Since most of my posts lately have been tweets rather than actual writings, and also since I’ve gotten several requests lately for definitions of what twitter is from friends of mine who don’t use it …

First I present two things twitter isn’t.

The Twouble With Twitter

couldn't tell you the source for this one

As usual, Wikipedia summarizes the microblogging site quite well, but it’s missing … something. I’m not sure what, exactly, but there are nuances about Twitter (oh, God, have I gone hipster?) that aren’t touched on.

The easiest way to describe it for those familiar with Facebook is to just say that it’s just like the status updates, without all the annoying apps and quizzes that get in the way. That’s not to say I don’t like Facebook apps; I have sent more than my share of Pieces of Flair, and play at least a couple turns of Scrabble a day. When it gets down to it, however, Facebook (for me) is about status updates.

Twitter asks its users to answer a very simple question, at any given time: “What are you doing?” Since I started using Twitter almost 2 years ago, I have mostly forgotten the question and just send out random thoughts that run through my head. Not many of them are insightful, witty, or clever, but I’d say the proportion of insightful, witty, and clever tweets to insightful, witty, and clever thoughts is pretty close to 1:1. Maybe the question has been cerebrally translated to “What are you thinking?”, as most of the time I’m not actually doing anything (see video above).

Anyway, it’s turned into a crutch for me of sorts. I don’t write longer entries with actual content anymore, because twitter has let me rest on 140 characters of pure laziness (though occasionally I have to chop a couple words out to make it fit, which can take some thought). It’s blogging for the ADD-afflicted. Maybe I ought to set a goal to write an expand-on-this-tweet entry at least once a day. And I’d be willing to accept nominations, either via comments here or on Facebook (as I’ve set my Twitter app to update my status on Facebook).

Oh, and if all this hasn’t convinced you to join Twitter (or has scared you away from it completely), you might be interested in this factoid: Twitterer’s tweets are available via RSS feed. If you don’t want to sign up for an account yourself, but you do want to “follow” me or the tweets of your favorite Celebritwitterer, just click on the link on the right hand side of their Twitter page, or at the end of your address bar if you’re using Firefox (maybe other browsers, too, but I wouldn’t know about that).

I bought a house, and I’m finally starting to feel like it’s home. There are still strange smells sometimes, but slowly, this is turning into home. The bedroom with the oxygen-tank-green walls is now a more muted shade of green. The floors upstairs are still all painted. I’m thinking of carpeting my bedroom rather than refinishing it.

It’s frustrating right now, because I need to save money to buy oil. This means NOT spending money on a couch or an entertainment center or a sander to get the floors pretty or art to hang on my walls. I think Nate thinks I’m being lazy because I’m not working around the house.

My arm is still nearly constantly hurting. The neurologist I saw a couple months ago prescribed Elavil, which I did not start taking right away. However, after taking it for a month, I called him and asked him for something else. It didn’t help with the pain at all, but more than that, I’ve been so sleepy all the time, completely unable to concentrate, and just feel fuzzy in my brain. Instead of switching me to something else, like he said was the plan (try it, if I don’t like it, we’ll try another one), he said, “Follow up with your primary care doctor.”

I’m beginning to think that no one wants to help me with this, they’d rather just turf me to someone else.

Just to round out my complaints, I’ve had a headache ever since I stopped the amitriptyline, which a cursory Googling shows to be mainly coincidental, but annoying nonetheless.

More than anything, I want to get better at keeping this up to date. I’ve been lazy about writing. I’ve been lazy about a lot of things. I’ve gained almost all my weight back (I was at a high of 235, then I got down to 186, then back up to 213). Nate bought the Balance Board to go with the Wii, and I’ve lost 3 pounds again … we’ll just cross our fingers I can keep it up. Down. Off. Whatever. But if I keep insisting that I’m going to write, maybe I’ll do some interesting things worth writing about? We’ll see.

In an effort to figure out why Flickr did not get the sound part of the video I sent from my phone the other day, I sent the same video to my email account. Flickr didn’t give me trouble with my other phone, so maybe something changed.

I got this text along with the file, which had a peculiar .3g2 extension:

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from Verizon Wireless!

To learn how you can snap pictures and capture videos with your wireless phone visit www.verizonwireless.com/picture.

To play video messages sent to email, QuickTime® 6.5 or higher is required. Visit www.apple.com/quicktime/download to download the free player or upgrade your existing QuickTime® Player. Note: During the download process when asked to choose an installation type (Minimum, Recommended or Custom), select Minimum for faster download.

I haven’t downloaded QT yet, but I haven’t been able to play the sound with any of the other media players I already have, including VLC. Wikipedia seems to think VLC should work, so I’m probably just missing a codec.

I assume that this is an issue for other Flickr users, but I wonder if fixing it is at all a priority for them.

I just wrote a six hundred word post and decided to post it elsewhere, so you’re all missing out on the awesome pun I used for the title. Sorry.

Okay, so I added a digsby widget to the sidebar there. Not sure how useful it will be, since I rarely remember to log in to chat with anyone anyway.

