Real time communications

Over the years I've always prefered real time communications. ie: IRC chat, instant messaging and voip services such as Ventrilo. I think this is a result of being involved in Amateur (ham) radio for most of my life. In fact real time communications over the web caused me to get away from amateur radio these past few years.

The advent of social networking on sites such as Facebook initially caught my interest. After trying them a couple years, I can't maintain a deep interest. The concept of commenting on someones page and waiting anywhere from a few minutes to hours or days for a response is not communicating in my book.

On a number of times I've tried using the real time chat feature of Facebook with friends and relatives and they failed to respond. When asked about it, I get excuses such as I can't think fast enough to know what to say or I can't type good enough to chat. I remind them how well they can carry on a phone conversation and chatting should only be slower in proportion to their typing speed. As far as typing skills are concerned, I'm a hunt and peck typist and manage to carry on good conversations with highly skilled typists. so excuses such as that mean nothing to me. Do you prefer real time communications?

Twitter, the good and bad of it.

I've been on twitter for quite some time. Though not real active until recently. It's a great tool to follow what people of like interests are doing. I played with a couple programs to generate more followers. My goal was to perhaps find more people that have interests similar to mine in the world of technology. I was more concerned with finding people to follow rather than people to follow me. This effort didn't work! I picked up a bunch of followers and in turn began following them. Regretfully most weren't of similar interests. If I had been looking for for self proclaimed marketing Guru's or self improvement experts, it would have been a success.
Because of this, I am spending the day sorting through my followers in an effort to see who I will continue to follow. To those I quit following, I appreciate your efforts, but due to wanting specific subject matter, I don't have time to look for specific tweets in a sea of thousands of tweets. If you choose to stop following me I fully understand.

Why do I live in 2 countries?

In the eyes of the law, I don't live in 2 countries. I live in the US as I am a US citizen. While in Canada I'm there as a visitor. The purpose of my visits to Canada is that I'm married to a Canadian citizen. People often ask why I don't immigrate to Canada or why doesn't Meg immigrate to the US? Both of these options are available to us. However for several reasons we don't do either. I gain nothing by immigrating to Canada other than the right to work there. I'm retired, so that's not an issue. Meg is still too young to retire, so she continues to work in Canada. As visitors, we both can spend up to 180 days in the others country. Having family in both countries we would never spend 180 days in one or the other country without crossing the border to visit family. Upon return the 180 day cycle begins again.
So being a visitor works out quite well at this time. Managing banking and other financial matters can be an issue at times, but we've managed to work within the constraints. I only wish the two countries would give the freedoms from border restrictions that NAFTA has given commerce.