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By Keith, March 6, 2010 1:18 am

I don’t do different things to be different.  I do different things because different is often far more interesting.  That’s why I joined a new social networking site that couldn’t be more different than Facebook.    You could say it’s a lot like Twitter, but it’s definitely NOT Twitter.  I joined t.sina.com.cn, a Chinese social network.

Why would I do this?  Why does it seem that I have forsaken Facebook and Twitter for a social site in a foreign language?  For me, there is great appeal in talking to people quite unlike myself and unlike most of the people I see and communicate with every day.  I feel the need to be exposed to a different culture, and if I can’t afford to travel right now (because of Godzilla), I might as well put the web to good use.

I’m not on Sina to collect friends.  I’m unlikely to ever rise above 20 due to the language gap.  I was surprised to have any reciprocal ”fans” (what followers or friends are called on this site) at all when I logged on this afternoon.  After all, I had just created my account Thursday night, becoming a fan of only a few handfuls of promising people.  Some who have become reciprocal fans have noted how few Americans are on Sina.

There are no virtual farms or other games to play or spam messages.  It’s basic communication, something I have missed in American social networks, and now I am enjoying something different.

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By Keith, January 29, 2010 8:55 pm

For the most part, friends are great.  (I am Keith’s limiting statement.)  Yes, friends are wonderful, but they are not all the same.  Does that mean that BFF’s are better than casual Facebook acquaintances?  Sure does, but that’s not what I’m writing about.

This post is about what friendship means to me.  There are lots of sappy sickly sweet greeting cards (I am Keith’s gag reflex) that yammer on about friendship in obscenely lofty language.  This will not be that.  Friendship is too subtle for such heavy handed treatment.

I say that friendship is subtle because we sometimes find ourselves becoming friends with people without intending to.  We work with a person long enough or spend time in classes or playing sports with them, or we game with them online, and before we realize it, we feel comfortable around this person.  We let our guard down, begin to trust, and before we know it. BAM! New friend.

It’s not only trust that makes someone a friend.  For me to befriend someone, it also requires high levels of honesty, comfort, sharing, empathy, forgiveness, and common interests.  All of these ingredients in varying amounts seem to determine the value of someone’s friendship. The weight we give to each ingredient is, of course, different from person to person and completely subjective.

We are not all the same. Certainly all of us look for specific traits whether or not we are aware of it. Take honestly for instance. I’d wager that someone like Dick Cheney might value loyalty far more than honestly. So much that he can remain friends with someone who would lie to protect him. Not all of our friends have the same trains in all of the same combinations.

Where am I going with this? I’m stating my recent reevaluation of my what the word “friend” now means to me. In doing so, I pay no mind to the dictionary’s treatment of it.  I’m ignoring my inner cynicism and expanding my ideas about it’s meaning. Here we go…

HONESTY
Above all other things, honesty in all things is paramount to me.  I would rather hear the ugliest of truths than the most beautiful falsehood. When we lie to people (including ourselves) we disrespect and devalue them. Lying, even a white lie, is a degradation. My friends should always interact with me honestly and should expect the same in return.

TRUST
We all need to trust others on occasion, and I don’t believe you can have friends without trust. People who divulge personal information entrusted to them are not my friends or won’t be for long. I’ve heard gossips say in their defense that the person shouldn’t have told them the information if they didn’t want anyone else to know. I don’t accept such bullocks, and I don’t treat my friends with such contempt and disrespect. Your friends are not your information sources.

COMFORT
My comfort level when in the presence of another person is a strong influence on the level of friendship I’ll have with someone. If you’re a person who says or does things that make me feel uncomfortable, we probably will never achieve BFF status.  If you don’t know (but do care) if you make your friends uncomfortable, maybe you should ask them for an honest answer.

SHARING
I value sharing with friends, but I don’t mean “sharing” in the material sense. I don’t want for things from my friends. I desire a sharing of ideas, thoughts, opinions, and the like. Sharing time is certainly nice too. Friends of mine should feel free to speak their mind, agree, disagree, or remain indifferent, secure in the belief that sharing such things strengthens our friendship. Even if we disagree, we’ll at least gain insight of each other’s thought process.

EMPATHY/COMPASSION
Empathy and compassion are just manly ways to say “love” or “caring” about each other. Even someone as emotionally stunted reserved as me must admit to caring/loving empathizing with or having compassion for his friends at least a little bit. The truth is that it’s a lot, but I choose not to wear it on my sleeve. Friends should show that they care about each other. My way to do this often involves doing technical tasks for or giving help and my time (which is extremely valuable to me) to those I care for.  Tech support counts!  Along with my love/caring empathy and compassion goes understanding.  I do my best to understand and empathize with my friends. I hope they will reciprocate, but I know it’s not always easy.

FORGIVENESS
Without exception, every one of us makes mistakes. Friends will forgive you. There are limits to forgiveness, of course, but when you recognize that a friend is truly sorry, forgive them and move on.   Life is far too short for holding onto +10 grudges of destructive unhappiness.

