Facebook's strength is in gathering everyone together in what gives the impression of private pods, similar to the dimensions of reality, something in which Twitter fails to do. People like... boxes. How large can our box be so that it remains intrinsic? I mean, there is a number in which value is lost. For example, would I'd rather hang out with...

...3 people or with 20?

...4 or 65,000?

...5 or 5 million?

For me, Twitter comes off as a billion people and not one friend.

There are other SNS's of course. Facebook's Instagram, though I'd value a thousand words over a picture that just may NOT be worth a thousand words; and whatever Google is peddling —I get a distinct sense that the Google brass slept through the class about scope creep. There's been others that have died along the wayside. Sadly, Last.FM is one of them, though it still serves as a tool for scrobbles. I've referenced earlier about my upcoming return to that platform around the turn of the year (though I may postpone it). Facebook is far removed from its simpler days with a gatekeeper of university email addresses and its later inclusion of grandmother's knitting. Privacy, EULA's, advertising—all of that—is basically approached by most that there is some basic assumption of "box control."

Facebook in the final conclusion is just a website hub where we shove content into it for sharing. We want to control the audience, but, c'mon, once we give control away, we lose control of it.

When I do return to Facebook, my content will be public because...let's face it...that's exactly what it is: public. With that attitude, what vexation do I have with what Facebook does with my data? If I don't want to share, I'm not going to share. Any kind of privacy is just smoke and mirrors. We have this misguided practice that the Internet is a seemingly infinite series of private coves, but it's no different than walking down a busy, city street swollen with foot traffic.

Diatribes and suspicions aside, what is the purpose of Facebook for you and me? Friendship/community enhancement. Yes, it is used for marketing by groups, just like how some people use their friendship to sell makeup, knives, acne cream. Sorry folks: people are buying into your quasi-pyramid scheme of financial success not out of a genuine place of want and need, but out of your creepy manipulation at the intersection of Guilt & Pity—that kind of business model has a limited shelf life. You'll get a few wins in the context of greater losses, but as they say, it'll be for a limited-time only.

Facebook is a way to supplement friendships, but can Facebook create friendships? In a context of spam/exploitation? What do we do with virtual friends? How do I live as a virtual person? I'm not exactly running around with Zoe on Caprica.

I don't really know what to do about expanding my virtual community—or real world, for that matter, because I value quality over quantity and in this place in life, there's not that many resources to mine for that sort of thing. There was a time when we could walk into a room and suddenly have a room full of friends. It was all just a matter of lowest common denominators. Work, sports, church, coffee, field of study...all of that, those were the things that brought me together with people. Oh, I've created fleeting friendships, guild mates on WoW, but like any avenue: leave the platform, the fire dies. And I've never made it easy on friends—an INTJ can readily be misunderstood and I've got the belt notches of argument won and friends lost. And sometimes, friends simply slide down into the sands of time. The transition into parenthood leaves a carnage of friends by the wayside.

Not that we stop knowing people per se...but it'll never be the same—how can it be? And for most, people are relegated to that which was before defined as acquaintance status. Confidants turned strangers.

How much did SNS's contribute to this? Clearly, today's ease of domestic migration has; again, it is friendship by association. What is the validity of friendships born out of proximity with a Once Upon a Time single point of tangency? Will it exist after the summer is gone? Do we confuse friendliness with friend creation? I'm disinterested in community for community's sake. I don't have to have friends.

Again, quality over quantity.

I'm interested in people with a similar drive; I want iron sharpens iron friendships. My involvement at the gym in town was a brief, failed experiment. I thought that those who are willing to train before dawn would share my tendencies, but, as I addressed before, they might have been better served by a shared table and a cup of that new coffee from McDonald's.

And maybe the thing I'd like just isn't available locally. I'm out-of-bounds of the stereotypes out here in the country. While I drive a truck and my lawnmower is built by John Deere, that's pretty much where the similarities end. You're just not gonna find me with a high-powered rifle waiting to kill something; furthermore, I'm out-of-bounds of the stereotypes simply because I'm an INTJ. Well, à la Brad Paisley, who needs stereotypes with a memory like mine?

