Listen, I’m no better homemaker or whatever it is, but I am starting to think that all those pins are fake. How do people make these amazing recipes and use miracle cleaning tricks and get them to work? Because, for the most part, I cannot. I’ve made a few recipes that were a little disappointing, but this last Pinterest-inspired activity I attempted was the miracle pan cleaning posted on One Good Thing. It seemed easy enough. Peroxide and baking soda aren’t hat hard to find, and my pans could use a little TLC. I was soon making a paste and putting it all over my cookie sheets. I forgot about ’em and assumed I would come back to some clean pans, but they looked exactly the same an hour+ later.

I decided it was all me, so I slathered on some more ingredients and let them sit even longer. I came back and nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch. Now, my peroxide might’ve been less than potent, so it’s not like I was necessarily misled, but I’m starting to think that Pinterest is full of more misses than hits. Tricksy internet.

1. The kitchen timer
2. The doorbell
3. People in the hall
4. My headphone cord
5. The phone ringing
6. The MGM lion

Ooh, so scary!

I’ve been loving my brand-new iPod Nano except for one thing: it refused to show my “Top Rated” playlist in the same order as in iTunes. In fact, on iTunes showed the playlist as ordered by dated added on for both my library and iPod, but my iPod kept showing the playlist by play count.  A quick Google search for “ipod playlist sort order” told me that I just had to right-click the playlist and select the option to copy by sort option. In fact, I had the same problem with my iPod Touch, and that did fix the problem, but it wasn’t going to work this time around.

The next result suggested that I should edit the information for all tracks to remember position. This also did not help. I finally set the iPod to manually edit and dragged my correctly-sorted playlist onto it, but that was to no avail. I resorted to a complete restore, and the sort finally did change… to another wrong order. According to iTunes, my iPod already should be sorted how I want it.

Then I figured out how to fix it.

How to Fix iPod Playlist Sort Order

I spend too much time on Facebook. I get alerts on my phone, too many really. There’s no good settings that let me see replies and comments to stuff I post without also seeing people who randomly reply to a friend’s photo that I may have commented on six months ago, but I digress. It’s one of the first sites I check when I log on to my laptop, and then I proceed to check it hundreds of times per day. No lie. Sometimes I log on, see nothing, close the tab and repeat the whole process because I forget that I was just on Facebook.

It’s ridiculous, but I bet it’s pretty common. I know I’m not alone. Dez tells me how she feel Facebook sucks her soul. We wait for clicks and comments and links. Somehow, those stupid red bubbles validate our existence. I’m no fool. I realize how unhealthy this is. I know if I stayed away all day and simply signed on to a couple likes, that would be okay, but the way I check constantly is not. I also know that I am fighting to open Facebook in another tab as  I type this.

It’s part of the Internet addition, but there’s something else with Facebook. The rest of the Internet constantly has new information. I can find facts. Play games. Write blogs. I can look at photography or even porn if I want. The rest of the Internet offers something new, and I only need to find it. Facebook is addicting because it’s personal. I wait for those alerts because I assume they’re about me.

You know the kicker, though? It’s often not. It’s those stupid six month old photo comments. It’s updates from friends that I don’t care about. Sometimes it’s game requests — which I just took the time to block a few. It’s rarely something  I actually want to see. That’s the punch line of this whole thing. I’m sure my brain reacts like I’ve taken a hit of something when I see the little red alert, but then it drops right back down when it’s what it usually is: useless trash.

You see, I’d kind of like to deactivate Facebook. I prefer much of the communication I do on Twitter. I feel like I have more useful conversations. Sure, they’re fewer and farther between, but I also say more with fewer characters. Something inside me suggests that more people on Facebook will see or care, like I’m signal boosting in a way that’s necessary. Usually, I wind up realizing how far I am from emotionally intimate to most of these people or heartbroken when my close friends don’t manage to respond in the right way or a timely manner. Again, not healthy.

Of course, my selfish mind assumes everyone saw and they’re just ignoring me or something else just as ridiculous. It’s not true. Facebook makes it difficult to see updates. Not everyone checks it as frequently as I do. Others might not feel like they can reply to a post, etc. I know that reasonably, but Facebook makes me feel so unreasonable.

As I was saying, deactivation is becoming more and more appealing, but it’s just not an option. I can’t deactivate my personal account and continue to operate the page for Reviews by Cole. And the interactions I have on the page, while sparse, are rewarding. The numbers keep going up. The people who fan me do it because they want to. The groups I’ve joined have been informative if not exactly warm communities. (Many of them are warm, but I have a habit of distancing myself). And Facebook has become a necessary part of my blog’s success.

Regardless, I will attempt to reign in this beast.. right after I check Facebook once more.