I realize that the best way to work with social networks is not to treat each as a separate thing — that is, posting something to a blog, then something else to Facebook, with a few Twitters in between. You’ll go crazy; every time a new site gets hot, you’ll feel the need to create and maintain a presence there.

No, the right way to deal with social networks is integration. You publish your stuff once, and it goes to all your networks. That way you use the tool(s) you prefer, and your friends can see what you’re up to using their preferred sites. So my Twitter followers will see the same thing my Facebook friends do, without my having to update each one separately.

Of course, there are tools on these sites that I’ll want to use, so it’s not like I won’t log in to Facebook or whatever. But the goal I’m working towards is a single place where A) I can post what I’m up to, and B) I can keep track of friends.

There are some WordPress plugins involved, and a few esoteric Facebook or Twitter features, but it’s coming together. (But I’m wondering what this post will look like on Twitter, seeing that it’s well more than 140 characters.)

Slowly but surely it’ll come together. Then I can be really social.

Quoth:

msnbc.com BREAKING NEWS: 13-year-old Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas
wins Scripps National Spelling Bee

Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas. I just love that. Too many people forget too quickly that what makes this country great is our incredible, unprecedented mix of people — people, cultures, ideas.

Homogeny breeds mediocrity. Evolution happens when something changes — when something different is added to the mix. If it’s good, it prospers. And we have prospered.

It’s easy to get all rah-rah and wrap yourself in a flag because we’ve got a ton of money and a lot of guns, but the  reason this place is so damn rich and prosperous is because we embraced changed.

300 million people who all think alike don’t get much done. But 300 million people with last names like Smith, O’Hearlihy, Mogatu, Fellini, Andreesen, Ivanovich, Rodriguez, Zaradic, Chan, Konishi, Shivashankar and a million others — we do wonderful things. We do magic.

Don’t forget it.

Argue about gun control and abortion and school prayer and taxes and health care and the wars we fight. But don’t forget that we can argue about those things because we have the money for weapons and medicine and schools and roads and clean water, and all those things because we’re all different – not because we’re all the same.

Kavya Shivashankar of Kansas. W00t!

Wait… so should I use caution?

Yeah, as usual I haven’t been writing much. But I gave up World of Warcraft so that’s gonna leave a lot more time in the evenings. And I’ve been taking notes on lots of things I want to write about.

Translation: If you’re a loyal reader (thank you thank you thank you) there will be more a-coming.

Angela, wherever you are — you know you want one.

This was pretty funny. I have a small home-equity loan through Provident Bank. I wanted to get the exact payoff amount so I can close it.

Nowhere on the Provident Bank site is there a way to do this, so I called. The customer service rep told me — seriously — that the only way to get this information is to fax a request in.

To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I repeated it back to her. “There’s no way to do this online?”

“No, sir.”

“I just need the payoff figure. Is there a number I can call to get it?”

“No, sir, They’re telling us to have you fax the request in.”

Wowzers. I thought Cincinnati’s Fifth Third bank was the most backward in the world, but this wins.

I appreciate the fact that you learned to type on a typewriter. So did I. But that was then. Today we use word processors, so the age-old tradition of putting two spaces after a period is over. Over. One space.

Thank you.

In a newsletter sent home to parents on Wednesday, Ramco Primary School in South Australia advised it would hold a “disability day” and fundraiser on Friday, May 29, with prizes for the “best students dressed as a person with a disability”.

[snip]

Its newsletter stated: “There will be prizes for the best students dressed as a person with a disability. Get your thinking hats on and see what disability you can represent!”

Link.

OK, so it makes sense that one of the two major condiments on everyone’s table is salt — simple mineral, long history, used for preserving, one of the five basic tastes, and so on.

But why black pepper as the other one? Why not cinnamon or curry or mace or saffron or ginger or… you get the idea. Who decided on ground black pepper?

One of life’s many mysteries that I’m too lazy to research.