Since January of this year I’ve been using Facebook to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, and other folks I don’t see often. There’s something to be said about seeing people’s faces every day which reminds you to stay in touch. Poke (and SuperPoke) is the greatest way to tell someone “hi” without getting into a dialog.

Since Facebook wants to make a few dollars in their effort to provide free services, they’ve initiated clandestine tactics to gather and distribute your surfing habits to others. Facebook’s Beacon software isn’t terribly popular for this reason but there are ways to keep it quiet.

wikiHow describes the proper way to disable Beacon in Facebook’s security settings as well as the BlockSite add-on for Firefox. Although the article doesn’t mention this you can use the BlockSite add-on in Flock (which, like Firefox, is based on Mozilla.

Manas Tungare describes how to filter out Beacon in the Mac version of Safari. I haven’t installed PithHelmet to test because it appears only in beta status for Safari 3 (which ships with Leopard).

NPR had a story this morning about America’s declining amount of sleep. Apparently our society has developed the idea the less amount of sleep we get the more successful we are in our career.

I’ve met people who take pride in their four hours of sleep and leave you with the feeling you should to the same if you want great things from life. Everyone should have a success plan and work smart regardless of your sleep habits. You can look at sleep in two ways:

1. Your body needs rest; perhaps these sleep-deprived people are the small percentage of the population who never gets sick, doesn’t need to diet, and has low cholesterol while eating fried chicken all day - they’re the exception not the rule
2. Getting insufficient sleep could kill you sooner than your well-rested friends
3. Sleep time is like an overdraft account for your time

Although I’m a night owl I force myself to bed around 11:00 PM. I’m most creative and productive when well rested but if it was crunch time on a project I could go until 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM. I’d get about four hours of sleep before my son wakes up.

The idea behind not sleeping is maximizing your time to get things done. If you use all the hours in the day and still have the urge to get more done…you’re out of time. The mental anguish of wanting to do more and no time to do it would drive me mad. I’d rather get as much done before 11:00 PM and know that I could do more if needed.

Those extra hours for sleep are like “rollover minutes” for squeezing more time out of the day when you need it the most.

When we moved into our house the very first thing I did was change the exterior door locks. The front door received a new deadbolt and locking handle. The back door was keyed to match. Thereafter, a new garage door opener was installed.

There was one lock I didn’t change: the mailbox. Our condo complex has a front gate (entered via keypad or actual key) and a group of mailboxes which use cam-style locks. I figured the former owner changed addresses, the HOA would change the gate lock, and that would be that.

Wrong.

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I’m a big fan of Monster. The green can gives a nice boost without the jitters from a double-shot of espresso and I expect the other additives help out in the energy department. The big question I have is the caffeine content. How much does a 16 ounce can have compared to a typical cup of coffee?

As usual, a Google search revealed tons of hits and most of them were craptacular. In most cases they stated “yes, Monster has caffeine” and fail to mention how much. Telling me how many calories it has is pointless - it’s printed on the can.

Eventually I found Energy Fiend which reveals Monster’s caffeine content and compares it to a large number of other beverages. Clicking through on any beverage, Monster included, gives further details. In another nice twist of oft-missing accuracy on the ‘net, data sources are cited and linked.

In a move to further aid the caffeine inquisitive you can research foods, sugar content, and calculate your daily buzz intake. Got a death wish? Find out how much of your favorite drink you can handle before it kills you. For me, 70 cans of Monster back-to-back will do it.

So how much caffeine does the typical 16 ounce can of Monster contain? Based on 8 ounce servings, the green machine runs 20 mg less than coffee: 80 mg vs 100 mg. Take that Joe!

eBay is a great place to sell stuff but I’ve discovered that being a seller isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Auction fees and PayPal fees have increased. More and more buyers don’t complete auctions and eBay’s dispute resolution is a joke because they don’t take into account the negative feedback you’ll receive if you challenge a buyer who defaulted.

The hassles aren’t worth it and I’ve been donating my wares to the woman who cleans my home, The Salvation Army or the e-waste bin at Best Buy rather than selling it on eBay. However, a recent post at Uncluttered has changed my tune.

SecondRotation buys used electronics such as mobile phones, GPS units, laptops, MP3 players, and more. They don’t buy everything but I found a number of my old mobile phones (sadly dropped into the Best Buy e-waste bin last month) on their list: Sony T68i, Blackberry 7100t, even a Nokia 8210.

Find your device then rate its condition and what original pieces you have such as product manual, charger, battery, etc. You’re not going to get a premium but they pay for shipping and send you a check or deposit to a PayPal account.

For example, my 7100t fetched $24 (comparable to completed eBay auctions) without paying listing fees and finding someone interested in an old Blackberry. I could have gotten a dollar more for including an original manual but it wasn’t worth my time to find it.

The convenience and free shipping is worth trying SecondRotation. What they do with everything is a mystery but don’t wait forever to dump your old gadgets (like my Palm Tungsten T3) otherwise you’ll be stuck with eBay.