Today we went shopping for stuff to put into a care package for our Son who is in the army and can now get care packages since he is in AIT training. It was a lot of fun, my wife and I went to Fry’s electronics and to the dollar store.

For me Fry’s electronics is like a geek Disneyland!

That’s all good and fine you say, but what is the big deal about getting my Son a care package? Wel, for starters this is the first time we will be able to send him something more than a letter. When I was in the army (for a short time) no one ever sent me a care package. Did it upset me? Not really. At the time being in the army upset me. My choice was poor, and it changed the course of my life.

So at Fry’s I picked up three movies for his PSP 3000. Awesome stuff for an awesome guy! I also got him some ‘parentally suggested’ stuff. Portable Kleenex pouches, some q-tips and chap-stick!  Now I have to find a box to put it all in, and then head out to the post office and mail it. My wife and I discussed sending him condoms (my suggestion), but she said they probably have them available to the troops…. in thinking about it, I don’t want to encourage him to loose his focus on training, the job he picked has a very high wash-out rate.

I also went looking at Fry’s for a TV for him.  He had his mother ship out his xbox-360 and he needs something to connect to it to play his games.  And of course eventually watch the news and programs on it.  He doesn’t have cable where he is at, but he can sign up for wi-fi based internet connectivity (that’s 40 bucks a month).  So next month after he gets paid we’ll shop for a laptop for him. He told me that he wished that I was there helping him make some choices, I told him that I could help him from afar and we could get his stuff shipped to him from anywhere.

The only thing I am concerned about is him losing his stuff. He lives in a dorm room, but he said that he could lock his TV up in his locker – no problem.  We’ll see how it all goes, I’m sure I’ll post something about it if something bad happens.

I have been publishing my blog for a number of years. I have found that not only do I need to come up with interesting topics to write about, I also have to keep an eye out for spam.  Thank goodness I have a spam blocker installed, it’s caught over 10,000 spam comments since I posted my first article February 5th 2009. I’m coming up on almost 3 years having this blog.

I’ve spent a lot of time trying to come up with decent, interesting materials. Allowing someone to spam comment my postings is the last thing I want to allow.  They get exposure, and greater importance on google because of their comments.  Their site address gets associated with my site… it’s like gorilla backlinking…

I used to think that if you got lots of spam comments, then at least people were looking at your site. This is true to an extent. My wife’s blog http://livinginramona.com gets 20 to 30 spam comments per day. Most are pretty ridiculous. Most come from Russia, and other countries in that region and are pushing porn. And then there are the other ones that are trying to get the web operator to sign up for SEO services to improve your google ranking – think of it as viagra for your web site…. oh yes, they are also pushing viagra!

Oh the things that you never see from behind the scenes of a blog web site. Pretty annoying, but it’s worth puting up with if you enjoy publishing your own blog.

Last November I received an email notifying me that a contact of mine was having a birthday a few days from when the email was sent. This email was sent by a service called “Plaxo” I had signed up for it years earlier, and never really got into using it. However it had connected me to a few of the people I knew and had previously worked with, including this woman, who’s birthday was coming up soon. The only problem was that she had been dead for over two years.

The whole thing kind of creeped me out, and sent me off thinking about how our online “connected” lives don’t always keep up with the real thing. Now the web sites that this lady had were all offline or taken over by other people, repurposed… But just like her, that part of her life was removed, deleted… Basically buried just like she was. But here was Plaxo humming along, asking me if I wanted to send her an e-card, or some online present.

To be honest, she and I didn’t end our working relationship on a good note. So this intrusion of her back into my life just brought up lots of memories of the difficulties that we had experienced. I never wished ill of her, but I didn’t wind up liking her.

This got me to thinking. What should happen to all our fingerprints (so to speak) that we leave on services like Facebook, twitter, or google plus? Not to mention our business web sites, personal web sites that we own (for example this site)? Should there be some kind of procedure that would allow our loved ones to dispose, archive, or continue on with our sites/profiles? Honestly I wouldn’t want to saddle my loved ones with running the sites I have. Where do all my business connections on linked in go? Recently a coworker where I work died of a massive heart attack. It was shocking, and mind numbing. How long do they keep his information at work? Who owns it? The family, or the company?

Jus something I have been thinking about. I will probably return to this topic one day, but today I just wanted to see where the stream of consciousness would take me.