No Digg(ity?)

It's been over a week since I visited digg.com.

And now I think I have to explain that a little. Several years ago, a guy I worked with (*ahem* with whom I worked) showed me a site called slashdot, whose tagline is "News for nerds. Stuff that matters." And boy howdy, they aren't kidding. Every day that site is continually updated with news about the latest version of such and such Linux kernel, instructions on how to construct sci-fi origami, new insights into quantum theory, news on Microsoft's ever-expanding software empire, and on down the pocket-protected list.

Believe it or not, stuff like that can be pretty addicting. :)

So slashdot became one of my favorite sites for several years, and I would visit it a few times a day for weird and/or nerdy tidbits of information. Well, about two years ago a guy named Kevin Rose, who made a name for himself on the TechTV network as a co-host of a technology call-in show called "The Screen Savers", invented a site kind of like slashdot only without editors. See, slashdot has thousands of users submit nerdy news stories which are combed over by a few editors and then submitted to the front page of the site. Digg, on the other hand, has its own users vote on (or "digg") the stories they find interesting, which then get promoted to the front page.

The result? A site that is constantly changing and updating with cool stories from all areas of life--sports, gaming, computers, politics, etc. It's all very interesting.

And very, very addicting.

For me it was never a must-have-it-or-I'll-suffocate addiction, but I did check digg.com a few times a day if only to read about exploding soda cans with Mentos and how to construct a Starship Enterprise out of a floppy disk. Something about having all that nerdy stuff in one place, constantly updated and refreshed, was kind of comforting. Sort of like a shot of cyber-endorphins right through an internets tube into my brain. But I recently realized that much of my time on digg.com was just wasted.

Think of it: 20 minutes a day reading dumb stories that don't amount to a hill of beans in the real world translates to over two hours per week. That's two hours I could spend with my wife, or reading actual news from my community, or studying my bible, or emailing friends, or who knows what else. So a week ago Thursday I decided to quit cold turkey, and have hardly touched the site since.

The result? I'm not exactly sure, but I do think I'm making better use of my time. And one of my prayers for the last several years has been "Lord, help me to make good use of the time you have given to me."

In other news, we made some wicked awesome enchiladas last night when some friends came over. Thanks, J and S...it was a great time. Scattergories was lots of fun. :) I also finished Ran, which was really good, though I should probably watch it all at once next time instead of several short chunks. And we are finally to the last episode in season one of TNG, which means we will only have seasons 6 and 7 after we finish. Tonight's episode was the infamous dude-with-an-exploding-head one, which I had heard about but, upon viewing, thought was far too cheesy to really bother me. :)

Time to hit the sack and gear up for another week!