Pedro B

So… Today is my birthday and that is in no way a secret nowadays.  Used to be I could keep my trap shut about it and not get any “Happy Birthday’s” except from my brothers and sisters.  That is until I went ahead and threw privacy out the door by getting into deep relationships with Google and Facebook.  (shhh… don’t tell them about each other…)

I woke up this morning with the same idea of ignoring my birthday just like I try to ignore every birthday.  You know that thing where you try to pretend like it’s just any other day?  Yeah that’s me.  I have to go to work just the same and that place has around 100 employees that work under me, all looking at me for guidance or looking at me to mess up.  I know there are more than a few of them that would go all out if they knew it was my birthday.  They would do the party thing with cake and balloons and stuff and all would be well.  The problem for me is that all of them would participate, even the ones that dislike me or the ones that I would have to fire the next day for stealing underwear or something stupid.  So it is smarter for me to not let them know about my birthday (even though some of them know, they just keep it on the DL because I ask them to.)

So I woke up this morning doing my damnedest to remind myself that it is just another day, off to work with me.  I got up early so I decided to log on to ye old internet and WTF why does google have presents and cupcakes and crap on the homescreen?  The Google homepage always has some crap dedication to some nonsense holiday so I go hover over with my mouse and WTF!  Google is telling me Happy Birthday!

Takes me a few seconds to realize that I was logged in to Google and so of course they know when my birthday is.  It’s still kinda unnerving though when you think about it.  Is there anything Google doesn’t know about me?  It’s bad enough that anybody can just Google search my name and find out some of the domain names I own or which websites I have written content for but now big G knows my birthday and flaunts that at me?  The nerve.

I guess as long as they aren’t publishing my birthday to the masses (and really, who in the masses cares) I guess I am just overreacting.

Then I go check my Facebook page cause once every three days or so I get a message or “wall post” and I don’t want to miss any of those!  Again I had forgot about the birthday thing and there are like 10 Happy Birthday posts on my page.  Sweet, activity.  There are many Happy Birthday blessings from old classmates, cousins, aunts, friends, the whole lot of ‘em.  Now that to me is pretty powerful.  Facebook makes things pretty easy to connect, congratulate, whatever.  This makes this birthday much more interesting and I have to admit, I’ve been checking Facebook all day for ‘new’ birthday wishes.

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Lots of folks giving well wishes, people that otherwise I would not have heard from.  Others might see these happy b-days as empty or less significant than a phone call but I like it.  It’s cool that there is a service like Facebook that offers a quick way to see who has a birthday and be able to wish them a happy birthday without much effort.