my real name since mine would be the only result with that name. Also, my sister's boyfriend decided to scare me about how FB collects your data for statistic purposes or something or sells it to people.. I dunno if it's true or not...

Anyway, round two. Six Degrees of Separation. The results from my 'stalking' behaviour:

I looked up people from my past from 10 or more years ago. Most did not enable a public profile (bummer) but some did. I looked up the guy I had a crush on in Year 10 (now engaged and not looking nearly as good looking as I thought he did when he was 15!), I looked up my first boyfriend (who seems to have a lot of 'friends' on his list). One name looked familiar and it turns out she is a girl I knew from a forum (she only visited a handful of times I think but I remember her name).
Then there is the friend I made 10 years ago when I went to on a travelling tour of Taiwan with a 'youth study group'. I went through his friends list and there was a girl on I knew, also from a forum.
Now, I've added some girls I went to high school with and there is a girl X on their list. I don't know who she is but her surname really stands out because it is 3 words. This sounds stupid but I remember this girl who worked on a big-name Australian fashion magazine because of this strange 3-word surname so I go through X's friend's list and sure enough, that magazine person I was thinking of is on her list! (probably her sister).
Back to my first boyfriend (oh so long ago!) I noticed on his friends list were a lot of people that I knew on a BBS I used to frequent. I was a bit annoyed the only person I really wanted to find out about did not enable his profile, but everyone else did.
I'm sure I'll find more weird six degrees of separation stuff...

So far I'm liking facebook because it is kind of like email, MSN (and other IM systems), websites, chat sites, forums, blogs, flickr, you tube, schoolfriends/friendsreunited all rolled into one. But it's good because you can allow or disallow people to see YOUR profile page (which you can write messages, add photos, play games and score against one another, etc).

So anyway, I found all these people that I used to go to school with and lost contact with and figured I HAD to join just to see their profiles and their pics. Amazingly, out of my high school peers 1) Most seem to be living overseas at the moment, 2) Most are not married and those that are have only married recently and do not have kids. Interesting, given everyone is about 30. I think it's just the type of people though. I had another friend from high school who got married when she was 22 and now has 3 or is it 4 kids.

Just had to get this all out before I forgot.

ARGH! I don't know what the crap is going on. But everyone I looked up the other day.. I mean every single person.. well their profile is now gone private. It just seems weird that all of a sudden these people (who have nothing to do with each other) have decided to put their profile on private?