I'm not alone, of course, and that's why there is a market for virtual connections and for now, Facebook is the game in town. And maybe friendships are no longer friendships, but a rough equivalent of forum members with Photoshopped avatars.

Yesterday marked the beginning of the second week of The 5th Expedition. Last week was a victim of complacency. Sure, I had this weird thing going on with my neck and I had a gym cleanup that included moving (again) all of my tools, workbench et al, but I know me, and a part of me rested a bit too much upon the laurels of The 4th Expedition, despite the efforts not to focus on past success. There's a bit of a false equivalence going on: "I had great success in the last six-weeks, so the next will be successful by default."

CLEARLY, this makes no sense, but, when do emotions make sense?

No, I have to go out there and get it and be ever-vigilant for this kind of thinking.

I'm a little wary of my diet soft drink habit. In the evenings, I've been enjoying a glass or two of Coke Zero, Diet Mountain Dew, Diet Coke, or Diet Coke Caffeine Free. While I had accepted that its influence on my diet is largely neutral with its lack of calories, on an emotional level, it does impact my overall objectives: it has me seeking pleasure-only out of food, a dangerous slope, and incidentally, correlated to my wholesale failure earlier this year.

Then there is caution to be considered on the gut side. Through probiotics, sauerkraut, ACV, and cayenne pepper supplementation, I am promoting good bacteria growth in my digestive system. Yet, my consumption of artificial sweeteners seems to encourage the growth of bacteria that is really good at pulling out energy from fat and overwhelming the system.

A couple of articles:

• Scientific American.com: Artificial Sweeteners May Change Our Gut Bacteria in Dangerous Ways
• Healthline.com: Do Artificial Sweeteners Harm Your Good Gut Bacteria?

It really comes at no surprise, does it? Never fall prey to a corporation's marketing department, whether the words are diet, low-whatever, fill-in-the-blank-free, or somebody full of sexy sex like Matt Berry's Douglas Reynholm. Food is never just food. Food is a drug; food is a vitamin dispenser. We just can't think of food in terms of pleasure. There's a consequence to our actions. I know we avoid this when we are elbow deep into a bag of Lay's or have that ring of glaze around our mouths as a sticky box is left behind in our ravenous wake.

And sometimes our lack of planning makes the zeal of satisfaction more enticing. I finished up my soybean blends for the next six days—that's 14 mixes worth. The day before, I put together and microwaved eight days worth of broccoli and spinach. And two days ago, I set aside AM and PM vitamins as I take 10 capsules/pills a day. See, I've already invested thought into what I want to achieve and my nutritional approach to get there. I've eliminated any need to think, or more specifically, closed any openings for temptation to slide in and kick me in the ribs. Instead, I react without thinking with speed and intent.

Think about it: if we don't plan, but shop for food after work when we're tired, weak, and really haven't got a clue, how big of a role does nutrition play? Do we think strategically? Or, do we ring out Fat Bastard's clarion call: "GET IN MY BELLY!" Chances are, there's an inverse relationship of the ratio between $ spent and nutrition density. More money for less—when does THAT ever make sense? But, that's the peril of the sugar, fat, and Lord Salt pursuit; I mean, c'mon, I'm pretty sure methheads aren't tearing their faces off from a place of logic.

There was no Click, Click, Boom kickoff for this week at Monday's 4 AM...

...I missed my 3:50AM wakeup call...

...my backup went off at 4:15 AM instead of 4...

...nevertheless and dauntlessly, I tied on my shoes and fired up my treadmill and elliptical...

...only to remember I had to get air in the tires and load up the trash for a quick run to the satellite dump not only before 7 AM, but even earlier to beat out the impending showers...

...AND toward the end of my warmup, I tweaked my neck once AGAIN...

...and my throat began to hurt after breathing heavily from the airborne remnants of my mopping the day prior...

...thereby aborting my ride upon my steel stallions.

"Shaka, when the walls fell." A bit of a bummer—not an inspiring day.

The thing is, there are some days that are like this. I didn't get the level of results that I want but I can't let that take away from the success I've had with my diet. At the end of the day, in this segment, wins are won by diet, not by sweat volume. I just want those big wins...