Traveling can be hard - not so much in the changing of hotels, and driving or flying from one city to another, but for me, one of the biggest issues can be "Internet Separation Anxiety". Yes, I made that up. By being away from the laptop, I am missing out on everything going on - news alerts, updated blogs, sports scores and stocks, for example. This last week, it didn't help when our 17-year-old beagle put her foot down and made the situation even worse.Upon arriving home late Friday night, and still being on East Coast time, I didn't want to do anything but sleep, so I put off my usual daily RSS feed reading in Google Reader to Saturday morning.
Saturday morning, I jumped into Google Reader and started going through the more than 500 items that had accumulated, one by one. Just as I had started, I got up to answer the phone, leaving the laptop on the floor, screen open. When I returned, I saw the dog literally walking on my keyboard, trying to use the laptop as leverage to jump on our bed. As I shooed her away, I saw she had somehow clicked the "Mark All Items As Read" link in Google Reader, instantly evaporating all the feeds, and Google couldn't get them back.
The Paw Stomp is where the dog made her dent in my RSS reading...
Instantly, a day and a half of the world's news and blogs were gone. Conversations and debates were held and I couldn't hear them. Product announcements and bugs went by without my knowing. And my dog didn't care. So, that old adage about the dog eating your homework? Maybe it does happen? I sure can tell you that the weekend didn't get off to a very strong start after seeing Molly (the dog) using her hind legs to point and click my news away. It's even more remarkable when you consider some dogs will actually get the newspaper for you...