I absolutely hate the word “blog”

Here’s hoping this Facebook email thread needs no real intro:

—–Original Message to Facebook—–
From: Virginia Culler
To: xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: PRIVACY-BUGS: “Wallster” app — spam/worm

User id: xxxxxxxxx
Description of problem: I received a message from an alleged Facebook app called “Wallmaster”, informing me that a picture from my profile had been used on xxxxxxx.com.  This appears to be a very sketchy site.  The friend who allegedly sent me this message did not in fact send it (I have informed her of this fact), and the app does not appear to actually exist.  I’d like to forward you the email, but you don’t seem to up-front about providing an email address (understandably).  If you’d like to provide me with an address to which I could send the email in question, you’d probably be able to crack down on this a bit better.  As it stands, I can only paste it in:

2008/11/10 Facebook <wallmaster+m1mh~hdm@facebookmail.com>

Lauren wrote on your Wall:

“has anyone emailed you to let you know your faceboook pic was just featured on dinascript.com”

To see your Wall or to write on Lauren’s Wall, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/xxxxxxxxx

Thanks,
The Facebook Team

___
Want to control which emails you receive from Facebook? Go to:
http://www.facebook.com/editaccount.php?xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Thanks and let me know if I can be of additional help!

–Virginia

Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.0.3) Gecko/2008092417 Firefox/3.0.3

_____

Hi Virginia,

As part of the new site design we have updated the “Friends” box to offer more customization options.  To edit these settings, simply navigate to your profile page and then click on the pencil icon in the upper right hand corner of the “Friends” box.

The Edit Box that appears will allow you to specify how many friends are displayed and which friends you always want to show.  If you want to ensure that friends from certain networks appear, you can select those networks in the “Include friends from” section.  Finally, checking the “Show Networks Section” will display a list of all of the networks your friends are in.

We hope that you enjoy these changes and welcome any feedback.  Let me know if you have any further questions.

Thanks for contacting Facebook,

Daisy
User Operations
Facebook

_____

Me again.  So what just happened?  Did you actually READ my message, “Daisy”?  Taking bets as to whether or not this is yet another Facebook virus — ten bucks says “Daisy” doesn’t really exist (unless it’s like a subtle nod to Kubrick, and Facebook is actually powered by HAL?).  Ah well, now I know all about the new Facebook (TM) customization options.  So there’s that!

I was running errands in Redmond the other day on my lunch break, and I drove by what has to be the most pathetically-named city park in the history of pathetically-named city parks:

(To be fair, there are indeed grass lawns throughout this park.)

Coming next month: “Wet Water Lake”. Should be a friggin’ riot.

Let’s see if it sticks.

No, not the cheesy Shakira album. I mean actual, paid laundry service.

See, we have assigned time slots in our building to do laundry in the shared, coin-op laundry room. And lately, some inconsiderate neighbors have been stealing our time slot, despite the fact that we repeatedly leave increasingly frustrated-yet-still-begrudgingly-polite notes about it. (At first, we figured it couldn’t possibly be the same people over and over again, and that it must just be new-ish tenants who didn’t realize there was a schedule. But then, our caretaker informed us that it’s the same assholes over and over again, so now we’re in full combat mode.)

Needless to say, the fact that they’d thwarted our FOUR most recent attempts to do laundry had left us with quite the backup. So I caved, and we looked into getting professional laundry service. And can I just tell you, MY GOD IS IT WORTH IT.

For a mere $0.95/pound, Russell will come by your place, pick up all your dirty things, wash them according to your specifications with your choice of products, and return them within a day clean and dry and nicely folded and bagged. You don’t even have to drop it off or pick it up. He says his rates may go up soon, but considering that we did at least four loads worth for $35, I’m not too freaked out about it.

Don’t get me wrong — this is a major splurge for us, so it will probably never become our principal form of laundry-doing (at least not unless we’re making six figures each). And now that we know we have the building’s proactive caretaker in our court, we’ll probably continue to do battle with our neighbors until we win. (Next week: Me sitting in the laundry room reading, waiting until they show up so I can confront them in person. Fun, fun.) But still — this was a very welcome help-in-a-pinch option, and I plan on having Russell come take care of our excess sheets and towels again the next time we have houseguests!

OH MY GOD. I am SO FRUSTRATED with security questions lately! Guess that’s my fault for doing my banking online, but holy crap. This last round, I literally DID NOT KNOW THE ANSWER to any of the available remaining questions for my FIFTH required security thingamabob. So what did I have to do? MAKE UP an answer, and store it in a Notepad file called “Security Questions”, because I will FORGET otherwise and my account will be locked down due to suspected theft. Again. Awesome. Nice and subtle and theft-proof, there.

I mean, I know this topic has been done before, but I’m just not done harping. My favorite is when they put completely subjective questions in there — “What’s your favorite hobby?” Well, jackass, it was stone sculpture back when I opened the account SEVEN MILLION YEARS AGO. Now I prefer World of Warcraft, and no fucking way is that the correct security answer.

Or how about, “What’s your favorite movie?” Um, it was probably The Rocky Horror Picture Show, back before I had taste, and now, it depends if you mean the public answer (Being John Malkovich) or the private one (Finding Nemo). Or whatever film du jour I’ve just seen and fallen in love with, because I AM NOT SO CLOSED-MINDED AS YOU, CHASE FINANCIAL SERVICES. YOU CAN HAVE MULTIPLE FAVORITES, IT’S OKAY. STEP OUTSIDE THE BOX. Or at least customize the box to account for things like middle school and self-censorship around snobby film students.

Or the really memory-taxing ones, that catch you on a technicality — “Where was your first job?” Um, fuck if I know? Does babysitting count, or are we talking real wages, or my first full-time job, or my first lemonade stand, or my first job where I received an actual check instead of cash but does it matter that I was getting paid under the table because I was only fifteen and couldn’t legally work for another year but they needed a Spanish teacher willing to take eight bucks an hour and I was more fluent than the older gals so all the checks had “misc. office supplies” written in the memo field? THAT DOESN’T FIT IN YOUR FORMS EITHER, ASSHAT.