Into Twitter Hell

As I mentioned yesterday, I've taken the plunge and decided to start Tweeting (@securityincite). Whatever that means. Basically there were a number of things that contributed to me being "late to the party," as a number of security twits (yes, that's what they liked to be called) reminded me.

First, I'm always late. For those that associate with me personally, there is "Rothman time," which is usually 10-15 minutes behind everyone else. I've been working on that, but it's a struggle. And the Boss is worse. "Boss time" is usually 15 minutes behind me.

Second, I was scarred as a young boy when my Mom dropped me off at a birthday party 2 hours early. She had to work - the nerve of her. It was a surprise party, so not only wasn't the birthday boy there, no one was there. I had to hang out with the kid's Mom for 2 hours. It was gruesome and painful and to this day, I'll drive around the block 50 times rather than show up 5 minutes early.

Third, I was never an early adopter. My house was the last house to get cable TV in the early 80s. By the time I got Atari, my friends all had Intellivision. Right, I got the Commodore 64 after everyone had an Apple IIc. We didn't have a lot of money, so I didn't get all the cool toys, and I realized it's not so bad - given 95% of shiny objects end up in the trash bin within a week. And with today's multi-tasking, ADD ridden, texting, Ritalyn taking kids, it's getting even worse.

So I don't have a Wii. And my oldest just got a DS. Bah humbug. I tell them to go read books or play in traffic. I didn't have no stinkin' DS. Or even the ticker on CNN to keep my attention for hours at a time.

Practically (dare I say Pragmatically), it's very hard for me to do full Daily Incite's more than once per week. So I'm figuring when I see interesting articles, then I can tweet about them and keep my analysis/commentary to 140 characters. I know many of you will appreciate that.

140 characters is good for me. That's kind of scary. Not much real estate. My first boss in research, a wild man named Joaquin Gonzalez , would thump me like a drum when I went into "flowery prose" mode. The worst insult he had for someone (OK, maybe not the worst, but close) was to say they wrote like a consultant. He told me good writing is dry, "dry like a martini." Why say it in 5000 words, when you can say it in 1000? Now I need to make the point in 140 characters. That is a good exercise for the verbose.

For those of you still resistant to Twitter, congrats. You are a later adopter than me, and that is pretty impressive. I'll highlight my Tweets in at least one post per week, so you'll know what I'm thinking - though not in real time.

So I'll see many of you in the Twittersphere, which is as stupid a word as blogosphere. You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/securityincite or @securityincite for you twits out there.

Calling myself a twit. I'm sure my Mom is tickled. Probably as tickled as me telling the surprise birthday party story (for the zillionth time).

Photo credit: "Twitter is down (the street.)" Originally uploaded by monstro.