Of course, as soon as I was done, they announced sweeping revisions of their privacy policy and a simplification of the user controls that had become so complex that most people gave up and just didn’t deal with them.

I wasn’t terribly worried about my privacy. I assumed that pretty much everything I put in my profile or said online was visible to everyone. I mean, it may be only your “friends” who are supposed to see what you write, but if someone is determined, anything is available.

You can still (always) find me online. I have Twitter, MySpace, Google Buzz, AIM and other accounts. And of course, this blog. For all of my stuff, just Google me, my profile is there.

I was more concerned about friends and family who, following my example, blithely joined. I wonder if any of them spent the time wading through the multiple levels of privacy settings like I did. I’ll bet few, if any. They were all to busy playing Farmville.

The best thing about Facebook is that your friends are all there. I mean literal friends, people you really know and value. I had about 260 “friends.” Many of them were family, classmates from high school, and a lot of people who I knew or had met through my music podcasting days. I truly enjoyed reading what they all had to say. Many didn’t say much, but it was nice to be in touch with them on some level. I’ll miss that.

What I don’t miss is the endless silliness. I don’t care who is playing Mafia Wars, or what special animal someone got in Farmville. I have nothing against them, but I’m not playing them and I don’t have any interest in them, so why do I have to keep clicking a button to hide them? And why if I already hid messages generated by some game, do I get related variations of it? And I really don’t care if someone gave me a virtual gift, or bought me a virtual drink. That’s all fun, but why do I need to send one to 5 other people to accept one? Just because I might indulge in some silly gesture with a close friend, doesn’t mean I want to involve any others.

I know a lot of people really get into those things. They are not important to me, though.

I often used FB to post a quick thought that wasn’t worth writing a full blog post here. A lot of them I included a link to share or a picture or video. It’s really good for that and I think that is Facebook’s most powerful aspect. Even when I wrote a long piece in this blog, I would tell people about it and link to it on FB. Some other friends were doing the same and we all read each others articles that way.

I also found the chat function useful. I often IMed certain people when we were online. Sure, I could do that with AIM or ICQ or any of the four or five IM systems I have accounts with. But often people whose eyes glazed over if you tried to explain those to, were happy to chat using Facebooks chat. Many didn’t even realize that often I wasn’t even looking at Facebook, I was using Digsby, a instant messaging client that works with all my IM accounts at once.

But over all, Facebook was a big annoyance and time-waster. When it became a movement to quit in protest of their policies, I decided to pile on. There wasn’t much to lose.

Besides, if it works and FB shapes up and shows some concern over their users privacy concerns, I can alway rejoin. Well, maybe. It seems like too much work.

You can’t just quit. They make you deactivate it. It gets deleted in two weeks. If you log in – even once – in that time, everything is back to normal. Before I deactivated my account, I made sure that wouldn’t happen. I deleted all my photos. I changed my profile picture to something very generic: Tom from MySpace. I thought that was ironic. I removed every detail from my profile that I could. Then I said my goodbyes and removed every friend, one by one. Then just to insure that I can’t accidentally log in ad re-activate the account, I changed the password. Then I deactivated the account. There is no going back now. In a couple weeks, I’ll cease to exist on FB altogether.

If I ever go back, I think I’ll do it differently. I may make a profile for just close friends and family and another one for those extended friends. Maybe even a separate one for all my musician friends. Like I said, it seems like more work than it would be worth.

The vehicle I bought is an Isuzu Ascender, which almost nobody has even heard of. I hadn’t. Isuzu doesn’t even sell vehicles in the U.S. anymore. So why would I take a chance on a lame-duck used vehicle?

Simple. It’s just a rebranded Chevy Trailblazer/GMC Envoy. If you don’t look at the badging on the truck, you’d swear it was an Envoy. Inside, it’s almost identical to the 2003 Envoy I had and the trim details on the outside, that I think are “different,” I’m not so sure they’re not just due to the 2005 model year as much as the different name.

Some minor details – again just as likely to be model year variations, or not – no OnStar. Boo Hoo. I didn’t want it anyway and never used it in the old Envoy. It would have been expensive to update anyway, as it was the old analog cellular system. And there is a weird ignition interlock that you need to use to start the truck. You can’t just turn the key. I’m not going to give it away, because it’s kind of a neat security feature, but even the dealer had never heard of it before.

