Random Thoughts

So I have two e-mail adresses: one for shopping, spam and general use and one that is private.  My yahoo account gets hundreds of spam messages daily based on stupid lists I subscribed to when I was a kid with my first e-mail account and stuff from Nigerian princes, people wanting money and foreign men who say "You hot look at my pix."  I've come to a reconciliation about this.  I tried to unsubscribe and report so much of this crap but no matter what, more keeps pouring in.  My gmail account is only given to friends, family and universities I have attended and will be attending.  When I check that account, I am relieved to see only pertinent information.  I have yet to get a single spam email and that is how I want to keep it.

Anyway, my Facebook, Youtube and other accounts are with the yahoo adress for fear of letting my private one get out.  This account was also once linked to Blogger.  So I blogged for a bit and was inactive for a while.  When I got back in the game, I was having difficulties checking my gmail after I had signed into Blogger.  When I was signed into gmail, I noticed that I had no blog posts.  Ah, what can I say.  I was pretty slow to catch on to the fact that there were no blog posts because my gmail account had no blog.  My yahoo one did.  The evil empire known as Google had made blogging and being signed into e-mail impossible.  So what did I do about it?  I signed on with posterous where I could sync my blog with negativelee.com and I could keep all my e-mail accounts constantly open.  This would encourage me to blog more because of this convenience and restore the harmonious nature of my dashboard.

As you may or may not recall, I got a puppy a few months back.  I have been recording him in his various stages of development in some funny and some not at all funny and tedious videos, all of which I have posted to Youtube.  No, I don't think he's a superstar or anything, I just appreciate how youtube will load upload your video of whatever (from rants, paint drying, guys getting hit in the balls, animals falling down, etc.).  Back in the day, you had to get people to see your VHS tape or submit that shit to America's Home Videos and deal with a selection committee.  People want to see him and I can upload videos of him and make them as private as I like. (I never allow commenting because I can't stand anyone saying anything mean about him.)  Another feature of youtube I enjoy is that I can make a queue of videos I have found on whims, recommendations and drunken nights of being reminded of funny commercials and such.  

So I was recently trying to share some links to videos of my puppy.  Most are unlisted, meaning I need to send the link, but mainly they are all in the same place under the "My Videos" section.  It is so convenient to go to that section and just paste links in the gmail account which is only privy to friends and family who are exactly the ones who would want to see all the stupid footage of my dog.  

BUT NO..........

After being constantly signed on to Youtube for almost the entire duration of having the puppy, I went to send my breeder a video and I supposedly had no videos.  I looked and saw the Gmail address there in lieu of the Yahoo one.  I (stupidly) figured it was some kind of fluke and logged out.  After a long weekend, I went to check my gmail account and I was having some issues.  Gmail was not connecting which is rare but not uncommon.  This lasted for days until it booted me to sign in again and then everything worked great.  Next time I tried to look at Youtube, the same thing happened.  I was signed in to the gmail address which has NO Youtube account.

I know what Google wants.  They want me to say, "Wow, Gmail, Youtube and Blogger all link up easily with one single account.  I should make a one google specific account for all of these and be signed in all at once.  How Convenient!"  Fuck you, Google.  I think this not so subtle approach to control me greatly insults my intelligence.  All computer users do not want one super account that accesses everything.  I know people who have many different accounts that they use for all kinds of different things.  Why can't they just be happy people are using all of these services, offer their complete package and leave it up to us what we want to do?  Because they are greedy and evil.

Granted, most of my hatred for Google began when people in the industry told me they IQ tested people before hiring them so they could say they were operated by a "team of geniuses."  I've taken many IQ tests, enough to know that a culturally biased test will ensure they hire white Americans from middle class backgrounds.  Supposedly this is no longer true.  I hope not.  It's really unfair and really exposes their narrow mindedness and not their intelligence.

So I will continue to use Gmail and Youtube.  I really don't feel like setting up a whole other private e-mail or dealing with the frustration of weeding the legit mail from the spam if I were to make my Yahoo account my primary one.  Youtube is much too ubiquitous to avoid all together and I really do like having a video library.  I did sacrifice Blogger for the more convenient posterous, though.

Oh, but I couldn't have my convenient blog.  Posterous changed into this "spaces" thing sometime recently and it is not at all user friendly in my opinion.  It's very difficult to find and manage drafts and trying to view as a post before you actually post it is very buggy (i.e. I uploaded pictures which display but do not when I post, etc).  The worst part of this spaces crap is that I very often blog on my phone when I am stuck in a queue and feel compelled to write something.  Sometimes, I just want to jot something down for a memory later.  I can no longer even access the site on my phone.  I guess it doesn't matter because I would have to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find my half-written draft.

What's with all the change?  I don't mind it so much.  What I mind is that is seems unnessecary and as if it is some kind of oligarchy where a couple of big-wigs in these corproations are telling us to go along whatever they say for our "convenience."

Sit and spin, Google.  Let us decide what we want.