As of this writing, the latest craze seems to be email requests from friends to visit their Facebook site.
When you go to Facebook, they encourage you to 'sign up' for a free Facebook account.
I spent time thinking about this latest craze.  Reflecting on how lame I've been NOT updating (my) My Space account.  Argh!
THEN IT DAWNED ON ME -
Why on earth would I want to create a new account on other *HOT NEW SITE* that tends to draw visitors based on the time involved to update said *HOT NEW SITE* with information about my boring life, that nobody gives a crap about reading anyway??
IN OTHER WORDS, NO!  I am NOT creating a Facebook account.
PLEASE UNDERSTAND -
I have nothing against my friends, Facebook or any other site that offers a free forum for posting pictures of the family cat.  Nothing against posting useless blogs (like this one) about what "pisses me off" in life at this minute.
In fact, to those who are creating Facebook accounts, I say:
"GREAT!  Go for it!  I'm happy for you.  Knock yourself out." 
TIME MANAGEMENT -
I have a lot of projects going on inside this 'box' we call a computer.  Many projects are NOT internet related.
I have several computers running different operating systems.  Each performs many different tasks - Internet surfing, news, live weather updates, email, photo/graphics editing, Second Life viewer program, audio production, CD-R/DVD-R backups - many projects running simultaneously.
Often, I'm so busy multi-tasking that friends get mad at me.
WHY DO THEY GET MAD?
Because they send an email -or- an IM and wait... and wait... and wait...
They get no response from me for minutes, hours and sometimes weeks - until the next time they log into their Blog/Groups/My Space/Yahoo/Hotmail/Google/Second Life/AOL IM service and read the response I left them several days ago.
I have many friends on the internet world-wide on continents across the globe.  Often they too get very busy!  Sometimes they don't respond for hours, days (in some cases) weeks.
DO I GET UPSET?
No.  Not anymore.  Why?  Because I understand they too have LIVES - other things to do.
HELLO PEOPLE?!
PRESSING ISSUES LIKE: sleep, eat, work, step away from the computer to use the bathroom, beat the kids for screaming and fighting, answer the door because visitors are knocking, multi-tasking in IM while doing their online related job earning income at home -or- in an office or corporate environment sitting at a desk.
YOU GET THE PICTURE -
Human-being type of tasks.  They respect my time as I respect their time online.
I HATE EMAIL! -
I have more email accounts than I can acknowledge or remember.  In fact, its so bad that I set the Preferences of (all email accounts that allow) to FORWARD all incoming mail to my central Yahoo Mail account - which leads me to spam.  GULP!
SPAM.  GOD DO I HATE SPAM! -
We all hate spam.  Nothing on the internet will waste your HUMAN BEING time worse than deleting spam.  Except reading spam, which will make you go insane!
FRIENDS THAT SEND YOU "FORWARD: FWD FWD FWD" EMAILS -
I gave up.  I bowed out of the war to teach my friends about forwarding email jokes, hoaxes, FAKE email virus warnings - all that bullshit!
I used to reply back.  Wasted more time trying to convince them that Bill Gates is NOT going to send them a check for $38,000 to forward emails to everyone.
FORGET SPAM -
The war against junk email was lost years ago.  I've given up trying to filter spam.  When it reached the point of diminishing returns, that's when I decided I've had it.  There are very few email filtering services on the planet you can trust.
DAVID, HOW DO YOU FILTER YOUR EMAIL? -
Here's how I do it:
I give everyone my Yahoo email address:
david.rodgers@yahoo.com
Next, I set the Yahoo email Preferences to Forward all mail to my local ISP account, which shall remain nameless - even though most friends know which provider I already use.
I created an email address that I NEVER give to anyone.  Reason: if no one knows it, no one can SPAM it.
WHY FORWARD TO YOUR ISP EMAIL ACCOUNT? -
Because they pay A HUGE amount of money to a highly respected spam filter company that many large ISP's around the world use to filter spam AND it works!
NEXT - I use my Yahoo Mail account to retrieve my local ISP email account - in other words, using local ISP email as just a redundant filter to rid the bullshit email.  The worst of the worst gets sent into my ISP's "Junk" email folder.  It sits there for 7 days, based on each emails date/time stamp.  Then my ISP simply deletes it from the SPAM folder.
Since my ISP's email can be checked both Online in the browser window and/or in the computer's email program i.e. Outlook Express, Thunderbird, I only use Yahoo Mail to retrieve my ISP email.  No need to download messages.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED -
I no longer have to suffer in Yahoo Mail sifting through thousands of junk emails in either Yahoo Mail's Inbox -or- Junk Mail folder.
Emails incorrectly placed in wrong folders, I simply check the box on that email, than move it to desired folder.
TIP: Take time to create email folders.
MY FOLDERS:
- Yahoo folders: inbox, drafts, sent, spam, trash
- Band Septic Tank
- BULK MAIL SCAN, I subscribe to lots of newsletters i.e. circuit city specials, sams club, drugstore.com specials, computer security newsletters.  I move all possible good and bad emails to this folder for later reading, when I have time.
- Finances
- Jokes
- Linux Help
- Music, URL's to YouTube links friends send that I prefer to watch later
- Orders Pending, when I buy something online like from Amazon, eBay, etc, I save all emails until I receive the item, it works correct, the charges on my credit card statement look correct and the bills been paid.  Then I delete the old emails.
- Personal, like email from close family
- Photos, JPG's from family. Perhaps burn them later to a CD-R to save.
- Projects In Progress, intense audio or other long-term projects
- Second Life, I have hundreds of online friends around the world. If they give me anything, and I mean ANYTHING, it goes here. 
- Septic Tank, I came up with idea once.  What if you read the email and you're not sure how long you should save the email?  VOILA!  I put it in Septic Tank.  Much like real life.  If its crap you have to store but eventually MUST delete it, it goes in Septic Tank for later deletion.  Tee hee hee!
- Software, rarely used but sometimes friends send me files of small programs to test.  If I later decide to keep it, burn to a CD-R.
I seemed to have drifted from the original subject I was typing about in this blog.  Doesn't matter.  It's just a blog!
Oh well.  Done ranting.  Have a great day!  ..