In Which I Play With Social Network Applications

I haven't even had a book contract for a month, and already I'm engaging in Authorial Avoidance Behavior...

I spent a while this morning messing around with setting up a del.icio.us account. This does actually have a worthwhile goal, namely to be an improvement over my current system of keeping a hundred tabs open in Opera containing articles I might want to mention on the blog. This way, I can file them in a central place, and not have the browser open tempting me to web-surf when I ought to be writing.

But, of course, it's also a wonderful excuse to putz around on the web, doing nothing particularly useful. Such as, for example, setting it up so my del.icio.us bookmarks show up in my Facebook profile.

Which, of course, means that I'm admitting to having a Facebook account (it's cleverly hidden under my actual name...). Like most people my age, I hasten to add, I don't really do much of anything with it (and, for that matter, I hasten to add that I hsten to add that I don't really do anything with it, which also seems to be a characteristic of people my age). It's occasionally useful for checking what's going on on campus, and it's sort of amusing to look at the profiles of students I know when they turn up in the random selection, but really, the idea of sending "friend" requests to students is just a little too close to the creepy "Have You Met My Golden Retreiver Puppy?" level of my personal moral anti-compass, and there aren't enough of my college classmates on there for it to really be useful in that regard.

I suppose I could set up an "Uncertain Principles" group, but I'm not sure what the value added would be. Other than giving me another way to kill time when I'm supposed to be working...