Tomorrow there is a staff meeting, which means I have to get there extra early. Blehh. I hate living so far away from work. Dating Nate has spoiled me, since he only lives a few blocks away and nights I sleep over I can sleep in a little. Plus I always sleep better when he’s around. Evidently last night was an exception to the rule, however, since I passed out around 4:30 yesterday afternoon and didn’t even get up again until 6 this morning. That means I slept through my 11 pm dose of ibuprofen, and then I topped it off with leaving the house without my pills, so I didn’t get my 7 o’clock dose, either. Thank god I got out early and had my 3 o’clock pill at 4. My shoulder is rioting now :(

I am broke but Kaity just txt’d me that she’d buy me a drink so I guess I’m going back out tonight after all. Guess I’d better put some clothes on.

I’m not sad to see this week be over. It was so friggin’ long.

Last night was fun, drinking downtown with friends from work and Nate. It was such a gorgeous evening that we sat outside, even if that meant cramming about 15 people around the little patio table. I almost felt bad for the waitress, except that she was slow with putting drink orders in so that made me lose all sympathy for her.

I might have let my mouth run a little too much last night, said some things to Nate that probably would have been better to stay in my head for now, but it’s too late at this point.

I got over-excited at the thought of selling my car and buying or leasing a new one, but I’ve resigned myself to just paying off the Civic and keeping it — probably until the wheels fall off. My mother this afternoon said that my generation is probably going to be the next her-grandparents’ generation, meaning that we’re going to have to learn the hard way to “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” But I like having new awesome things all the time. What’s the point in living in the future if I can’t have everything I want right when I want it? Lame.

One of the reasons I bought a laptop was so that I could write and Sims in bed, but I can’t get it to play with my internets and I can’t find my Sims disc (not that I’ve looked real hard, honestly), so that idea is not working.

I think that pretty much sums up the last week and change. I think this weekend is clean-the-apartment weekend because I’m pretty embarrassed about it. Plus it shouldn’t be so completely unbearably hot this weekend, so the fact that my apartment is someone’s attic is less intimidating. Plus if I get it cleaned up, I can get the A/C out of the box room, and that would just make for a happier everyone.

My mouse isn’t working. The last time this happened, it was just accumulated dirt and lint in the sensor, but no dice this time. It’s cleaned out and it still doesn’t work. It doesn’t click things, it doesn’t move the pointer. It just lights up and blasts me in the eye with its evil laser rays.

It doesn’t really matter, unless I want to look at pictures or comment on Ian’s journal. OH WAIT, I DO. It seems people designing web 2.0 forgot about the mouseless. Makes me think more about accessibility for the disabled. I mean, what if my mouse wasn’t broken, but I couldn’t use it for some other reason? Lame.

I am in a foul mood. My allergies are killing me, and the dermatologist gave me antibiotics that may interfere with Nuvaring, so I’m frustrated about that. I mean, I am glad that the pharmacist told me to use an alternate, back-up method for the next month, don’t get me wrong, I just don’t want to have to do it.

But now Flickr isn’t even listening to me anymore and I can’t fix it and ughhhhh. IAN FIX IT, KTHXBAI

It’s May, which means it’s a new theme, but it’s also PMS time, so it means I don’t feel like fucking with the theme editor too much. So lots of things look stupid.

I learned yesterday that Mayday (the distress signal) has nothing to do with May Day (the holiday). It derives from the French venez m’aider, meaning ‘come to my aid’/”come [to] help me.”

I wish I could remember where I heard that May Day was where you were supposed to go have anonymous sex in the woods.

I don’t think I like being back on Nuvaring, because it is making me wicked moody. And giving me migraines. But it is better than the alternative!

I haven’t been able to figure out why Flickr can’t post here anymore. I’d investigate it further, but I’m out of ideas.

Except the idea that it might be this layout, somehow. It doesn’t really make sense, though.

I only took about 30 pictures or so, because the last couple miles I was busy singing and carrying my big stick that I found and wondering if I could not pee my pants before I made it out.

I’ll be the first to admit that they confuse me. But if this says that UTC is 1 am and it’s 9 pm right now, that should make me UTC -4, right? But then when there are silly things like DST and whatnot, it throws me off.

I have no idea how dianarchy.net got switched to UTC -5, but it’s fixed now.

Which reminds me: I made more spreadsheets at work today. This time I taught myself how to add an hour and a half to a set of times. And also how to subtract just the time part out of a date & time timestamp. It’s almost like my job has nothing to do with patients sometimes.

I don’t know why my writing has exploded all over lately. I don’t mind, and I hope you don’t. It’s been a long time since I could just sit down and write for hours on end.

I think I probably just jinxed myself and won’t have anything significant to write for a long time.

I’ve got at least one more, waiting in my drafts.

Which reminds me, I need to figure out how to back up, so I can do my WordPress update. It yells at me every time I log in, but this is me mostly not caring. I think I care, and then I try to read through the updating instructions and my eyes glaze over and I remember that I really don’t.

Okay. Really going to bed now. Probably.

I can’t figure out what changed, but comments I make are no longer emailed to me. A while back, I hated that they were emailed to me and I couldn’t figure out how to make them stop. Then I realized that when they’re emailed to me, I can just send that email on to the commenter I was replying to.

Now I write the comment, copy it, post it, paste it into an email separately, and send it. Too much steps and half the time I forget to do it.