Prior to Friday, I did see Twitter as another social network. But if you treat it like a news company, Facebook is not the main competitor. I also don’t think that you could say traditional news networks are “competition” because at 140 characters, Twitter is content-poor and relies on 3rd party sites to provide content. In that case, their growing integration with CNN makes more and more sense.

Conclusion: Facebook is for friends, but get your news on at http://twitter.com

Conversely, the people I’ve worked with in the past who do take their work home come in and talk about the reality TV show they caught last night. They don’t bring their wives out to social events, and you get the impression things are a little rocky. Before too long, those people start looking drained of life.  This may work if you’re a solo act at work, but what if you’re a part of a team? Every day you have to sync up with the rest of the team. Stuff gets done that the rest of the team had no say in doing.

Despite the list of consequences I could make here, it really just comes down to “Why?”. Why would you pick work over anything else – personal health, relationships, fun? There’s a saying that no one on his death bed ever said, “If only I had worked more…”. People wish they had spent more time with family and friends and living life. I just don’t get it.

Classes are being held by the San Francisco Comedy College. The improv troupe is called “Frisco” poking fun at all the people who say “Don’t call it ‘Frisco’”. Yeah they’re talking about you. Monday nights for 5 weeks. I think this is right up my alley for tons of reasons, but some of the key points are:

1. Gets me on stage. I like being a point of attention
2. I won’t be the only one on stage, I don’t like being the center of attention
3. Conversational humor! I never thought I’d be good at stand up and essentially talking alone, I always wanted a routine where I had someone to talk to and play off of. This is exactly that.
4. Nothing like having an audience and being a pseudo-celebrity to get you meeting new people.

So ‘Frisco it is. http://www.sfcomedycollege.com/ Mark your calendars for Monday March 8th at 6:30pm where I’ll be performing!

Now that I’m 28, I think I know a lot about relationships, and yet dating seems much, much harder.

Part of what’s going on is that I have a crap memory of the past and time lines. In my head, I was constantly in a relationship from the ages of 19 to 25. In truth, I spent most of those six years in one relationship or another, but there were plenty of 6 month blocks of singleosity in there. Presently, I’ve been on “several dates with one lady” as recently as October, but I also like to argue with myself that the last substantial relationship I had was back when I was 25. That’s just unfair to say.

What’s really going on?

1. I’m out of college. People like me who are my age are farther apart – density is way lower out here in “the real world”.
2. What I’m looking for has changed somewhat. Dating a student is no longer high on my list. If she doesn’t live on her own, that can also be a big downer. She’s got to be employed, show ambition, be assertive, and have a killer smile.
3. This is the kicker, I have no idea who I am anymore.

Back when I was a fencer I could get behind it and sell it, “Hello, I’m a fencer, take it or leave it.” essentially. Now, there’s no elevator pitch for “Well I’m a guy who enjoys introspection, and I write software for the web, I’m kind of goofy, but not like most software guys, and I’m a little more in touch with human behavior, but not like someone who got a degree in psych, and blah blah blah.” I’d need a big ass skyscraper to begin to describe myself to someone in an elevator – that, or for someone to pull the fire alarm.

I need the box so I know how to market Will Read. I need to have a definition so I have something to shape perceptions around. Right now I’m more like fog than I am a definite shape.

Today’s social experiment stems from a norm I’ve long been aware of: People [in the US] walk on the right side of the path. It must stem from the driving laws. I notice that foreigners tend to break this mold more frequently than non-foreigners. What I observed today was this: Coming out of the Powell Street station there are two escalators and a stair case that link to street level. walking from the station, you would first encounter the up escalator, then the down escalator, then the stairs. Today, the up escalator was barricaded off for maintenance, leaving only the down escalator and the stairs for use. The down escalator was also stopped in this case.

To me, the up escalator, the one on the right, is out of service, so I would expect to have to walk farther and use the stairs. But since the scenario had reduced the layout to essentially two stair cases, people were using them just so, as if the up escalator didn’t exist. People were walking down the stairs (on the right to them) and people were walking up the now stopped down escalator (on the right to those people).

I want to know how we learned to walk on the right and why that lesson is so strongly carried out. I also want to know why my gut instinct differed from the masses, and why I caved in and reluctantly walked up the down escalator like everyone else.

Update: It’s working! Check out Matt’s blog http://mcd1901.blogspot.com/