How one blog post came about - 1

This week we moved the BURRIS's portable, international HQ to Sanibel Island, FL, where the command post can function in a bit, uh, warmer climate. (Apparently just in time.)

Work goes pretty much the same as it does in North Carolina or South Carolina. I travel with my internet phone router, so I receive calls the same way. We have a DSL connection here and a wireless AirPort Extreme, so with a couple of refresher programming minutes of help from Jeff Satterwhite of Softwired Systems, I'm ready to go.

In a later post I'll probably wax on about the environment here, maybe even the weather, but this time I wanted to write about how the Internet impacts some of what we do. This is long-winded, a bit circuitous, but, well, you'll get the idea.

For instance, there's no TiVo in this little house. Now, if you have TiVo, you know what I'm talking about. A VCR doesn't quite do the job that a TiVo does. A VCR requires more programming, it's less intuitive, and it doesn't give you the same "watch while you record" flexibility. Nevertheless, we did manage to record - and later watch - the two weekly shows we try to catch: "Commander-in-Chief" and "Boston Legal."

Boston Legal is a tightly-written, more-than-slightly absurd legal "dramedy" by David E. Kelley. And it has extended the career (once again) of William Shatner, who on the show - and, apparently, in life - is a shameless promoter of all things William Shatner.

But this post isn't a promotion for TiVo either.

Actually, it's proof of how the Internet moves me around in ways that only a blogger can appreciate.

I was doing an iTunes search today. My nephew and friend Jack Burris sent me a song he wanted me to listen to ("California," by Low). As I navigated through the search feature - and I don't recall how - I came across this: It's a playlist of songs chosen by William Shatner, or, as he's known on "Boston Legal," Denny Crane. I figured out that most of the songs are from Shatner's own cd's (I told you: "shameless self-promoter").

So here's the sequence of activity (as best I recall):
- Jack Burris sends me an email suggesting I listen to a song.
- I go to iTunes, search the "Music Store," and find the song.
- Somewhere along the way, I find Shatner's "Playlist."
- I capture the image of Shatner's playlist, send it to Gus Bright and Rick Hall, two other fans of "Boston Legal."
- I decide to write about it in this blog.
- I Google "Boston Legal" to see if there's a web site I can link to in this post.
- I spend a couple of minutes tooling around the "Boston Legal" site.
- I download a photo of "Denny Crane" to include in this post.
- I write/edit/proof this post.
- I publish this post - POOF!

Hey, location isn't important. I can waste time wherever.