Facebook Fun

Well, I finally took a major step this weekend. I set up a Facebook account. (That’s fine. I’ll wait a moment until you stop laughing.)

Several things had kept me from doing so until now, the major one being the fact I have dial-up Internet access. That slow delivery leads to interminable (and sometimes no) downloads and frequent computer freezes, to the point that some days I can’t get online at all. You’ve all heard me complain about that often enough.

Still, Friday afternoon I finally decided it was time to try out Facebook. I’d been assured getting one done was easy as pie. For most people it probably is. But--well, here’s how it went. I set up my name and password. So far so good. It wanted my age. I tried to sneak the year by, but it crossed its arms, stomped its foot, and refused to do anything. So I compromised--and gave it want it wanted.

Then it wanted me to add an image. I didn’t have one. I thought I’d use the shield from a corner of my webpage which I’d used before. It started to download the entire page. I quick hit cancel. It didn’t. So for a period of time, my image was a thumbnail of my entire webpage. Now this was a problem--why? I set up the first ‘trial’ page under my legal name. A lot of people who’ll see that site I don’t plan to share the writing name with. I want to have other writers as ‘friends’ on that ‘writer’ one, and I feel awkward asking them to friend me under both names.

Then it wanted the schools I attended. I swear I followed every darned instruction and they still popped up wrong. Finally got that straightened out. Then I tried to write something clever about myself like a lot of you have. Nada. I lost count of the times I typed something in and it never did take. So now it’s a critic?

Giving that up, I decided I’d had enough fun for one afternoon and night and fixed a good, stiff cup of coffee (I forgot to buy wine.) Saturday I started again. Finally I was ready to add friends. But all these strange people I didn’t know kept popping up, and I realized it was trolling for people who’d listed my colleges as theirs. I didn’t know one of them.

How do I get rid of all these faces and names of people I don’t want littering my site? I didn’t ask for them. Why were they there? And then suddenly I got a friend request. I don’t know how that person got my name. Is there a secret grapevine I don’t know about?

I want to thank all of you for friending me--and if I haven’t responded, it’s because I still don’t know what the heck I’m doing.

And to cap it off, I had to email Jen to ask how to post. Honestly!

P.S. I haven’t found my wall yet. Are there four of them?