As some have noticed (hi Adam) I’ve been writing on dancatchpole.com every day the last few days.  My goal is to write *something* every day, at least four hundred words. That’s 2.78 tweets a day [it has come to my attention that I’m retarded and words =/= characters] I think it’s a modest but achievable goal, and we’ll see how that goes before upping the required wordcount.  In addition, on smarthero.tumblr.com I’m planning to post one photo that I’ve taken, be it on my camera or my phone, and posting one interesting link to a person or place, every day, and hell, why not, one interesting video. In addition, I’ve begun a new fitness program to start feeling a bit better about the state of my body.

Modest goals, yes, but my glands, they are underdeveloped, let me ease into it.  Lately I’ve just had the feeling that I’m not doing *enough,* not contributing anything and slowly becoming this amorphous, uninteresting grey blob of a person.  So yes I’m kind of cheating for today’s entry by using it to explain what this is and why I’m doing it, but so what, it’s my damn space and I’ll do with it what I please. 

  To my tiny troupe of readers, I may need a little help.  Encouragement is nice.  So is a bit of scolding, too, if necessary.  If you don’t see anything here worth reading, we’re both wasting our time.  Criticize, comment, and cajole me.  Kick me in my metaphorical butt if you don’t see anything posted by ten o’clock eastern time each evening.  Keep me honest.  It’s a work in progress so it may evolve or change over time, we’ll have to see.  I apologize for rambling but I wanted to get all of this down while it was fresh in my mind.  I promise it will get better, at least, in theory.  I’ve already got a good idea for tomorrow’s entry already and this one is just about wrapped up.

Word Count: 403

In the meantime, I do have a few places I update with far more regularity: Twitter and Tumblr. Twitter is, obviously, where I whittle away my spare moments at work, chatting with folks and keeping up with other peoples’ toots and such. My Tumblr site is where the little one-off and short bursts of ‘stuff’ I find/create wind up. Think of it as the red-headed stepchild of dancatchpole.com. Give it some love, why don’t you.

Twitter is a micro-blogging service that’s been around for several years now, wherein you ‘tweet’ status updates, thoughts, complaints, etc. I’ve been using it mostly to chat with friends, get advice from other users, and keep up with news on various products and projects I’m interested in.  Lately, however, I’ve found a wonderful new use for it:  Customer Service.  After having issues with both UPS shipping and Comcast cable and voicing a few idle complaints, their Customer Service staff, @ThomasAtUPS and @ComcastBill, respectively reached out to help.  Within a few minutes both had supplied me with email addresses to their CSR team and I was able to get my issues resolved within hours, without having to listen to hold music or navigate phone trees.  Many claim Twitter is ‘useless, and only good for the vapid and the vain’ but I’ve found it’s a great way to get information and help.  Hopefully more companies will follow in UPS and Comcast’s footsteps and start helping their customers out, 140 characters at a time.

Yes, my cockles.

You want to touch them, don’t you.

“The server returned a malformed response.  Please check that your blog and API URLs are correct.”

So yes.  That’s annoying, as one of the nicer feature of Scribefire was the ability to post entries to multiple sites simultaneously.  Looks like I’ll have to bug Phil to give me a hand with this one.  I’ll likely be buying a few books on beginners web dev, so if you have any suggestions, they’d be appreciated.