Gratitude, Madeline! But hey, I just got done linking a photo of my nasty ankle to a pic of Dr. RMH's pedicure...and you say safe for viewing. ;)

I think you're right about my wariness of genre. I understand that we can make use of classification systems, definitions, and ways of describing that don't always (only) mean to confine, restrict or close off possibilities. And so I've been trying to figure out my hesitation, trying to open up the sense I have--after a year of blogging--that it just won't stand still long enough to put a good-'nuff tag on it.

I'm interested that much of what you say about my blog is felt in kind. In other words, I look at many of the blogs around me with an admiring eye--good ideas, thoughtful input, writing through the mundane and peculiar. In fact, that's what my blogroll represents--writing I find interesting for various reasons. When I label it "Been Caught Reading," I really mean that I've caught myself getting hooked on somebody's writing, their ideas, their ways of working through some question or some issue or whatever.

(When does a comment take on the life of an entry?!) Last thing: what you say here about comments--and who leaves them--reminds me that the directly responsive audience has a lot to offer. Beyond the server data, which is loosely verifiable, comments prove engagement, right?

But why can't weblog-as-ramped-up-diary-with-(potentially)-big-audience make us smart and school us all. I think a lot about the part of corporate knowledge management initiatives that attempt to capture "what's in the expert's head" in an effort to share it, leverage it, and extend it throughout the organization. So much of that knowledge is diary-like. I'm not making much sense here... Only so much of an organization's corporate knowledge exists in documentation and retrievable formats. The rest -- the really important stuff -- is the knowledge that's gained through relationships in and around the reasons that you're working. It's knowing how to work with and for certain people, of what tools do and don't work for particular projects with particular team members. That knowledge can't be (or is extremely difficult) to capture and store. It's collected individually through relationships and dialog -- diary-like dialog -- that is the underbelly of all organizations.