random ramblings of an idiot

Don't know about you folks, but I will be doing something, say watching TV, and all of a sudden a stray thought will come flying in from left field. By "stray" thought, I mean one that is unrelated to what I am doing at the time. It seems to happen a lot when I am watching the local weather forecast. I totally miss the forecast even though I am staring at the TV the whole time. I would pass these off as old age creeping in, but I have actually been this way for as long as I can remember. Unlike my youth however, I now keep a pen and pad handy to jot these down. All of the ideas for this blog come to me this way.

What prompted this particular post was that while reading an article about Twitter the other day, I was suddenly reminded about a guy who "tweeted" long before there was a World Wide Web. His name was Blackie Sherrod, and he was a local sports writer of note. His column, called Scattershooting, was a must read for any sports enthusiast. Rather than write a simple column about a single subject, he would break it down into 2-4 sentence paragraphs, each about a different subject. His columns would often include two dozen or so of these "tweets", along with an occasional one liner thrown in for good measure.

Now personally I am not a fan of Twitter or Facebook or any of the other "hot" sites of the moment. This blog is about as adventurous as I get on the net these days. Most people would be surprised to learn, that sites such as Twitter and Facebook are not even new ideas. Sites like these have been around since Al Gore invented the Internet. Facebook especially is just a newer version of the many "make your own home page" sites popular many years ago. Sites such as Geocities, Yahoo Groups, and Angelfire just to mention a few. And Twitter is just sort of a natural progression from the old dial up Bulletin Board Systems(BBSes), and Usenet newsgroups.

Which brings me back to the title of this post. At times, when I have a bunch of random thoughts saved up, I will simply do a post entitled "random ramblings". They may have a related theme, but then again, maybe not. It will be up to whatever my brain is in the mood for at the time. Feel free to leave a comment on any and all such things. Your thoughts are always welcome.

Also, just a note of housekeeping. After some good feedback, I will be tweaking the format of the blog here and there. I have set up a separate "test" blog to try things out before transferring them over. The old format was a bit confining for longer posts. Hopefully the end result will be a bit easier to read. Your thoughts are welcome on this as well.