Do you hear the crickets chirping?

Can you see the cobwebs hanging from the corners of my blog?  Yeah, I thought so.

So, what the heck have I been doing for the last week or so?  Mainly concentrating on getting to my 50,000-word goal for the www.nanowrimo.org contest.  That is to say, I have been working on my novel.  That is not all, of course. 

I have also been running all over southwest arkansas trying to help schools with their technology problems. Oh, I know, that has nothing to do with taking some time out to jot down a few words here. 

I have a confession.  I've been Plurking.  What is "plurking?"  It is a very cool social network tool like twitter or FaceBook.  I'm not sure how other folks are using it, but I have connected with a lot of education-related folks who enjoy incorporating technology into the curriculum.  I have also connected with folks that seem to talk about anything.

What I like about Plurk is that the conversations appear in a time line and that people can respond to the posts.  There seems to be a camaraderie on Plurk that is different than connecting with old friends (a la FaceBook).  The ability for response and to scroll back through posts easily makes it more relevant than Twitter. 

I also like that the posts and comments are limited to 140 characters like Twitter.  This forces the author to either limit their thoughts or to created inventive posts spanning several responses to their own posts.  It is a strange thing to see play out.

Then, there is karma.  You post, you respond, you boost your karma.  At certain levels, you get to 'unlock' smileys depending on your karma score.  The real fun comes in when you put yourself up against fellow "plurkers" in a contest for who has the higher karma and who can maintain their level.  A bit childish? Sure. A lot fun? You bet!

Really, though, if I expect folks to stop by here and see what's popping in my head, I need to keep on posting.