Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Where's George?

Valentine’s Day can be a tough day if you have to spend it alone. It’s not that I haven’t tried to date or anything. It’s just that it’s hard to meet someone. Most of my life is spent either at work or at home. When I do go out, it’s not usually doing things that are geared towards meeting people. I don’t like bars or clubs and I don’t know anyone that’s willing to set me up with someone.

Dating sites are a joke. You have to admit that any site that charges by the month and has a 3-month deal is a bit pessimistic. If I’m going to pay money for a matchmaking service, I want some measure of success within a few weeks. At the very least, I should see some responses, even if they’re negative, within a few days. I shouldn’t have to send several messages and not get so much as a quick “no”.

Is there something that I’m missing? Advice seems to be contradictory. Some people have told me that you have to relax and let it happen while others say that I have to get out there and be aggressive. Which is it? I don’t see how I can do both.

I’ve got my birthday coming up in one week. I’m turning 30 and I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I don’t see why people make such a big fuss about the milestone birthdays. I could see if it was 100 or something, but it’s only 30. Get over it.

In more exciting news, I found a site called Where’s George, located at http://www.wheresgeorge.com. The George is as in George Washington, a reference to the fact that the site is used to track money. There’s nothing technical about it. There are no GPS locators or anything. It operates on a catch-and-release system.

You enter the serial number off of the bill and hope that someone has entered it before. If so, you get to see the bill’s history as told by those few who have encountered the bill prior to you. If you’re the first to enter the bill into the site, you get to originate said history. The next chance you get, you spend as many bills as you see fit.

Once a bill gets multiple hits, you get to see how far and how fast the bill is traveling. So far, I’ve hit two bills that were already in the system. Both have been from the Miami area. I’m the first entry for all of the other bills that I’ve entered. I’ve sent many of them back into circulation, but I’ve only been doing this for a few days, so nothing yet.

I’d really like to make a habit of writing here. Posting once a month doesn’t really count. I’m going to set a goal of writing another entry by my birthday. Maybe I’ll have a hit on Where’s George by then.