*WARNING**Go to the top right of your screen, click Account & then click Edit Friends. Go to the left side of your screen and click Phonebook. Everyone’s phone # is being published. Please repost (sic) to let your friends know of this change in security, so that they can remove their phone numbers or change their privacy settings…

I went and checked out my Phonebook and noticed that all the phone numbers in there were from Facebook friends that had them listed in their profiles. I think it’s not so bad for Facebook to organize the information that people have made available to me already. Apparently this is a pretty old feature I had just never seen. False alarm. Nothing to see here.

Then I saw this message at the top of the screen.

To learn more about Phonebook or to delete any contacts imported from your phone, click here.

From my phone?!? Click…

Facebook Phonebook displays contacts you have imported from your phone, as well as your Facebook friends. If you would like to remove your mobile contacts from Facebook, you need to disable the feature on your mobile phone and visit this page.

Remove Imported Contacts

When you import contacts into Facebook from your email, mobile, or instant messaging service, we may use this information to create friend suggestions for you and your friends. We also display these contacts in your Facebook Phonebook.

If you choose to remove your imported contacts, they will no longer appear in your Phonebook and friend suggestions may be less relevant to you and your friends.

To remove all imported contacts, please make sure to disable the Facebook synchronization feature on your phone first, if you have ever enabled it. Then, click the ‘Remove’ button below.

It turns out that Facebook is uploading contact information from your phone and storing the phone numbers. I can’t find any official information about this beyond what I posted above. Within Phonebook though, it looks to me as if imported numbers have a phone icon, while profile numbers list MOBILE or HOME, etc.

This information is not being formally added to profiles, but it is obviously associated with accounts. Why is this upsetting? Because Facebook has my phone number, you know that one I intentionally left off Facebook. I see no options to view or remove this information. I can’t even see what they have on me. It wouldn’t surprise me if Facebook is collecting other contact data from phones, such as email address, physical address, birthday, messenger screennames, and other contact information that most phones store.

I checked a friend’s Phonebook and Blackberry®, and several phone numbers had been imported. In the Blackberry® Facebook app there is a setting under Options to disable the syncing of Contacts. I do not know if it is enabled by default.

After some more searching it looks like not all phones with a Facebook app are syncing this information. I have an HTC Hero with an Android Facebook App and a HTC Facebook App and I have Sync Contacts checked, however none of the phone numbers in my Phonebook came from my phone. They are all listed on profiles. I’m sure eventually Facebook will upgrade their android app to sync as well.

If anyone has any information about other phones, or better Facebook apps that can enable a one way only sync, please post in the comments.

1) Hiro just runs up to Sylar and stabs him. If we remember, Hiro tried this before while time was frozen and still failed. And Hiro would have had his head in the game much more than Sylar, because Sylar had just killed his own mother. What a ridiculous decision not to have Hiro freeze time to stab him, or do like DL and teleport the sword directly into Sylar. It might as well have been Ando with the sword after all.

2) Nathan has to carry off Peter to save NY? That makes no sense at all. The first power Peter found was his ability to fly. He could have flown himself anywhere, anytime. Alternatively he could have frozen time and run away, teleported to a desert or the sky where Nathan carried him, or just learned to control the power like Ted and Sylar did. Are they suggesting that Peter, with the most powers of anyone, and was trained in how to control them, was inferior at controlling them compared to Sylar and/or Ted? Nathan did not have to die. Not to mention, Claire could have just shot him in the head/chest and he would have regenerated. Niki could have knocked him out. There were literally hundreds of solutions, even suggested ones in the plot, that did not involve Nathan dying needlessly. They completely failed to justify why Nathan carrying him off was the best solution.

3) Peter met Ted in the middle of New York. Peter knew he was going to be the exploding man. He was going to leave for Nevada. He never followed through on this and no reason was given why. On top of this he met Ted in downtown NY. Talk about stupid. Not only that but he met Sylar there too.

4) Planning this series of events would not only have been improbable, but completely impossible. Even the notion that Linderman, Angela Petrelli and Charles could have known about what was going to happen before Isaac painted it is unexplained. To somehow conclude that they planned for this to occur and there was “nothing that could be done about it” starting as far back as Claire’s birth and Niki and DL getting together is absolutely ridiculous. There were so many ways to stop NY from exploding that almost happened or could have happened that the line “there is nothing you can do to stop it” became the biggest farce in the entire show.

I really really liked the show as a whole, but the last episode was inexcusably bad.

Hello Family,

The newest Gadberry household has been busy this year and has many updates to share. Both of us had the most exciting, albeit busy, year of our lives.

At the end of last year I moved to College Station to be closer to Lauren. As a perk, I was able to room with Travis from August until June. Lauren was busy with the spring semester and wedding planning, looking forward to taking the summer off.

