About a Blog, and Other Stuff in the SocMedVerse

It's been over a week since I posted here. As usual, I have my excuses. In the past week [deep breath] school started for the girls, the wife and myself, which necessitated the usual getting back into the groove, plus two open houses, and I got my biggest freelance job to date which included attending a day-long meeting, and I had one other meeting about a different business opportunity and two different repairs on the house, plus a marathon doctor appointment for one kid and the usual schlepping about to lessons and the Olympics ended and the Conventione happened. Oh, and I got sick (twice) and threw out my back (once).

So yeah, it's been a bit of a week.

One thing I learned (over again) from all this is that if I'm not writing all the time I get rusty. Pieces I should have banged out quickly felt like passing stones or something. So when I get busy in the future, I'll try harder to write something, anything, here just to stay fresh. And keeping you all entertained is of course a bonus.

Funny thing is I get nervous about blogging when on deadline. If someone is paying me and sees blogging happening, will they think I should be doing their work? etc. Thus far every job I've gotten has included some vetting by reading the blog. But since I need this to keep my chops (and get the next job, apparently), clients will have to deal.

With all that, I wasn't entirely dormant in blog world. First off, I'm integrating my social media lives, as you can tell from the shiny new widgets, stereo right. The first is links to the three other social networking sites I use, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Below that is a Twitter feed window showing my last n tweets.

As you can see, I've gotten into Twitter quite a bit. The really attentive reader may notice the de.lico.us (which thankfully is just "Delicious" now") widget is gone. I had fallen down on keeping it updated and now if I see a cool article I tweet it. Unfortunately the badge doesn't let you click directly through to the article, you have to click the tweet which takes you to a Twitter page on which the link shows up. Nonetheless, if you see something you like, that's how to get there.

And of course, you can always Follow me. My tweets are about 50/50 original versus replies to others. I realize that seeing the replies here doesn't help much -- hearing half the conversation and all that. So it goes. I'll also warn that the tweets range from substantive to pithy to quotidian. Oh, and that's where most of my snarky one-liners go these days. I will warn you that I've installed a utility that automatically feeds links the posts here. Other people feed their blog to their Twitter and post Twitter on their so I'm taking it on faith that this won't cause rift in the blog-time continuum.

My use of Facebook has evolved over time. Back when candidates started using Facebook and MySpace I started accounts just to see what the candidates were doing. Since I can't do so much as look at MySpace without getting a raft of pornspam friends ("come to my website which has my really fun pics, lol") I've let that go to seed. Meanwhile, old friends keep finding me through Facebook, so that's what I'm using it these days. Up next I'll be posting some family photos so various friends and family can see how the kids are doing. So if you're Friends with me, look for that.

LinkedIn is supposedly the grown-up, get noticed and get work social site. I know people who have gotten work through it, but thus far, nothing for me. Again have hooked up with some old friends though. As for work, nada. We'll keep playing with it to see what happens.

OK, so with that bit of a waggle, hopefully I'm back in the blog game and will try not to leave for days on end again. I've been thinking much about what I want this to be. Probably you will find more local stuff and more policy stuff, and less about the national race. On the other hand, I definitely have some thoughts about the last few days so you never know.

Just as long as it's fun.