If you’re one of the few people who haven’t ever seen the episode, here’s a snippet:

Source: YouTube WKRP Turkey Excerpts

Now that’s pretty funny (no actual turkeys were harmed in the filming of this episode).

But as happens all too often in life, the happy and the joyful turned sad today on the news that Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede.

It’s not the first time this has happened, in fact, I can remember stories from the past several Black Fridays of people being trampled.

Which reminded me of another episode of WKRP. A much sadder one:

On December 3, 1979 outside the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio eleven people were killed and dozens were injured in a crush of people trying to get into the arena. Fans were waiting outside for a Who concert scheduled to take place that night.

Thousands of fans (with first-come, first-served festival seating tickets) rished towards the locked doors when they mistook the band’s sound check for the concert having started. People were trampled and crushed before the doors were unlocked. The Who went on to play that night, unaware of the tragedy outside. (Source)

That episode can be currently seen on YouTube, split into 3 parts:

Part 1:

Part 2

Part 3

From the same source quoted above:

After the tragedy Cincinnati put a ban on festival or general admission seating. That ban was only lifted once for a 2002 Bruce Springsteen concert and then on August 4, 2004 the ban was lifted totally by city councel, concerned that performers were skipping Cincinnati because they could not have general admission seating.

To prevent any problems, new rules limit the number of tickets (based on square footage of the concert location) and all the doors to the festival seating area will have to be opened two hours before the concert. Ushers and security personnel must be in place before the doors are opened, and a written evacuation plan is required.

I’m not sure what lessons we can learn from this. I’m not sure there are any lessons to be learned from it except the sort of pragmatic ones that Cincinnati figured out.

But we need to do something.

I hope someone, somewhere, who is smarter than me will think of a way to keep this from happening in another 365 days.

Palin, who first came out against community organizers (well done, Gov!) sees bloggers as the enemy, and tries to paint them all with this caricature-brush: livin’ in your parents’ basement, in your pajamas, bloggin’ some gossip.

Palin doesn’t get it.

Well, there’s a lot she doesn’t get, but here’s one example:

She doesn’t get that the Main Stream Media (or “MSM” as it is now all-too-often abbreviated) is here to stay.

They’re a powerful force.

One candidate used that force in this election.

One did not.

The one who did is now “measuring the drapes” for 1600 Penn. Ave. (Oh, and he has an amazing website at Change.gov)

The other is not.

There’s a ton of room for lies, deceit, gossip, etc in the “blogosphere” (another made up word I loathe).

But there’s also a lot of fact-checking.

There’s a lot of energy.

There’s a lot of eyeballs.

While McCain and Palin kept dismissing the polls, mockingly saying “They forgot to let the people vote”, Five Thirty Eight.com turned out stunningly accurate predictions down to tenths of a percent as to how much of the vote Obama and McCain would get.

Not ABC. Not NBC. Not CBS. Not CNN. Not MSNBC. Not even the Republican News Network (aka Fox News).

A website.

Palin is trying to pass herself off as this folksy “aw shucks” candidate.

Meanwhile, the truth is that she has abused her power in office within the first few months of being in office.

She sold an airplane — at a loss, and then just used a different one to fly herself around.

She claims she said “thanks but no thanks” to the bridge to nowhere, when what she actually did was support it, then when it became unpopular, she switched sides and went against it, and then she kept the money.

She is as much a politician as anyone you are likely to meet.

McCain / Palin tried to pull off “OUTRAGE!” at Obama’s “lipstick on a pig” comment, except that there was video footage of McCain using the same phrase several times over and over again.

Palin says that the Harry Potter books weren’t even out when she was city manager (or whatever) and accused of trying to get books banned….except that 4 of the 7 books were out when she was in that office.

McCain / Palin tried to run a pre-web campaign, where the only news cycle was from 6-7pm and 11-11:30pm.

They tried to run a campaign that could only exist back before there were ways to fact check, before there were easy ways of disseminating information.

