In addition to my overly analytical and incessant thinking, I also have unending streams of ideas. I'm not that guy that has 4 ideas that he harbors his entire life and becomes jaded because he feels the world isn't giving him his due respect. My ideas are spontaneous and fleeting life-rafts that ebb and flow in my forever changing ocean of thoughts. They're spontaneous because anything can trigger them, from watching a movie to a talk Kate and I had about breeding dogs. They're fleeting because I write them off with the feeling that they could have already happened or something else catches my attention. Today's talk with Kate, I feel, is fleeting because of the former. For example, we were talking about a job whose sole purpose is to bring various people to breeders that help puppy development prior to ownership.
When Kate and I started discussing dog breeding, I focused on the aspect of getting dogs accustomed to people prior to getting an owner. I'm of the opinion that breeders tend to be in rural areas, which stems from the breeders I've come across online and in person. So how can a breeder, who spends most of their day with dogs, get puppies acclimated to people? Since there are many breeders in decently populated areas, why not be a breeder socialization agent?
Through this thought cloud I heard Kate's faint voice commenting about crutches and wheelchairs, which put me on the track of using old people as clients. Ostensibly, retirement homes aren't going away. There are also volunteers at some that take elderly people out so they don't become lifeless beings eagerly awaiting death. Take a few old people to a breeder's house so the retirement people can rekindle childhood memories of puppy breath and the breeder's puppies can get used to other people in wheel chairs and walkers.
That's only the start of it. Kindergarten, to me, is a child's indoctrination into our public learning program. Children are often exposed to many things, from finger painting to sharing favorite toys. Taking puppies to random elementary schools could give children a healthy foundation on how to handle animals, specifically dogs, and the breeder's puppies get exposure to young people.
From pre-teens to adults, I have a different approach because this demographic can be mischievous. Instead of being an excuse to get out of class or starting a "bring your dog to work" movement, I think the agent can research areas, such as parks, where they can help the breeder walk the puppies in pedestrian-rich locales.
Another idea I had is a refinement of online bookmarks. With our society becoming computer-reliant, more and more people are starting to get cross-platform experience. Sure Delicious and Ma.gnolia are great online link aggregators, and there is Foxmarks for the Firefox user. However, none of those can replace the flexibility and organization of my bookmarks bar, especially if I use one browser at home and a different one at work.
The problem with Delicious and Ma.gnolia is I don't organize by tags. To me, tags are a great way to find something that I think I misplaced or haven't organized. Even though Foxmarks is closer to what I want, the problems I have with it are having to log in to access them and its vertical tree interface.
What I want is something like a flickr for links; I want to be able to choose how I view, organize, secure, find, and share them. To me, that's what a core homepage should contain, not something overwhelming with push data like iGoogle or Pageflakes. Having something like this for a homepage also frees me from being shackled to a browser. I like Firefox but it's a resource hog, and Foxmarks is a brilliant extension that's only on Firefox.
As I wrote this, Kate and I had intermittent discussions about these ideas where some of these points were further refined, like taking kindergartners to the breeder so puppy immune systems won't be as impacted. This discussion was another example of how my ideas can be fleeting because I was about ready to scrap this because there were additional points that I didn't write about. After she saw me delete everything, we digressed into a small conversation about why I should still write. It's times like this that make me appreciate programs that have an "Undo" feature.