Looking ahead to supporting a wife, I left my independent contract work behind in early May and got a “real job” at a medical research software company named Datatrak. I could not be more content in my position at the company. I have an over-affirming boss with superb upper-management directly above him. I am truly blessed in finding this amazing position.

Of course the highlight of the year was June 3rd when Lauren became my wife. Our honeymoon on the Riveria Maya was phenomenal, aside from having to sleep on two double beds for the first two nights! We snorkeled, wind surfed, toured Chichen Itza, rode a banana boat, touched giant sea turtles, and much more. Over a week in Mexico was grand, but it sure made me appreciate the good old USA. There are things we have here that are simply not available in Mexico, even in a luxury resort, such as 800 numbers, the FDA, customer service departments, and good water.

Lauren took the summer off so that we could begin to build our home together. It was a great time of relaxing and getting used to a new life with each other. In the fall she was in school again taking the most time consuming semester I have ever seen. Aside from the reading intensive Political Science and History classes, she also had to take Statistics and Fortran Programming. Who ever heard of a Political Science major needing a computer programming class?!? I can comfortably say that we both know Fortran pretty well now.

We have been attending a Newly-Weds Sunday school class at Grace Bible Church here in College Station. It’s been a great class for us and has allowed us to learn from other people’s hard knocks instead of our own. It has also been very affirming to see how much of the subject matter we had already covered. About 3 months ago in the Newly Weds class, my boss invited me to attend an FPU group. FPU stands for Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University. Since my wallet didn’t look as fat as I wanted it to, I decided to give it a shot. It has been a huge blessing in our lives. I highly recommend it to everyone, to both the young and to the not-so young.

Looking ahead, Lauren is now registered for next semester and plans to graduate in August after the second summer session. For those of you who are counting, that’s 3 years and 3 months from when she took her first class! After that, our plan is for her to get a job so that we can get closer to our first house. Hopefully that’s somewhere in the next Christmas letter.

Merry Christmas,

Aaron and Lauren

So something’s wrong with your car. No? Then somethings wrong with your truck, suv, motorcycle, boat, etc. Why else would your be reading this?
I recently began having problems with my truck running very roughly. I figured a misfiring cylinder and started off by replacing sparkplugs and wires. When that didn’t fix it, I rebuilt the distributor. That didn’t do it either. I decided to try and find out if I had a different problem with the cylinders. I did a little research and decided that it wasn’t very hard to check the compression. The basic idea is that if the compression in a cylinder is considerably lower than the other cylinders, then you have a problem. The problem could be a valve, piston, piston ring, or probably a few other things that I don’t know about. Here’s how to do it.

Equipment

Compression Tester Gauge. ($10-$20)
Deep Socket set & Ratchet
Gloves

Testing

The procedure is simple and a little monotonous if you have 8 cylinders. It doesn’t matter which cylinder you start with. I suggest starting with the most difficult to reach, or the one you think is bad. Go around and do one at a time. Go in order so that you don’t forget which ones you haven’t done yet or do the same ones multiple times.
The first step is to run the engine to get it up to operating temperature. If you can’t do this, it’s ok. This will give you a more accurate reading.
Once the engine is hot, turn it off and remove BOTH ends of the coil wire. For those of you who don’t know, the coil wire goes from the coil (usually a cylindric shaped object) and goes to the top center of the distributor cap (the plastic piece with a bunch of thick black wires coming out). Please don’t touch the wire while the engine is running as this can cause electric shock, pain, embarassment, and is usually indicative of stupidity.
Now you’re ready to test the cylinders. Here are the basic steps for each cylinder.

1. Remove the wire from the spark plug going into the cylinder using your hands or small pliers.
2. Make sure nothing (dirt, leaves, etc) is in position to fall into the cylinder when you remove the spark plug. A can of compressed air or an air compressor is a great way to blow all the stuff out of the area.
3. Remove the spark plug going into the cylinder using the ratchet and deep socket set.
4. Screw the Compression Tester Gauge into the spark plug hole. Tighten by hand only.
5. Crank the engine so it turns over roughly 6 times. This should give you an accurate measurement.
6. Record the reading on the gauge. (Yes, write it down. I know, writing is terrible. At least it’s not physics homework.)
7. Press the pressure release valve on the gauge so it drops back to 0.
8. Remove the gauge from the spark plug hole.
9. Replace the spark plug into the hole the same way it came out.
10. Repeat.

If you find one that is considerably less than the others (I read approximately 12% or more) then you have a problem. Obviously the more the difference, the worse the problem is and the more it needs to be fixed. As for fixing the problem, you’re on your own. My compression was fine, all cylinders right at 150 psi.
I just found out what was wrong with my truck. It turns out that a bad spark plug was the original problem. When I replaced them, one of the new ones I put in was also bad. As if that wasn’t annoying enough, I accidently switched the 7 & 8 wires. I never claimed to be good at working on trucks :). Good luck with yours.

Send me an aaron@gadberry.com if you want to trade!