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Attrell Update

Hey sister (and to anybody else reading this),

As you are well aware, you’re not living in Canada right now. In fact, you’re actually studying in Dijon, France right now. What you might NOT have known, is that since we stopped living together (when I moved away for school) is that I’ve been missing you (a lot!) and wishing I had a good way to keep up with your life.

What I’m proposing is pretty simple really: we keep YouTube video journals, updated weekly, that let the other know what is going on in our lives, or just talks about anything we want! Really, the video above explains it all.

I made a YouTube channel for us (here, or here: +Attrell Update) and I’ll let you start the proceedings. Let me know which day of the week you’d like to take to post your video, and I’ll pick one that’s on the other side of the week.

I got the inspiration for this idea from two brothers, John and Hank Green, doing a similar project for the last few years (+vlogbrothers) and they have really gotten to have fun with it, and I think we can do the same!

See you very soon, I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Bad Relationship Advice (You Should Take)

Friends,

Far be it for me to give any kind of help with others’ relationships, but in this case I think I’ve stumbled on something that might actually be useful for a lot of people who tend to get in trouble when they are just trying to have fun (as I am often wont to do).
One of my favourite shows AND it fits this post perfectly!
Basically, I treat my social relationships as a game a lot of the time (serious situations notwithstanding, obviously) and it tends to cause friction more often than it needs to when discussing extremely stupid stuff.
That being said, here’s what I propose:
Treat conversations with people you care about like a game of Hollywood Squares.

In case that needs some explanation, Hollywood Squares is a game that has been on TV in various forms for a REALLY long time. There are modern versions of concepts that are very similar to this (like @Midnight and I assume Celebrity Game Night), but the basic premise is getting funny people together and letting them have a good time for entertainment. They are asked questions and are given free rein to provide one joke answer to the question that pops into their heads, before continuing to seriously address the question.

I think that relationships, more than anything, are about having fun spending time with the person you’re with. Keeping that in mind, I think that people should be given a free pass to give one joke answer to a non-serious question (and even perhaps serious questions to break tension, so long as it’s not abused).
My very favourite kind of humour (wow that is a very British sentence) is off-the-cuff, ad-libbed humor that ties together past situational references in humourous ways. This means that sometimes a really well-phrased (but not socially considerate) joke will sometimes escape my lips, and I don’t think it necessarily warrants a massive blowback every time it happens.
I’ve already brought this up with my sig. oth. (a abbrev. I have simultaneously coined and disavowed myself from) and have asked for this opportunity in our relationship. I hope it will really help, and if it leads to any hilarious happenstances I will be sure to keep you updated.
Side note: I really do think that most things we as humans tend to be sensitive about are so funny for the very reasons we’re all sensitive about them, because we can all relate. I constantly try to break down barriers of stereotyping with socially conscious jokes, following in the footsteps of my heroes like Michael Scott (Steve Carell) and Stephen Colbert (Stephen Colbert). I think we could all do with a little less sensitivity and a little more humour.
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I stayed in touch with ALL the cool people in my life with this one weird trick.

Hello friends and family,

Here’s an idea for you, do yourself a favour and give it a try:

First, log in to your Gmail account, henceforth called your Google Account (Gmail).

Now that you’ve done that, head to the sidebar where your display picture and chat list are (on the right –>) and click on your display picture (you will see the options shown over there).
Right at the top, click on “Try the new Hangouts”. You will be shown an message explaining hangouts, and though it will seem foreign, click OK and once your email reloads, you are ready to start exploring Hangouts in all its glory.
For starters, once you’ve taken the above steps, you can click on the new chat search (called “New Hangout”) and start typing my name. Depending on how close friends we are, my name and photo should show up right away and you can begin typing out a message to me. Say hi and I’ll welcome you to the wonderful world that is Hangouts!
Now that you’re all connected and ready to go, it’s time to discover what you can do with Hangouts. If you head to Google+, you will see that your same chat list will appear on the right side of the window. If they’re not there yet, click the Hangouts button at the top right of the window and they’ll pop up right away.
You can start a free phone or video call from your computer, iOS or Android device (download the Hangouts app here from your phone, this page also contains a ton of info about the app).
This week on +Future Tech Chat, we will be discussing all of the details of Hangouts, and comparing it to the myriad other chat and video apps available to you, and hopefully we can convince you that Hangouts is the place to be.
As a final note, while Google+ is awesome, it definitely isn’t necessary to use Google+ in order to use Hangouts.

You can check out the discussion on Hangouts and other chat apps here too, starting live at 12:30 PM EST on Saturday, March 22nd, 2014. If you’re reading this after the episode has aired, the video will be watchable in its entirety. Hope you like it!
And remember to tune in to +Future Tech Chat every week for a new episode. We’re also starting a blog which will cover tech questions and cover topics like this.
Follow us @FutureTechChat on Twitter or Future Tech Chat on Facebook, and be sure to subscribe and follow on YouTube and Google+ to stay up to date!