My wife bought a Jeep Liberty last week. We decided we needed another vehicle NOW, rather than keep using the rental we had picked up the day after the accident. I looked at a couple of Trailblazer/Envoy replacements, but didn’t really find quite what I was looking for. But she saw the Liberty and liked it. I have to admit, I like it too. It’s a bit smaller than the Envoy was, and I really like having a roomy vehicle these days, but it will get her to and from work in the wilds of Northern Niagara County no matter how nasty the weather gets. I like not having to worry about that too.

We only got one key and remote with the Liberty. We found out that it’s a high-security key with some kind of chip in it that needs to be programmed. you can’t just cut a new blank and go. A locksmith can do it, but they have to have both keys to make another. With one key you have to go to a dealer. So I stopped at the local Jeep dealer to get the key made. It cost $100. I bought another remote online for $30. The dealer took the vehicle information and a recall notice popped up. Guess, what, we got free lower ball joints. All I had to do was wait an hour and a half.

So, I killed time by looking at used cars. That’s how I found the Ascender.

So, we are now at three cars. Plus Albert’s, that makes four in the driveway. I don’t know if they will fit. But it will be nice to have my own vehicle and be able to go where I want when I want again.

I went skiing last Thursday and on the way home, I had a mishap. I can’t explain it, just all of a sudden, the truck was spinning and hit the snowbank, not nose-first, not back-first, but full on sideways and flipped over. It caught the running board in the snow and rolled, ending up sitting on the driver side in someone’s side yard.

No one was hurt. No other vehicles were involved and no property – other than mine – was damaged.

I’d never been in a rollover crash before. I was leaning against the driver door window with the seatbelt still holding me in the seat wondering what to do next. I wasn’t confused, nor did I lose consciousness, but I just needed to assess the situation and figure out the best course of action to a situation I hadn’t encountered before. Once I had decided that the vehicle wasn’t about to burst into flames or explode imminently, I decided to get out. I suppose that would have been the same decision, had the truck been in flames, but I had time to decide how to do it elegantly. I turned off the ignition and was annoyed that the radio kept playing. It does that. The Envoy doesn’t turn off the radio until you actually open the door.

Opening the driver door was out of the question, the truck was sitting on it. So I decided to go up, to the passenger side. I released the seatbelt and immediately fell into a heap on the door. I got up and stood up. The door was still what seemed like far away. I decided to see if the window would roll down. I then realized that to operate the window, I had to turn the ignition back on. I could reach the button for the window and it went down a bit sluggishly. Somehow I found a foothold and managed to climb up and out and sat on the side of the truck before jumping down to the ground.

The first thing I saw was a guy with a mountain bike on the shoulder of the road talking on a cell phone. He asked if I was all right and if anyone else was in “there.” He was reporting the mishap to the police.

I won’t drag out the whole story any further other than explain eventually, thanks to the help of the guy on the bike, a NY State Corrections Officer, two Erie County Sheriffs Deputies, the driver of the Tow truck who was on the way home and came upon the scene and his other driver who brought the second truck needed to flip the truck back upright, I had a long ride home with the Envoy on a flatbed.

Since I climbed out the window without opening the door, the radio kept playing, as if to taunt me, until they had flipped the truck back onto it’s wheels and we could get back inside…

I didn’t realize how bad the damage was at first. I could have had it towed to someplace local, rather than spend $120 to bring it back to Lockport, if I had known it was a total loss. When the appraiser called to give me the bad news (which I already knew from the body shop anyway) we had already bought a new vehicle.

We’ve been struggling with two vehicles shared between three drivers for quite a while. Inertia and a shortage of parking space in the driveway had kept us from buying another vehicle. We got through the weekend with a rental car, which the insurance company will pay for slightly over half, so much for “rental coverage.” But we found a vehicle that Bobbi liked at the right price and took it home. She’s now the owner of a blue Jeep Liberty.

Once I get the check for the insurance and get the bank loan paid off on the Envoy, I’ll get another vehicle. We almost bought two at once, but I’m glad I waited to see roughly what the insurance will cover. I should be able to replace the Envoy with another similar model and upgrade by a few model years at the same time.

