Random strangers on Facebook are not exactly known for impressive displays of intellect, but with several of my friends in the hospital recently, I've been annoyed by one particular bad habit that their friends seem to have:

1) Someone posts that s/he is experiencing a certain medical problem and is going into the hospital. Friends reply with supportive words.
2) A few hours later, the OP posts an update describing what the doctors are doing. Other friends reply with questions like, "omg what happened?"
3) A day or two later, the OP posts that s/he is being discharged from the hospital and is recovering. Other friends reply with questions like, "omg what happened?"

The same goes for someone posting a series of updates about any serious crisis, such as the death of a close family member. People, if you want to know "omg what happened," then go to the OP's timeline or profile or whatever Facebook calls it these days, and scroll down for the original post describing the problem in the first place, because the subsequent posts are clearly intended as follow-ups due to their lack of inherent context. By asking "omg what happened," you demonstrate that you are too lazy and/or stupid to bother with this very quick research, and possibly too lousy of a friend to notice when your friends have been in crisis for a while already.

Not coincidentally: Evie, I'm glad you're recovering. Chris, get well soon. Lisa, I'm so sorry for your loss. Becky and Becky's family, I hope for the best.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

Spirit

I've always felt like my life's dream was to quit my job and spend all my time online. I wouldn't only do that, of course – if I won the lottery and quit my job, I'd also travel and take classes and throw parties and do other things – but let's face it, I'd spend a lot of time working on this site and talking to people online. Last night I dreamed I was a ghost, recently passed. Go »

Heart Burn

The recurring pericarditis that I mentioned elsewhere is now believed by my primary-care doctor to be heartburn or possibly an ulcer. The latter explanation is possible I suppose, but I'm skeptical about the former since it feels less like an acidic burning than like a sharp localized lower-chest pain such as a knife wound or bullet wound. Either way, it still keeps occurring every few weeks, it still hurts like a son of a bitch and keeps me awake all night, and I'm way beyond sick of it happening. Go »

The Little Ship

Our cat Sweetie Pie passed away in her sleep on Thursday night after a very long illness. We don't know how old she was -- she was my mother's cat before mine, and my grandmother's cat before that, and belonged to some other lady in my grandmother's nursing home before then. We have that stranger to thank for giving her the old-fashioned name, but it was appropriate: Sweetie Pie was a friendly cat, who was happy when company came over (especially if they fed her treats!) Go »

So Long, NCSA Primer

Someone asked me for help learning HTML today. I turned to my trusted traditional source, the good old primer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, but alas, it has finally been removed after all these years. This was one of the major how-to guides in the early years of the web, and it's the very guide that I used to teach myself HTML one weekend in 1996, from which this very site you're reading has since evolved. Go »

In Bed

"You are very generous, and always think of the other fellow." Go »

Eschew Obfuscation

For any FIN players wondering where in the hell the game is: I used my little free time over last weekend writing a mini-post – three whopping paragraphs – and at the end of the weekend I just couldn't bear to publish it so short. (The title of this post was the planned title of that post.) I have now rearranged my social so that weekends are more free, and one thing I plan to do with the time is resume writing FIN, starting this weekend by expanding my three paragraphs into more like three pages. Go »