Postcards From Myself

Twitter and services like it, including FriendFeed and others, are becoming more and more popular. Many combine the ease of use of instant messaging with the more widespread broadcasting ability of a blog. What’s more, they are much more timely and succinct. When you have only 140 characters to get your message across, as with Twitter, not only do you cut out the extraneous, but you are also likely to post more often than when you have to come up with 500 to a thousand words for a blog entry.

But I am beginning to think that therein lies the danger – at least it does for me. When I can say what I am thinking and let off that mental steam quickly and easily, it takes the burn away for me to do blog entries. Anyone who looks at the history of my entries on this blog can see that the frequency has gone down since I began using Twitter. Think of it as text messaging versus the telephone call. If I can send a text message to my wife telling her I will be home late, there is much less pressure on me to actually pick up the phone and make a call. And sure, she gets that bit of information that I needed her to know, but what we aren’t doing is really conversing. We don’t hear the tone in each others voices and we don’t drift in to other topics and find out more information. Some might say that is a good thing, but it can take its toll.

And that, I fear, is what is happening with this and some other blogs. The fast and easy is replacing the longer and more thought out. Don’t get me wrong, I think that services like Twitter and instant messaging have their place, especially in today’s fast paced attention deficit world – and I intend to keep using them. But, I also believe that we need to make sure we don’t give short shrift to the fuller and deeper message. We need to take the time to have the full conversation – with all the give and take and feedback that entails.

What do you think? Do you Twitter? Has it changed the way your other communications go?

“I am just a bug on the information super-highway waiting for a windshield.” That is what I used to tell people when they asked, “why palmettobug for your domain name?” Truth be told, that is only part of it.

For those of you who don’t know, a palmettobug is basically a cockroach. Yup, a 1.5 to 2 inch long roach – although I have seem some bigger. They are all over the place here in the low country of South Carolina. Two things most people don’t know about our native palmettobugs – first is that they can fly. Yup, though they only normally do it for short distances, they do fly. Second, they are often found in trees. They especially like palmetto trees which are a variety of palm tree. I think they like the palmetto trees because the rough service makes climbing easy and the fronds provide lots of places to hide. Their affinity for the palmetto tree may even have something to do with their name.

Now if you have pieced this together you will figure out that the palmettobug can climb up in a tree and then fly down and land on you. Talk about freaking people out! Nothing like having a 2 inch long roach land on you when you are strolling the street! Too hilarious. But here is a third secret – they also bite. Not often and not too hard, but it is something to be aware of.

All of that aside, the reason I chose the name is that when I was looking for a domain name I wanted something that was indicative of the area but not so local as to pigeon hole me. So, after much thought, I decided on Palmettobug.com. It is funny to people around here and interesting enough to others that they will ask about it. I have had the domain for over ten years now, and it has provided exactly what I wanted. And no, to those who have asked, I will not sell it.

So, there you have it. The story of Palmettobug.com!

Can’t we get this guy out of office any sooner? What has me ticked off now is his call for off shore oil drilling to be resumed. He has said that the prohibitions are outdated and counter productive. Sorry, not they aren’t, you are! With rising gas prices he said, “families across the country are looking to Washington for a response.” Agreed, they are. But this destroying our environment isn’t the response they want.

Beyond the environmental issue, I think this is the wrong move for two reasons. First, if oil drilling does resume it would not have any affect on oil prices for a very long time. How fast do you think they can get oil rigs in place, set up, and pumping to the refineries? Probably a year or more. Sorry Mr. Bush, you will be out of office by then.

Second, I firmly believe this has more to do with getting money to his Texas oil buddies than helping out any of us little folk who pay the bills. In fact, if I was a conspiracy theorist, I would say that this entire situation leading up to the high gas prices was created by the Bush Buddies specifically to increase profits and lead up to letting them drill off-shore and perhaps even in the Alaskan wilderness.

Why not, instead of using the money to drill, use that money to fund alternative energy sources and more efficient methods of transportation? Not only would this help the energy needs in the long term, but it would also help with global warming. Even if you are one of the flat-earth disbelievers, at least these alternative sources would decrease foreign oil dependency which is one of the main reasons Bush wants drilling allowed.

I will tell you why not, because Bush and his Buddies don’t stand to profit from it. Just like the fact that if they end the war, the defense contractors will make less money (Cheney Chaps) and unemployment will go up as all the soldiers and reservists head home. Can’t have any of that now can we?

Sorry, but the November elections can’t come soon enough. January 20th will be a very happy day for a lot of people.

This is my whiny post – the one where I go “oh poor pitiful me.” The subject of my whine? I am whining because sometimes I get tired of being odd, or as I would prefer to call it, “eccentric”.

Here are just a few examples: I don’t care most major sports and hate football. But I love soccer. I am from the Deep South, but do not like watermelon, iced tea, or collared greens. I really like trains, and would like to build a model railroad. But I like English trains. I keep looking and looking, but most newstands here in the US have stopped carrying British Railway Modelling and Railway Modeller. Could it be the exchange rate? Or the cost of gas to get them here? Even the magazines I can find about real (non-model) railways are about US ones, not English or European. I could go on about my love for strange British cars too, but I think you get the picture.

Oh, and lets not leave out the fact that I work in a very conservative office, in a very conservative industry, in a very conservative city, in a very conservative state. And I am very liberal. Sometimes the arguments are fun, but sometimes it makes me just want to give up and move.

So, do you ever feel like this? Other than those highschool years when you were sure that you were the only one who had ever felt the way you did, have you ever continually felt like odd man out? Or odd woman? What do you do about it? It would be very hard to switch, and more than a tad dishonest to yourself. So, as you keep plodding along on your own road, how to you keep your head up and keep a cheerful disposition?

I just took the political quiz over at PoliticalCompass.org and it should be no surprise to anyone that the results came back with me as a liberal. Imagine that! Had me worried for a few seconds because there are a few questions on which I went a little more conservative. Here is what I got.

For comparison, here is the chart of some of our leaders.

There is some interesting stuff there, and some questions that will really make you thing. Or at least they made me think. So go ahead, take the quiz. And let us know where you score. We are all friends here no matter what quadrant you are in!