I was having a chat with one of our social media managers at work, and started thinking about the overwhelming number of ways we communicate with one another.

In days of old, you had to get up out of your chair, leave your house, and walk down the street to talk with someone who wasn’t right next to you. But today, that’s all changed.

• Telephone
• Mobile Phone
• Email
• Text Messaging
• Instant Messaging
• Blogging
• Discussion Forums
• Chat programs
• Quick-Hit sites like Twitter*
• Status Updates on sites like Facebook* / myspace.com* / etc.
• Verbal (face to face)

And the list is probably double this if I had time to think about it. Oh, and verbal is last on the list for a purpose. These days you usually resort to verbal when none of the others works or is fast enough. Sad.

There are just too many ways to communicate, and it’s overwhelming at times. Don’t you just want to open a bottle of wine and tell everyone around you to BE QUIET?!

It’s just too much. The mind can’t handle that much information in a coherent way, and it’s likely why we have so many rampant cases of A.D.D., A.D.H.D., bi-polar disorder, and probably schizophrenia. Is it too far fetched to wonder if many of today’s mental disorders have been caused by the inundation of information we receive every second of every day? And I’m not talking about the news or the media, I’m talking about from our friends, family and coworkers too!

An article on Infoworld gives us an idea to combat the overload:

One strategy to consider is instituting information “filters.” To cope with volumes of data, e-mail filters can be used to screen out less-than-critical messages and prevent an overwhelming amount of data from being thrown at a person, Cascio says. Deleting your name from list servers is another way to limit the influx of e-mail.

Um…Hello?! That doesn’t solve the problem, it actually compounds it!

We’ve got answering machines and voice mail for our phones, we have filters and folders for email, and if you don’t want the information on a website, you don’t visit the website!

In each case we’ve implemented a method to prevent the communication from DISTURBING us. The problem is we aren’t ELIMINATING it, only delaying and compounding it.

To bring it home, it’s like TIVO. You can’t listen now, so you record it for later and then you suddenly realize Friday afternoon that you haven’t watched the last 20 episodes of the show and you have to spend your entire weekend catching up on the lives of the characters you care so deeply about!

Take my advice - open up the Now Playing list of your life, highlight the program folder, and push delete on your remote control. Then go outside with your partner/spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/lover/friend/whatever and talk to them.

Oh, and leave your darn phone in the house.

* Cell phone and brain scan image from WikiMedia Commons

I’ve been using Feedburner to burn my feeds for a month or so now, and I really like some of the features. For instance, over on the right bar of this blog you can see the number of people who are burning me at this moment (or rather for this day or average of days).

That means that there are of you out there who subscribe to the site via an RSS reader. I think that’s a pretty good number. I know there are blogs out there who have bajillions upon sintillions of readers, but that’s not what I’m going for. What I really want is for all of you to interact with me via comments!

So that started me thinking, what would it take for you to comment on a blog? I know the basic answer is probably something like - the blog posed a question, or was about a topic I’m interested in…but that’s boring. What about posts that are curious, or are about something you know nothing about but want to know more about?

Just because you aren’t interested in American Idol doesn’t mean you can’t comment on one of the contestant’s hairstyles especially if I include a picture.

So…here’s a question and hopefully something you’re interested in (especially if you are also a blogger) - What is it that makes you want to stop for a moment and comment on a blog post?

c’mon people - I’m shameless.

If you love me, you’ll digg me (hint: click the digg box on the right menu)

Can you digg it?

I want to give a shout out to my long-lost friend D.H. (which stands for damn hot, and also Doug Hill) who lives in Atlanta.

Doug and I first met in college at Appalachian State University, lost touch over the years after he left, got back in touch, lost touch, got back in touch, and the story continues.

Doug was somewhat of a mentor/friend to me during my first years in college - and for that I am eternally greatful. Love me some Doug.

I’m happy to say that Doug is back into the blogging world again, and sharing with us some crazy adventures, including a recent skydiving trip.

You can read all about it and him on his new and improved blog:

…the fine print…

I was looking through my log analytics and ran across this image…it shows the spike in traffic on the day of the American Idol 2008 premier.

Addicts.

I would like to send a shout-out to my buddy in Arizona, JMo, for posting the 500th Comment to this blog, on the post about my Allergic Reaction to Ginger.

I also encourage everyone to head on over to his website, Ignorance on Fire, and take a look at some of the wacky-wild things he has to say, including his latest homage to a man with no legs.

Thanks for being a reader JMo, and I look forward to your unending stream of witty comments here :-).

Ok - I’m in happy in love with the newest version of Wordpress, 2.3.2.

Yes, I realize it’s been out for weeks, but this was the first opportunity I had to perform the upgrade, which includes a bunch of new features, and security settings.

If you run your own blog, Wordpress really is the way to go. I’ve tinkered around with other software like MT, but it just doesn’t come close to the types of plugins and customizations you can do with Wordpress.

Anyway, just a quick note here that the upgrade is done - please comment here if you experience any problems on the site.