Over the past couple of years, my wife and I have had very separate and busy lives throughout the day. Of course this means that the time that we do have together is valuable. We often find ourselves driving in our separate cars, on separate roads, but with an intent to end at the same destination at a specific time. A good example of this is when we have to meet at the dance studio after work.

We presented a Foxtrot routine last night at the studio and although it went decently, we had our usual timing issues with the music. The Girl was pissed off enough about her performance afterwards that she had more than a couple of glasses of wine at the studio after our routine. This was before she remembered that we had driven separately and would have to leave in separate cars.

I’ve currently got a Yaris that is a courtesy rental while my car is yet again in for some repair work. The Yaris is an odd little car and I can’t get used to the fact that the speedometer sits in the middle of the dashboard to the right of the driver. This is a perfect location for backseat drivers to see how fast you’re going, but not all that great for the driver themselves. I thought that maybe a GPS pops out of the dash in front of the driver. Alas, that’s not the case.

Anyway, I ended up leaving the rental at the studio and drove The Girl‘s car home with both of us in it. We drove back to the studio this morning to pick the rental up and then I headed home while she headed off to do some temping work. She was ahead of me on the road. And this is what transpired on facebook:

I’ll get the apology about being critical about the car out of the way before I go on. I was just getting really frustrated having to keep turning my head to check my speed. The Girl, on the other hand, well she’s making fun of the fact that I had to lock each door manually when I first got out of the car. We’ve both been spoiled with remote door locks on each of our cars. For her the more lights and buttons something has, the more expensive it should be. I also want to state to all of the young people that read my blog that text messaging while driving is a very bad thing to do. Especially when driving past a speed trap.

What we like about facebook mobile messaging is that our status updates get sent to our phones, so we know what each other is doing during the day. The most important aspect though, is that we can send threaded messages to each other. This allows us to bypass the limitation of SMS message length on our phones. If I’m at a computer and she’s not, I can still send her a long message that facebook will break into SMS-manageable chunks for her phone. Much of our discussion about day-to-day issues with the landscaping was done this way.

Why not just talk on the phones? Because as usual, our patients get in the way. Text messaging between patients works much better for short conversations than having to dial and leave voice mail for each other. It’s also cheaper on our phone plan. It also works better at home in Cowland where cell service is spotty because of inadequate coverage. SMS gets through eventually, voice service is fairly unreliable. Because we only have dial-up internet access at home, the landline is often tied up. I’ve gotten around this by having the landline’s voice mail fire a page off to me when there’s a message waiting.

So everything has been pretty nice over the last year or so. Fast forward to today. Both my brother and I have had serious issues with facebook that have left a bad taste in our mouths. So I’m not on it as much. I’ve also met some really neat folks online through blogging communities like Entrecard and others. This has kept me busy enough to not be logged into facebook as much as the past.

Most importantly, I’m really grooving Twitter. There’s been lots of stuff written about Twitter all over the blogosphere these days because as Rudy says, “it’s micro-blogging at its finest“. Twitter is best described as a hybrid status updater (like in facebook) and an instant messenger (which facebook now has also). facebook can now do what Twitter does, but Twitter can preserve your anonymity much better.

The only reason that I initially signed up with Twitter was so that I could update my status on my blog without having to use my actual name. The facebook rss feed for status updates carries your real name on it. It was easier for me to update my status on Twitter, have my blog pick it up, and also have a facebook app called TwitterSync update my facebook status automagically. Twittersync can filter @ replies out of your updates and keep your facebook status looking “normal”.

However, as more and more people that I interacted online with used Twitter, I thought I’d check it out a bit more. It’s very, very simple to use. But it’s cool. The list of people that I interact with on Twitter consists of a number of people in the dentogeek field. One of them, @kamala is a dentist out in Texas who is intent on having a contest with me to see which of us can eat the most sugarfree gum before diarrhea sets in. @dentalinsider just became more active on his Twitter account after a bunch of people started following his “tweets”. Of course, there’s @fragileheart who is everywhere as I’ve said before, and lin, who has commented on my blog a number of times. There’s also the corset model/writer, @Haley, who was nice enough to play along with that last meme we did.

One thing that will annoy the hell out of you on Twitter though are people that update their status incessantly and to the point where everyone else’s status is never visible because it’s been scrolled off your screen by theirs. When this happens, I leave a friendly note that I’m unfollowing that person for a while because of too much, too soon. I’ll check their page every so often to see if they’ve stopped and then maybe re-add them to my follow list. Maybe.

Here is some sage advice by @prokofy:

Subscribing to signal, person by person. Of course, what a lot of people mean by “signal” will vary, and many people think their little noises to their little friends are of fascinating and gripping interest to others — they aren’t. Here’s what I find irrelevant on Twitter from other people: status of baby’s diaper; status of surgical wound; status of your landing in an airport or sitting on a runway. Hold that thought, and if you are compelled to externalize your lifelogging because you can’t listen to your still inner voice and focus and connect in real life, at least tweet something to go along with your lifeshell (I call these things lifeshellcasting instead of lifecasting because they are only casting the shell of life, not its inner content).In other words, if you feel compelled to um, lifelog shit like that, you have to do it like this to get me subscribed: “The toddler’s diaper is loaded again but I’m completing the latest chapter to my book”. “My open surgical wound is hurting me but I continue to translate Dostoyevsky”. And “I’m landing at SFO to meet with @robertscoble to talk to him about what he actually does at Fast Company”. In other words, your landings and your takeoffs, your toddler, your wounds — none of these matter unless you supply some other relevant life data that lets us know you are not content-free. People who are content-free are a waste of time.

And finally one last point: Lots of bloggable topics come up through Twitter. If you want to see what I might be pondering for a future blog post. Check my favorites and see what I’ve got stuck in there.

Hope to tweet with you soon…