to my facebook friends: thanks for the (early) birthday wishes!

 

i've never been a huge prankster, but... april fool's! well, it wasn't intended that way, but that's how it's turned out. let me explain.

a while back, i became disenchanted with facebook's insistence on surreptitiously altering its privacy settings, resulting in personal information being shared, even when the user had previously tried to protect that information. to combat this, i altered my birthday information. i left the correct month and year so that they could get accurate demographic data; i just took out the part that would allow for identity theft.

that seemed innocuous enough, until yesterday. though i've been away from facebook during lent, i still get the occasional message forwarded to my e-mail, and when the birthday wishes began to pour in, i realized that what i thought was an inconspicuous change was having unforeseen (but in hindsight, entirely predictable) consequences. my apologies for the misdirection. i suspect that i may end up getting birthday wishes on april fool's day from here on out, and maybe that's not entirely inappropriate. :-)

so... i feel blessed to have so many thoughtful friends -- and a little embarrassed to have misled you. but i'll save up your birthday wishes for almost a fortnight, and see you back on facebook after resurrection sunday!