OK, before my libertarian and conservative friends start bouncing off the wall, I haven't joined a labor union. Frankly, I would panhandle before I would take a job with a unionized company, however I am on strike, and this strike may spread to include other entities. Heck I may just decide to throw in a couple of boycotts (General Motors and Chrysler) while I'm at it.

Since I spend a lot of time working from my home office, I miss out on the daily banter I would normally participate in with coworkers. For me Facebook has filled that void. Over the last couple of years, I have found myself logging in two or three times a day to spend a few minutes checking in on the latest happenings and maybe swapping a few comments with friends.

Last week on Tuesday, shortly after midnight, I decided to pop in at Facebook for a quick glance before turning in for the night. Wow! I had logged in just minutes after Mark Zuckerberg's techno wizards flipped the switch to bring us the newest version of Facebook. Instead of a quick perusal before bedtime, I spent the next two hours trying to wrap my head around the changes.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much. After all, Facebook is free and if I don't like what they've done with it, then I don't have to use it. Well I don't like it and I've stopped using it. If you pull up my page you'll see I've replaced my picture with a banner proclaiming my strike. You'll also notice I haven't posted anything or interacted in any way since the changes began.

Going cold turkey was a little rough, but I'm determined to stick it out at least through the end of the month and maybe permanently. I do have several Facebook business pages I have to administer, but I've moved them to a family member's account so I can just deal with the pages and not be tempted. I have also cancelled the Facebook advertising contracts of several small businesses I own.

What has me so upset? When it comes to consuming media I'm a linear person. I want to go from point A to point B in the simplest and most efficient manner possible with the fewest disruptions. That is why I DVR every single thing I watch on television, so I can go from start to finish without commercial interruption. That's also why, even though I used to listen to five or six hours a day of talk radio, I rarely listen anymore because I can't pause, rewind or fast forward through the commercials. The world has changed, but radio has not. On the other hand, Facebook may have jumped the shark by progressing too far too fast.

In my case the old Facebook news feed where every post from each friend and fan page I'm subscribed to was displayed live in chronological order worked perfectly. For me the newest posts are the most important, and previously I could quickly scroll down the page newest to oldest in order and stop for a moment if something caught my eye.

Now those cubicle-bound, brainiac developers at Facebook have invented a computer algorithm they claim can determine which posts are important to me, and thus my news feed now displays the posts Facebook says I like first even though they may be many hours old. Note to Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, your algorithm doesn't work. It determines what I see in my main feed based upon how often I have interacted in some way with that page or person in the past. Thus if I have made a comment on someone's post or clicked a link they have posted, that friend or fan page receives a higher score than a person or page I seldom or never respond to. The more often I interact with them the higher their scores become. Sorry Zuckerberg, life is not like that. Just because I have never or seldom commented on a post from a particular friend or fan page doesn't mean their posts are not important to me. Some of the posts from those friends and fan pages are just as or even more important to me than the ones showing up in my feed.

Now the Facebook gang will tell me they've built in functionality to let me, over a period of time, influence what appears in my feed. Yes, I can individually click on each of my more than 1,000 friends one at a time and customize their settings to help determine how often they appear and what category of their posts and interactions I would like to see. You know Mark, I really have several weeks of my life I can spare to set that up. Not! I can also click on each post that appears in my main feed and tell Facebook whether I want to see more or less of that type post. Of course that would almost double the amount of time it would normally take for me to go through the posts.

If all the commotion of the last few days weren't enough, the engineers at Facebook have now unveiled many additional massive changes to be implemented in coming weeks that will be far more earth shaking. Their goal is to make Facebook such an integral part of everything you do, that your entire life will revolve around it. Plus Zuckerberg wants us to share far more about ourselves than we currently do. While some may welcome that, I for one do not and I suspect many others feel the same.

Probably the most intrusive thing will be the way Facebook will soon handle your personal profile. Zuckerberg is not content for you to only list the static basics such as where you work, where you live and your relationship status. No, he wants your profile to become a living breathing timeline of your life with everything you do on and off Facebook being automatically incorporated into building a deep, personal picture of who you are. That's just downright creepy!

News, music and video platforms will become key components of Facebook. The new ticker that now appears in the upper right of the screen will soon post real time status updates of what your friends are reading, listening to or watching. Numerous external apps such as Hulu, Netflix, Directv, Spotify, Flixster, Slacker Radio, Yahoo News and others will be set to automatically feed to your Facebook status. See a friend listening to a certain song that interests you? You can click on their status update and start listening too. Is your friend watching a Netflix movie? Click on that status and you can also be watching the same movie online. 

Of course there are also the privacy issues. As this new profile timeline builds a huge, deeply personal dossier of your activities, likes, dislikes, pictures and comments, I can see employers looking here first when they are considering you for a job. There are many things employers cannot ask you during a job interview such as your age, marital status, health conditions, political or religious beliefs, and whether you have children. Let a Human Resources person have a couple of minutes access to a job applicant's new Facebook timeline profile, and many of those jobseekers will immediately be dropped from consideration. Looks like Sonja voted for Obama. Rejected!

As the new changes are rolled out, if you decide to continue using Facebook, you'll want to stay on top of privacy settings. As an example, Yahoo News will now be integrated into Facebook. If you add this application to your account, every time you read a story on Yahoo, it will immediately show up on your friend's feeds and will also be incorporated into your personal profile timeline. Things could get embarrassing quickly. What will your reaction be when you notice your uncle reading a lot of stories about women's fashions and also cross-dressing? The next family reunion could be interesting! And I bet you had no clue that Aunt Bessie watches Jersey Shore.

As we saw with the Tiger Wood's sex scandal...voicemail, text messages and online posts live forever. That is another reason to avoid using Facebook chat. While you may delete the conversation on your end, the other party can keep it indefinitely, and you never know when some off-the-cuff comment could be resurrected to cause you a lot of grief in your personal, political or business life.

We live in a fast paced constantly evolving world and I understand today's hot thing can be old news next week, but the Facebook team's desire to stay one step ahead of Google may have overreached. There will always be a segment of the population, particularly the under 30 crowd, who will quickly embrace these changes. For the over 40 set, many of whom are big users of Facebook, these changes violate the "keep it simple" mantra and many may soon feel that Facebook requires too much time and effort to continue to use it. Don't think it can happen? When is the last time you visited MySpace? And I bet very few of you still have an AOL email address.

I've really enjoyed reconnecting with old friends and engaging in some water cooler discussions these past couple of years. However, each hour that passes, my Facebook withdrawal symptoms lessen. To fill the void I've beefed up the number of news outlets, businesses and friends that I follow on Twitter. As inconvenient as it sometimes is, the free market works. I for one am using my power as an individual to just say no to Facebook. At least for now. 

Follow me on Twitter @chuckshiflett and also check out my statewide columns at: The Backroom Report.