The website is finally updated – and after one month of work I’ve gone from having a website with some pictures on it and my blog – to a website that has slightly different pictures on it, and my blog…

Well, that was worth it. But one of the other new features is the fact it now updates Facebook automatically. Which is great.

…I think.

Now – I’ve got to confess to something here. When I was at school I was never really the sporty kind. I was into books & computers. Nowadays I would be considered a geek. But unfortunately back then the ‘geek’ was still someone you kept chained in your basement, and fed live chickens. ‘Geek’ as we know it had yet to exist. So people tried other words, in the hope of finding the one that would stick. Let’s just say that none of them were particularly pleasant..

Anyway – the upside of having no social life, is that I used to be able to sit alone in a room with a computer and form a relationship with it…

Yes – I said upside.

I started out with a ZX Spectrum (which no-one in the USA will ever have heard of, but basically it was the first popular UK home computer. Sir Clive Sinclair, who invented it, thought that it would be simpler for someone to – instead of just typing ‘PRINT’ letter by letter – hold down shift and alt and P and that would be quicker. Simple right? So naturally many UK homes had a second computer to remember the key combinations required for the first computer).

Then I worked through several other brands through the years. I was on the pre-internet internet which was, at the time, called Compunet. It was more a bulletin board than anything but you used to be able to meet with other people and then call them direct to.. ahem.. ‘share’ games with them. All this happened at 7.5k speed. To put this in perspective – it’s 7 times slower than dial up at the moment. And we were being billed by the minute. All of which meant that I was unable to use the ‘internet’ after my first month – when my parents got the bill for five hundred pounds. (And this was back when 500 pounds was real money… Although apparently not to a twelve year old).

In short – I’ve always loved working with computers, and gadgets, and technical stuff. And then I was introduced to ‘social’ websites. Now – speaking as a pre-geek. ‘social’ websites are an oxymoron. You know you could just talk to that person, right? You could just call them or travel to their house and see them, right? Try it – It’s like virtual reality – but not virtual.

So I go on Myspace and Facebook and ask people to be my friend. That’s altogether too open for rejection for my liking. I’m laying all my cards on the table – I like you, I want people to know we’re buddies, I want to have a 1/2″ square picture of me on your ‘friend’ space. And I’m going to take all the risk that you may just go – ‘Hey honey, look it’s that weird kid from school that we didn’t have a word for’, and click ‘reject’.

I don’t think so.

And even if someone does accept you as their friend. It’s all happiness and witty banter until you turn up drunk at their house at 3am asking for somewhere to stay. Noooo apparently ‘friend’ doesn’t mean, on Facebook, the same that it means in real life.

Now that brings me to the next point… When I first logged on facebook it asked – ‘What are you thinking about right now?’ Naturally, I typed ‘boobies’.

They could really explain up front that they will then post that information to everybody.. Luckily at that point I only had various home computers from the eighties as friends, so they just thought I’d typed 5319009 upside down and giggled about it.

Then I realised that this was supposed to be an update for people to read. Now if everyone answered the question honestly, when asked ‘What are you thinking about right now?’ – they would all type, ‘I’m trying to think how to be extremely witty and charming in such a way as not to offend any of my 253 friends – but also make them all like me so much that they go speak to their other friends and get them to be my friends as well.’ Of course – no-one would actually type this, because it’s too open and raw and honest…

..And also because apparently we’re not allowed to have any thoughts that exceed 140 characters.

So I kind of got the hang of it. My first real status post asked if the past tense of ‘To Twitter you’ is ‘To Twat you’, and two people liked it. Naturally, being English, I wondered why the rest of them clearly didn’t like it enough to click the little thumbs up icon. And again, being English I vowed to bottle up that resentment and let it eat away at me until the day I die.

But that seemed to be it – just little one-liners ever so often.

…And then someone threw a sheep at me.

To be precise, my beautiful wife threw a sheep at me.

What does that mean? Is it a sign of affection? Surely livestock hurtling toward you can’t say ‘I love you’ any more than flowers, can it? Then other things got thrown at me. A cow. An octopus. Then I got sent quizzes. I didn’t know there would be tests… Is there a minimum level of intelligence required to keep an account open on Facebook? (Answer: No) (Note: If you had to read the answer first, you failed).

When I asked, I was told that the sheep meant I was being ‘superpoked’. Now I never had a problem with the normal level of poke. Why would someone feel the need to make it super? What does it all mean?

Well – I’ll tell you. It means I am officially old. It took 38 years, but I’ve finally had to accept it. From this moment on, I will get up at least twice a night to use the bathroom. I will make a little grunting noise every time I get up off the couch. I will never lift my foot higher than a 45 degree angle from my body. I will check for drafts. I will complain about the noise of anything. And if there is no noise I will say it’s too quiet. I will grow hair in places that hair has no place growing.

But it means I can finally accept that I won’t understand all the new technology that comes along. I can relax and just enjoy life and let everything else pass me by… Just one more thing – if you agree with me please could you click that little thumbs up at the end of the article? Or Digg me? Or visit www.mikeswitzer.com?

..Hey – I might be old, but I still need to maintain my social life…