We were really sad to lose this car. It was like brand-new condition when we bought it. Sure, they clean up a used vehicle when you buy it, but this one was extra clean. The mileage was low too, and I chose it over one that was a year newer because of that. We’d kept it in good condition as well, with the biggest blemish before this having been the Bird-damage episode, which we had repaired.

No, sorry. It was forty years ago today that Astronauts set foot on the moon. Not only was it an astounding feat at the time, it was televised. Yes, shown nearly-live on TV. We’d been enjoying real-time news for quite a while. Olympic coverage. Coverage of the VietNam War. Mostly by undersea cables, but more and more by some newfangled satellites. But to me the Apollo landing on the moon epitomizes the move to instant gratification with the news.

Everyone has their story of where they were and how old they were when it happened. I’m not going to disappoint you. My observation of the moon landing was extra special to me as I was in Washington DC. when it happened. How much more patriotic can you get? I was in our nation’s capital during this moment of national pride.

I was 16 years old and my sister and I were visiting my Aunt who lived in DC. (Both of them read this blog and will probably correct me if I get something wrong.) It was a magical time and the moon landing was icing on the cake. Nixon was still president, but he was out of town at the time, so we had no chance of seeing him. But we saw just about every sight we could.

We spent two weeks there. My sister and I were old enough to venture out on our own. My Aunt had to work during the day, but spent a lot of time on evenings and the weekend showing us around. But, we were equipped with guide books, transit maps and a few tricks my Aunt had let us in on.

We traveled on buses. The subway system hadn’t yet been built. I think we may have had a pass that let us go anywhere. I know we did find out about the shuttle for the tourists that went around the Mall and paid a daily rate on that. We rode it all around the scenic area.

We found out about the employee cafeterias in most of the office buildings. They were all over and much cheaper than restaurants.

We spent an entire week seeing the Smithsonian. We still had to force ourselves to keep moving to see it all! The Library of Congress, Art Museum, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, Capitol, Jefferson Monument, Washington Monument, Ford Theater, all were checked off our list. We even went to a few less likely things like the NTIA (Home of the Voice of America), FBI and rode a bus out to the Pentagon. I embarrassed us when I pulled the cord to get off the bus as soon as I saw the building. The driver just glared at me. I didn’t know that there was an actual terminal inside the Pentagon and the bus went inside it!

But we had a great time. Partly because it was a great place to visit. Partly because we were finally treated like adults and allowed to do – within limits – what we wanted. We had an experience only two kids from a small town dropped into a big city could have. It would have been awesome by itself. Like I said, being there to observe men landing on the Moon was all gravy. We stayed up late to watch it and saw it all.

I had always been a big fan of the space program. As a kid, I remember them wheeling big TVs on tall carts into the classrooms and having us watch John Glenn’s orbital flight. That was a regular occurrence whenever there was a space launch (as we called them) at the parochial school I went to. I understand they didn’t do that in the public schools. They didn’t have TVs, I guess. Maybe it was against the rules. Even at the Catholic school I went to, there were only a couple TVs. They would set them up and bring all the kids from another classroom in to share. We had kids sitting two to a desk and we still were transfixed by the occasion.

Later, as I got older and went to the public schools, the space flights got to be more routine and it didn’t matter so much whether we watched, but if I could, I did. Of course, you didn’t have much choice. They were like Presidential speeches, they were on every channel and we only got about 4 back then.

We left Thursday morning about 7am and arrived in time for his appointments in the afternoon, then stayed one more night at the Neville Family House. The bronch was the only thing to do today and was an outpatient proceedure, so we were free to leave by about 5pm.

It was done under mild sedation, so there was some observation time before we could leave. The photos here are Al having his first food after being NPO since last night. He really felt okay and was glad to get the sandwich. They wanted to get a lot of fluids into him, so he had some cranberry juice and a can of Pepsi.

We noticed they have a new can design that we haven’t seen at home yet.

Al has been cleared to drive, but with the sedation still wearing off, I drove home tonight. He’s free to drive himself around all he wants to now, and enjoy that until they tell him he can go back to work!