And lest you become too haughty about where your political news comes from: don’t forget it was The Inquirer which broke the news of John Edwards’ affair.

For Palin to win in 2012, for any Republican to win in 2012, they are going to have to completely re-think how they run the campaign, how they get their message out, and what that message is.

(It would also be nice if they had something to offer other than “The Democrats are bad evil people with bad evil friends who might be terrorists, socialist, marxist, communist, fascist, tax-raising, puppy killin’ mean jerks who will take your guns!!!”)

It’s going to be more and more difficult for them to get away with the old style fear-mongering, because there are too many ways to refute a message that isn’t truthful.

The problem is that Palin is complaining about being treated unfairly, when she gave no interviews, released no medical records (despite saying she would), and basically trying to cloak herself in a shroud of secrecy.

Then she tried to turn around and claim that we didn’t know who the “real” Obama was… when the truth was we had no idea who Sarah Palin was.

By 2012, we’ll know a lot more. The spotlight will get a lot more intense, Gov. Palin. You might just want to think about whether or not you can really stand to face all that light, because so far all you’ve been trying to do is shovel darkness.

I watched almost zero nightly news programs during the campaign.

I bought no newspapers or magazines.

I watched The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and later added Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow.

(By the way, you can watch all 4 of those shows in their entirety online. For free.)

I saw a lot of YouTube clips.

I read a lot of blogs, and a lot of newspaper websites.

I clicked a lot of links on Twitter.

Someone started a Sarah_Palin account on Twitter. I’m not sure if it was official or not (Obama’s clearly was official) but they mostly made statements with no link, no followup. For example:

Numbers show that truly Ohio is the Buckeye State and not an ACORN state ;)

Really? What numbers are those?

By the way, that was posted at 9:21pm on Nov 2nd. Oops.

Here’s another:

Obama speechwriter Wendy Button switched to McCain b/c Democrats under Obama are belittling working-class people like Joe the Plumber

Really? Where’s a story I can read about that?

When you make statements like that, statements with no corroboration, all you are doing is speaking to those who already want to believe you.

There are several of these pro-Palin twitter accounts, none of them seem to be “official” and most of the ones that I saw posted very little by way of verifiable stories, and mostly just threw out these statements hoping that people would read them and say “Oh, ok, I believe you.”

Compare that to the Obama Twitter feed which is full of links for more information. When statements are made, they are messages of encouragement or updates on where he was or what he was doing.

Obama got it.

Anyone who thinks it was just part of some strategy, checkout his new website Change.gov.

It’s a whole new ball game.

And Palin best figure out how the game is played if she wants another turn at bat.

I hate losing my cool.

I hate being the guy yelling at someone over the phone, someone who (in all likelihood) wasn’t responsible for the problem in the first place.

I don’t want to be “That Guy.”

And so I try to avoid it.

I go out of my way to be reasonable and courteous when talking on the phone with support people.

The problem is that it just doesn’t seem to work very well.

I don’t know if I’m just unlucky or what, but I seem to have to make several phone calls to get problems solved.

Most Recent Case-In-Point

I don’t know if it was due to living in a swing state (which, by the way, is not nearly as much fun as it sounds), but we have been getting as many as a dozen calls a week, sometimes several per night, where the caller ID said only “Private”.

Of course we’re on the Do Not Call list, but that doesn’t seem to matter. Politicians and fund-raising are exempt from the list, and we still routinely get calls from people offering to lower our credit card debt, etc.

I called AT&T about their Privacy Manager feature, and was pleased to learn about their All Distance plan, which would add more features to my phone service for a lower price per month.

One of the included features was Privacy Manager, which is what I had called about in the first place.

This was Monday, October 27th, around 10 a.m. EST. I was told that it “should be on by Wednesday, but maybe as late as Friday” and I was given a number to call to configure Privacy Manager.

I called the automated number late Wednesday, and it wasn’t setup. That was frustrating (more calls coming in) but I decided to be patient, after all they said as late as Friday.

