My wife and I are thinking about getting a dog.

I’ve been negligent about blogging lately.

I’m following the growth of Twitter, wondering when and whether we should consider using it to help report the news in Monroe County.

Does all of this have any connection?

Only the tiniest thread.

I was reading the “E Media tidbits” blog on the Poynter Institute Web site this morning. It’s one of the ways I keep up with what’s going on in journalism new media circles.

There was a post by Michael Arrington, of TechCrunch.com, about how Twitter is occasionally turning off the reply function, because of traffic problems. Mr. Arrington noted that he just switches over to FriendFeed.com when that happens.

So I followed the link to see what that was about. This is how he started the conversation he used as an example:

“I keep thinking I should blog something, and then I look out at the ocean and go play with my dog instead.”

Note how short the message is. Typical of Twitter conversations.

Back to my story. That got me thinking about the dog my wife and I are considering. After 20 years of owning a dog, we’ve gone the last 10 or so without one. We’re thinking of getting back into the game.

The vision of walking the dog on the beach gets me thinking nostalgically about past walks with former pooches.

Which leads me to the fence I’ll need to build.

One more time-consuming project that will keep me from blogging.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 1st, 2008 at 7:26 am and is filed under National media issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.