I literally skim through 400+ RSS feeds a day. I kind of wonder where my limit is. The point where it starts to feel onerous, and that I’ll never ever get any real work done.

The reason why it’s anywhere close to manageable is the fact that most of the feeds are blogs and not news sites. The new sites (like Slashdot, and in particular, Digg) pump out tons of articles a day, and there’s no way in hell that I’d ever read them all. (And, luckily, too, most of the stuff on Digg is crap, with shitty headlines, and even shittier synopses, thereby frequently compelling me to avoid reading said pile-o’-shit. Seriously. Don’t say shit like “Title says it all.” These guys need copy-editors or something. Even so-called artificial intelligence could do a better job of making compelling blurbs. Seriously, if you had a Mac, you could just copy an article and feed it to the Summarize service. Screw around with the slider. Presto! Instant compelling blurb!)

Man, is this a flight-of-ideas, or what?

Anyway, the point is that individuals rarely post at a rate where I can’t keep up.

And the whole point of that entirely tangential prologue is that I’ve managed to find blogs of people from college, which is always interesting. It’s neat to see the different paths people have taken, some ten years (!) out.

I know. In a way, it can be creepy. Someone you don’t know all that well reading your thoughts. I mean, sure, you voluntarily posted it there, but there’s still something weird about lurkers, you know?

I kind of wonder if it blogging has decreased the number of spontaneous phone calls people make to long-distant, remote friends. Perhaps the number of face-to-face meetings have decreased as well. I mean, why bother calling to find out how someone is doing, when you can just read their blog from your own cel phone, for God’s sake?

OK. OK. This is what I was going to write. (Instead you get the above freakishly long prologue full of diversions and excursions.)

Olivia, whom I haven’t seen since I left Berkeley nearly 10 years ago, reminds me that today is the summer solstice. The longest day of the year (and ergo, the shortest night of the year, which the way I’m looking at it, since I’ve been working nights for a week now. I blame that for my current flavor of insanity.)

I try not to think about the fact that despite it being the beginning of summer, it’s really all down hill from here.

(Yeah. I kind of dislike winter. December and January are OK, but February starts fucking with my brain, and I’m pretty much a wreck by March. Thank God I’m back in California, where spring actually starts in spring. Damn seasonal affective disorder.)