Brightkite, Twitter, And Endless Road Construction

-i am now a Brightkite user. what is Brightkite? well... suppose you had a thing for me. now, suppose you were borderline psychotic and needed to know exactly where i was at any given moment. Brightkite can help you! essentially when i am out and about i text to this website where i am. it can be specific (for instance, a little while ago i was at the grocery store and told Brightkite exactly where i was down to the street address), it can be general (tomorrow i plan on being in amherst during the day... odds are my Brightkite account will primarily tell people that i am in amherst until i decide to inform it exactly where i will be), or it can be ridiculously vague (the next time i go out of state i intend to only tell Brightkite which state i am in at any given moment). so what's the purpose of this? my circle of friends have this tendency to mass text everyone with the generic 'anything going on tonight?' text. frankly it gets annoying. with Brightkite i can show everyone exactly where i am at. i can upload pictures from my phone to the site to correspond with my location (wanna know exactly who i am hanging out with? i'll upload a pic...). i can also put little notes with my locations explaining things like how long i intend to be there and/or how intoxicated i may be. of course, you could always call me and get all of this information direct from my mouth but where's the fun in that? besides, it integrates with google maps so never again need you call for directions to meet up with me. granted, it is still in private Beta at the moment so there aren't too many people in the area using it but hopefully that will change. if you are interested in it (or need more info) i have a few invites left. drop me an email. if you just want to keep tabs on me or are interested to see what it's like to have a website keeping tabs on you (whenever you see fit) this is my Brightkite profile.

-i often forget that i also have a Twitter account. Twitter is similar to Brightkite but doesn't rely on location based entries. it's rather similar to Facebook or MySpace status updates but primarily sent spur of the moment from my phone. for the month of August, i intend to use my Twitter account to keep tabs on what's on my mind at any given moment. you can follow these updates here.

-why is it that the majority of places i need to get to are hampered by construction and detours? i live approximately 4 miles south of downtown northampton. usually it's a straight shot to get there. since sunday, however, there has been a detour through easthampton. you cannot (unless you work at the tubed products factory) simply travel down route 5. approximately 2 miles north of my apartment, also on route 5, there has been some sort of construction which brings traffic to a standstill every day between 9am and 5pm. it's just plain annoying. yesterday i went to lunch with my friend Kaliis in south hadley and there was construction on the bridge. it wasn't problematic on the way into town but on the way out traffic was backed up the entire length of the bridge to the rotary on south hadley's side. we ended up taking the other bridge (through south hadley falls) into the flats of holyoke but even then had to correct our route as we were driving to avoid the holyoke side rotary as it was completely closed off and would have forced us back into south hadley. this is ridiculous. you would think that they would attempt to time all of these construction projects/detours to make travel easier for people. and you wonder why i tend to spend most of my time at my computer in the sanctity of my apartment.

-i'm off to finish Green Wing. if you have yet to watch any of it, i urge you to. it is a British sitcom about daily life in a hospital with almost no hospital aspects involved. think Sports Night without Aaron Sorkin and with british accents... in a hospital. it's smashingly good.