SHARED INTERESTS
There seems to be a strong correlation between having shared interests and friendship. Frequently people meet through and bond over those interests they have in common. Such is the case with he friends I have online. Although I’ve never met some of them offline, they are real friends nonetheless.

As someone with very few close friends in the offline world, I can attest that it takes relatively little effort to make friends online.   However, once a friend is made, the effort is well invested in keeping and improving friendships with those you hold most dear, online or offline.  (I am Keith’s post-blog regret.)

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By Keith, September 24, 2009 10:57 am

When was it that the show Queer Eye For the Straight Guy was hip, five years ago?  South Park even did a spoof on the show which ended with the Fab Five turning out to be crab people secretly undermining gay culture or some such silliness.  With that out of the way, I’ll fill you in on why I ask.

Tuesday night at work, Brenda (my “twin” latina “sister” with whom I share a birthday) came into the QA office for stretching to start her shift wearing gray pants, a black shirt, and a pink hat.  I pick on Brenda (not to mention pilfering her candy) a lot.  When I saw what she was wearing, and because Brenda is very fashion conscious, I jokingly pointed out that her hat didn’t really go with the rest of her outfit.  While she was busy defending her outfit, Joe, another 3rd shift QA inspector, grunted, “What is this, Queer Eye?” Yes, it was an episode of Queer Eye for the latina chica, idiot.

I wasn’t sure if Joe meant to insult me by making a gay joke or if he didn’t realize he was even making a gay joke.  Either way, he clearly expressed himself as the ass-scratching Neanderthal that he is.  People who make gay jokes or refer to things they don’t like as “gay” generally don’t seem to give their choice of words a lot of thought.  I understand that.  I expect that.

I can even handle being referred to as someone on Queer Eye.  No biggie.  Unlike Joe, I’m comfortable with who I am, even if some conservative midwestern types might ignorantly mistake me for gay. Calling someone “gay” is not much of an insult to me.  An insult is something that tends to make someone feel small or insignificant, hurts their feelings.  Being called gay just makes me laugh at the person saying it.  It makes me think of them as insignificant and ignorant.  I’ve been called a lot of hurtful things in my life, but being called “gay” by slack-jawed troglodytes isn’t even on that list.

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By Keith, September 19, 2009 5:41 pm

I absolutely cannot stand when people rationalize and make excuses for their mistakes.  To my mind, excuse making is a sure sign that someone lacks the maturity to accept responsibility for their mistakes and is therefore extremely unlikely to learn from them.

All of us make mistakes in our lives, in our jobs, and in our relationships with other people.  When someone points out to me that I’ve made a mistake, my first reaction is to try to understand what it is that I’ve done to see if it really was a mistake.  Once I understand what I’ve done wrong, I generally will apologize if I think it’s necessary (it usually is), then attempt to correct the mistake if possible.  Once that’s done, I tend to dwell upon the thought process (or lack thereof) that led me to make the mistake in the first place so as to not repeat it.  I understand that if I don’t know what I did wrong AND how I got there, the probability of my repeating the mistake by following the same pattern will not decrease.

So I ask myself, “Self, why do some people seem so reluctant to investigate why they keep making the same mistakes and change that pattern?”  My self is silent on the subject, but I strongly suspect it has a lot to do with their propensity to rationalize and make excuses for what they have done without admitting and accepting that they have made a mistake.  I see this at work all.  When I politely point out to certain people that they’ve made a mistake, their first response is to blurt out an excuse for why they did what they did.  This bothers me.  Where I would say something like, “I’m sorry for doing X, can you tell me how I should have done it?” they say something like, “I was never shown how to do X so I just did it that way.”  I can see that it never crosses their mind that they should have asked someone for help, because that would be admitting that they don’t know how to do something (another trait I find extremely irritating).  This pattern repeats itself where I work several times each week, but that’s not what this post is about.  This is a rant against rationalizing our mistakes.

So, why is it so hard for some of us to admit that we were wrong?  Why is “I’m sorry for messing up.” so difficult to say?  Why is it that some people don’t seem willing to ask for help when they clearly need it?  These things I see in other, and try to recognize in myself (and fix) that bother me deeply, because I don’t think we are going to make it as a species unless we change.  We are capable of change, but we have to choose it ourselves or we are destined to repeat our mistakes.

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By Admin, September 17, 2009 11:41 am

VINTAGE INFINITE TIDES
original post date: August 28, 2009

How much does a candy bar cost these days?  $.65?  $.75?  I confess that I do not know and cannot remember the last time I bought one in a store or from a vending machine.  The prices on things in the machines in the break room where I work are inflated, so maybe a candy bar costs as much as $.85.

What do you do when the vending machine fails to release your candy bar, we’ll say it’s a Heath, from its evil spiral clutches into the candy-grabbing area below?  Do you A) Purchase another Heath bar to dislodge the first one; B) Shake the machine violently until your Heath is dislodged (fork lifts won’t fit through the break room door); C) Fill out an envelope provided by the vending company to request a refund; or D) Smash the glass front of the machine and snatch several candy bars as recompense for the hunger pain, suffering, and stress of not getting what you paid for?  If you answered “D,” you might work where I work, and management would like to have a word with you.