Making Some Changes

2009-08-27T14:58:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen,

After thinking for a considerable amount of time about my privacy—thinking that was triggered by a couple of mildly troubling communications that I received within the past year, and in consideration of such news stories as this one, where individuals have endured negative consequences as a result of making public written statements that should have been intended to be read only by friends—I have made the tough decision to make my Twitter status updates private, effective immediately. If you are reading this on my blog, Twitter is/was the section on the top right that I have labeled “Right now”.

Also, I will no longer be posting anything to this blog. (I know; it has been a while since I posted anything substantial here anyway.) Eventually—as in several months from now—I will remove this blog permanently. (I will keep it archived on my personal computer, of course.)

For now, I will keep most of my Flickr pictures public. As time goes by I will tweak their privacy settings on a picture-by-picture basis. (I have done a considerable amount of this already.)

Lastly, about a month ago I strengthened many of my Facebook privacy settings, such that only people with whom I am mutual “friends” on Facebook can view my pictures, profile, etc.

What does this mean to you, the small handful of people who might be interested in keeping up with me, and how I am doing? Well, if we are mutual friends on Facebook, there will be no change for you. You can still view my status updates, and any notes that I might share. In addition—or alternatively—if you already have an account on Twitter and are “following” me, you can continue to see my status updates as before. For those who normally just navigate in their browser to http://heavycrag.blogspot.com/ to view this blog, you will no longer see any new content from me. This is the final post on this blog. If you want to continue to keep up with me, you have two options:

Add me as a friend on Facebook, OR
Follow me on Twitter

If you do not have an account on either Facebook or Twitter, I have created very detailed instructions here on how to sign up for Twitter, which is the easier of the two to set up. Signing up for a Twitter account is easy, free and anonymous and it literally takes two minutes. Here are the instructions:

Navigate in your web browser to https://twitter.com/signup.
You do NOT have to provide them your real name (just put in something fake, like John Doe), and you can make your username completely ambiguous. Also, you do not have to provide a photo.
The next page will ask you if you want to find friends on twitter based on their email addresses, and will prompt you for your email password. You can SKIP this step if you prefer by clicking the “Skip this step” at the bottom.
I recommend that you also click “Skip this step” on the next screen, which asks you if you want to follow popular news agencies, celebrities and/or businesses.
Once you see the page that asks “What are you doing?” appear, then your twitter account has been created. You do not have enter anything in that box. If you do, be aware that is public—unless you go to Settings and check the box called “Protect my tweets”. I recommend that you do indeed protect your tweets, but like everything else it is up to you.
If you do not plan to make any tweets yourself and want to avoid spam email, I highly recommend that you go to the Notices section of your Twitter account settings and uncheck the box that says “Email when someone starts following me”. (Be sure to click Save after you uncheck the box.)
Now, navigate to my Twitter page https://www.twitter.com/heavycrag and click the small “Send request” button. After I have received your request I can choose to approve or deny your following of my status updates, or “tweets” as they are called.
If you do not use your real name for your Twitter account and you make your Twitter username something unrecognizable, then I will probably not know who it is that is requesting to follow my tweets. If you think I might not recognize your request, email me directly after you click “Send request” so I can know to approve your request. Unfortunately, there are people on Twitter who request to follow others simply as a way of spamming them, so I need a way to differentiate you from them.
After I approve your request you can view my status updates anytime by going to http://www.twitter.com and logging in.
If you have any problems with any of these steps feel free to email me or comment here and I will help you as soon as possible.
That’s it! If you follow these instructions carefully I can pretty much guarantee that it will be a painless way to continue keeping up with me.

Alternatively, if you prefer to sign up for Facebook, my profile address is here. I am not providing instructions for Facebook because the privacy settings are substantially more complicated. You will have to navigate those waters yourself! :-)

Well, that’s all for this blog. In the future I may start up another blog, but it would be strictly limited to professional business and programming topics. I appreciate your interest in my life and I wish everyone the best as we all weigh the pros and cons of internet life! I personally celebrate the fact that we have so many options and I am happy that I can stay in touch with many people this way. All the best from the Midwest, this is Nate, signing off!

The State of Nate

Making Some Changes