Bug Eating and Tweeting

I was all set to attend a one evening class at the Springdale Lewis and Clark store on wilderness survival skills..or as I like to think of it Bug Eating 101. Unfortunately, it was cancelled due to the instructor having knee surgery.

When I decided to take that long walk in a year or so I also decided that it would be a simply a mid-life crisis experience...not a life threatening ordeal that I might not survive. With this in mind I thought about which skills I needed to improve for those worse case scenarios, visits by Mr. Murphy, and my general lack of consistent motor skills. I knew that I want to get enough info in my brain so that if I manage to let my pack (containing my housing and foodly type stuff) float downstream during a crik crossing, I would be able to figure out how to get to a bail out point. Fortunately, although the OHT is quite long, it reality it looks like it is rarely more than a half day's walk from a road of some type.

I suppose I could go with the field experiment type of learning for this...grab up random bugs, and there's bound to be a few around the hill if spring ever manages to kick old man winter in the butt, and do a muncha cruncha, taste the tentacle, nibble test. However, knowing my luck, I'll manage to find the only species of inedible bugs within 10 miles....some of you are probably thinking right now "er..migoi, ALL species of bugs are inedible, you loon."

I think they give the clinic every month or so...also the guy that gives the clinic has a school and the Wilderness Skills 1 and 2 are being given in September...maybe I'll look into that.

Second topic...twitter.

As some of you know, my latest thing to do with my laptop while watching reruns of MASH or movies I've seen a dozen times (Tremors comes readily to mind) is to be learning how to use a website called "Twitter".

Twitter is a way to send a 140 character text message to a mass group of people..either through your computer or through your cell phone. You can also receive the messages (called tweets, don't I sound like the web geek?) from the people you are "following".

The aspect of Twitter that is very different than any other media that I've used is that ANYONE can follow you and you can follow ANYONE (anyone meaning anyone with a Twitter account). You don't have to know them, they don't have to know you. There is a way to block or require preapproval of those wanting to follow you but there's no fun in that. With this in mind, you actually have to put very little information on your Twitter page. The only thing it really requires is a working email address and that isn't revealed. You could lie about everything that is public, of course this makes your friends finding you much more difficult.

My "following" is slowly growing. I currently, as of this writing, have about 70 people following me. of those, I actually know and have met face to face, 4 of them. I'm not entirely sure why the other 66 of them are following me...maybe they read my "Hunka, hunka burning love" entry and are waiting for me to mangle myself or burn down the house.

Some of my followers are businesses and some seem to be business girls (or at least strippers). From my reading so far..Twitter seems to be the next wave of media for growing your business. I'm not yet sure what I'm going to "do" with Twitter, but I am having a bit of fun...I can say anything I want because most of those folks don't know me...and the few that do, know me well enough to write anything I say off to the "there's something wrong with that boy" excuse.

I'll provide more info about Twitter later...but then you all could just go to www.twitter.com, register an account, then search for "migoi" and follow me.. much amusement is bound to follow.

...take care.. t