September 21, 2007
Anybody home?
Writing - If I haven't written much this month, it's because the important things going on are things you don't write about. Other than that, things have been pretty much on autopilot this month.
Twitter - The writing I have been enjoying a lot for the past few months is via Twitter. Some consider it 'social networking'. I like to think of it as microblogging. You are limited to 140 characters. I actually find it fun to try and pack something useful to say in that space. It forces you to be terse. When you consider some of my past posts have been around 1000 words, squeezing an updated into 140 characters has been a paradigm shift for me. The other nice aspect is that you can take a minute, scribble something together, and be done. Easy to do during a break without getting too caught up in it.
I've set things up so that my recent updates at Twitter are posted in the lower right corner. So if you surf by this site and see no change, double check down there. Depending on the speed of their servers, it may lag the loading of the rest of this page.
Flickr - I've also been experimenting with taking quick 'n dirty snapshots with my phone and sending them over the cellular network to Flickr. I've had a personal Flickr account for a couple of years, but never posted anything to it until I started to experiment with this whole phone to web streamlined flow that they have. I was thinking of creating one myself, but they've done all the heavy lifting (read: programming) already.
Email - I did have an email problem a week or two ago. Microsoft (ie. HotMail) blocked all mail coming from the shared server that I'm hosted on. Once I brought it to the attention of the server administrator, he contacted Microsoft and within a day or two, it was all cleared up. Email sometimes drives me bananas.
A few last tidbits:
Work - I found out that AMD will have the equivalent of a "plant shutdown" for the week of Thanksgiving. While they give me Thursday and Friday off as holiday, I'll be forced to take three vacation days on Monday through Wednesday. If you'd like to visit the week of Thanksgiving, let me know.
Claire - Claire spends Monday through Friday next week with her class at "Nature's Classroom" in Freedom, New Hampshire. We're excited and yet nervous for her. This is the first year the school has gone to this particular site. Their cabins are going to be quite full.