Okay, let’s be honest. If you’re here, and you’re not a spambot, then you’re either (a) some poor sap making scut wages as a human spambot to get around filters, or (b) you followed the link in my last Facebook post because you can’t go without some Brett-y goodness. If it’s (a), you have my sympathy, but not my support. If it’s (b), welcome! Comments are limited to approved users and moderated, but only to keep the site more or less spam-free. You can expedite user validation by sending an e-mail to my address: bhainley(at-sign)casualnotice(tiny-circle)com.

I have a Facebook problem. I have a Facebook problem in the sense that some people have a heroin problem, except Facebook doesn’t cost me any money (but it may, eventually, cost me friends and family if I don’t deal with it). I spend too much time registering an opinion on almost everything. I spend way too much time correcting people when they have the facts wrong. I apparently never learned when things weren’t any of my business.

Worse, I would camp comments, wasting entire days checking and rechecking my news feed for something that “demanded” my input. This is a bad thing. If I spend an entire day staring at a blank page on MS Word, it’s not wasted because my brain is still working through whatever has me blocked. If I spend that same day clicking over to Facebook to see how people reacted to one of my snide, cat-based graphics, my brain is focused on defending the theory that my cat, Coleridge, finds partisan political ranting tedious, and that day is wasted. I track the word-count on my current projects on a whiteboard in my office. Those counts haven’t changed in over a month.

So I came back here. I’ve had A website since 1996, and Casual Notice has been the home of my ramblings since 2004. I don’t check it compulsively for opinions, and the blog format tends to give me an impetus to think through the commentary that is posted here. More importantly, this is my home. I own the server, and I own the website and everything on it.

Facebook is like a front yard. Yeah, the space is yours (sort of), but everyone passing by can see what’s there. They can bitch about your opinion because it’s right THERE assaulting their eyes like a concrete flamingo. The thing about Casual Notice is that you have to come here to see my opinion. If you come to my home and you don’t like the ratty green sofa in my office, you’re very free to fuck off. This is my space, and you’re a guest here.

Anyway, big changes coming for CN (again), including a probable migration at the beginning of the year. Again, if you want to expedite user validation, send an e-mail to bhainley(spiral-ay)casualnotice(point)com.