Try not to hurt me

alem, I really never meant to cause you pain. I never wanted something like this to come up between us, and I'm really sorry it had to happen this way. Please don't let it hurt our relationship.

It looks like waywardbound managed to get some extra tickets to the advanced screening of Serenity this Thursday for capricious_k and me.

I promise, no spoilers will be in my journal.

A rant about the "immediacy" of the internet

Working in User Support for Google, I occasionally read emails from grateful users that go something like this:

"Dear Google, a couple of days ago I was feeling a terrible pain in my chest, and my left arm felt numb. I thought, 'Could I be having a heart attack?' So I booted my computer up, and ran a search for [ symptoms heart attack ]. Sure enough, it sounded like I was having one! So I got myself down the the hospital, and everything's OK now. Thanks Google, you saved my life!"

I always want to write back to them:

"Dear user, next time... DIAL 911!!!!!!!!!!"

The internet if a fabulous place for the exchange of information. With it, I can learn about events half way around the world in great detail, complete with pictures and audio, from people right there on the ground where things are happening. With the internet, I can keep up with my friends' lives when they post to journals and put their photo albums online. I can find obscure information, and I can find forums for discussing my esoteric hobbies with like-minded people. And I can play really cool video games in real time with people all over the planet.

But I want you all to listen up, because this is important. The internet is not a good medium for emergency communication! If you need to get information to me in a timely fashion, do not post it in your journal, and do not write me an email. Call me. I have a telephone, that's what it's for. If we're supposed to meet in 15 minutes and you're going to be late, call me. If Dead Can Dance tickets just went on sale and they're selling like hotcakes, call me. If you need me to drop everything to be somewhere for you, call me.

Because if you send me an email, or post it in your journal, or send it to me via Friendster/Orkut/Tribe, or put it on a message board I frequent, I might not read it for a for a while. Heck, I may not be anywhere near a computer for hours and totally miss out.

We invented the telephone a long time ago. It's a really good medium for getting communication from Point A to Point B quickly, with a high likelyhood of targeting that information to the person who needs it in a timely fashion. Especially with all the cell phones these days. Do not rely on the internet for important, rapid, emergency knowledge. Use your phone!

(And no, you can't use Google SMS from your phone to look up [ symptoms heart attack ] either. Dial 911!)