Twitter does have one redeeming quality. When used properly, like Facebook, it helps keep users up-to-date with others’ activities, reducing the time spent on actual human contact. Human conversation is inherently wasteful. I can waste 30 - 60 seconds on a phone call to Lucas, only to learn that he’s unavailable to go eat. I called Lucas because I already know that Diane is napping because I spent 2 seconds reading her Twitter in my RSS feed. I’m just pissed because, outside of Diane, nobody else I know uses it which makes it like playing Counter Strike without an Internet connection.

I guess now that I’ve figured out how to make log entries by email I won’t have to fall back on text messages.

Yawn. I’m up too early this morning. It’s 6:19 a.m. and I’ve been working for over an hour already. Holy shit. I just looked outside and it’s light outside. That’s depressing. There’s nothing worse than getting up early and being proud of it only to have time pass and realize everyone else is beginning to wake up. It causes me to feel ordinary again.

I’m fairly excited to go to San Francisco in a couple of weeks. I’m planning on seeing Starfleet Academy. Maybe they’ll teach me how to Twitter.

In other news, this video is unbelievable. My hat is way off to my friend Brian Simpson for this homemade gem.

The full-length sweded version of the 80s classic, Neverending Story. Created by Brandon Todd and Brian Simpson over the course of 4 weekends. I’m guessing a total budget of 25 dollars and cut using a Mac. (dang yeah)

Facebook has been experimenting with different kinds of advertising techniques with varying degrees of success and to various amounts of fanfare, ridicule and outright protest from its users. The most ire earned so far has been related to ways they’ve tracked users and based the ads delivered on the data from such tracking. I don’t really mind companies watching what I do, as I gave up on the concept of Internet privacy many years ago. I figure that if someone cares enough about what I’m doing to record it and use the data, I feel just a little bit more important and my head gets a little bit bigger.

I logged in at the suggestion of an email sent by someone at Facebook to tell me that somebody I couldn’t remember added me as his or her friend. Facebook has a view that lists the recent activities of each of your friends, and I often find myself reviewing it since it’s really the only way I can find out anything about my friends with actually talking to them directly. Removing the requirement of human interaction is one of the most staggering modern conveniences.

In any case, I’ve noticed recently that the second or third entry is usually an advertisement. I usually skip right over it, but this time it caught my eye. There, listed right along with friends adding applications and joining groups, was the news that the Counting Crows not only had a new album, but that it was already in stores.

While most of my music purchases are now from Amazon and it’s one-click access to its DRM-free selection, there are some purchases that I want to be able to display prominantly at the top of the cardboard box of CDs that I keep in my tool shed. Reminding myself that I needed to eat an extra helping of cranberries as punishment for not paying closer attention to my favorite band, I quickly left my office and left to find a copy.

After striking out at WalMart among its selection of about 12 artists, I found my prize at Hastings. I was profoundly disappointed at the lack of a jewel case, but that disappointment quickly faded as I inserted into the CD player in my truck the tracks to which I will be listening exclusively for the next six months.

We had one hell of a show last night at O’Brien’s Pit Stop in Norton, Kansas. Our good friend Rex Striggow, previously of the Mad Cows and the Blaine Younger Band and now from the relatively newly-formed Carbon Cowboys, joined Lucas, Dave and me for the show by rocking the green bass. The crowd was fantastic, making us play 45 minutes longer than we planned and yelling “one more song” very loudly in unison about thrice after we finally quit.

I’m sitting at Maddy’s house in Norton. We’re making calls to everyone in the area who might have some alcohol to put in Lucas’s brother’s new racing go-kart. Two fat, grown musicians trying to get a tiny go-kart with a small engine running on gasoline is probably a sight to see, especially when they realize after it’s finally running that the engine is tuned for pure alcohol instead of the gasoline. I don’t know if we’ll get the alcohol in time before we have to head south for Hays, but I’ll grab some pictures if we do.