I called late Friday, and it wasn’t setup.

I called AT&T and they had already left for the day.

Saturday I called AT&T again and was told that it was “Pending” and that there wasn’t anything she could do to make it happen faster.

Wednesday I tried again, still not working. I called Friday and was told that “the system doesn’t even show that it was ordered.”

Doing my best to keep calm, I expressed my disappointment that I was a) being told this now, almost 2 weeks after I first called, and b) that I had been told before that it was shown as “Pending”.

The customer service person apologized and said she could have it turned on “by tomorrow” (Saturday).

I thanked her, and hung up, wondering why I was told it would take “2-5 days” to get it turned on the first time, but then she could get it turned on within 24 hours.

Sunday, when I tried it again, it still wasn’t working.

Monday I called again, and made my way through their awful voice-prompt call-routing version of hell again, and finally got through to yet another “customer service” person.

Who asked me for an order number.

Mind you, I don’t remember ever being given an order number in the first place, nor had I been asked for an order number any of the several times I had called before, but now, after telling her that I had ordered this service two weeks earlier she asked for an order number.

I started to lose my cool.

She checked the system and told me that it did show as “Pending, and there’s nothing I can do to make it happen any faster.”

In hindsight, I assume that this must be something that they are trained to tell people who call one day after ordering something which is scheduled to take longer.

It is, the training should teach them, not something you ever say to someone who has been waiting for two weeks.

Not unless you want them to lose their cool.

Which I did.

I informed her that I had been waiting for two weeks and had no intention of waiting another damn day, and I either needed to talk to someone who could do something about it or I needed to talk to someone about closing down my entire damned account with AT&T.

She transferred me to someone else who was magically able to get Privacy Manager turned on the same day.

To Recap

I called up on October 27th to add a service that I would be paying for to my phone (this wasn’t something they were doing out of the goodness of their hearts, it wasn’t a favor I was asking them to do for me, this is a paying service in a highly-competitive market).

I was told I had to wait 2-5 days.

When I called back the 2nd time to complain about it not being turned on yet, I was told I would have to wait another day.

When I called back the 3rd time, lost my cool and yelled, I was able to get the service turned on the same day.

If the service can be turned on within 24 hours, why tell me to wait 2-5 days?

Why should something like this take 2-5 days? It’s not as if someone had to come to my house and flip a switch; it was almost certainly done on a computer somewhere.

What does this teach us?

This is only one example. It’s not the first time that something like this has happened, and it’s not only AT&T that has done this.

I would hate to do customer support, I would hate to do customer support over the phone even more.

But when you customer support is behind a pain-in-the-ass voice navigation system, followed by being on-hold, followed by being told that I need to be patient, that there’s nothing anyone can do, then I have to call back again and hear there’s no record of my order, then I call back again and get asked for a piece of information that I was never given…

Is anyone surprised when people get angry at the people doing customer support?

Does this process of “being patient” = “being told to wait and have nothing happen” versus “get angry” = “get the desired outcome on the same day” teach anything other than “If you want something done, you’ll have to get angry?”

Let me reiterate, I hate losing my cool. I tried very hard not to lose it, and I can sympathize with the people on the other end of the phone who have to deal with getting yelled at.

Regardless of what you might want to argue in the abstract, the fact of the matter is that time and time again, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease” especially for definitions of “squeaky” that include “angry”.

If I could actually get customer service without yelling, we’d both be happier.

Nobody wins.

But I’m left to wonder: if I had called back on Wednesday and gotten angry, could I have gotten it turned on sooner?

If I called back Friday and yelled, would I have gotten more success at getting it turned on Saturday?

Perhaps I didn’t need to get angry at all; perhaps the person I talked to on Monday was going to get it fixed the same day regardless.

Maybe. But it didn’t work the first three times I tried it.

Update 2008-11-14: AT&T emailed me today to tell me that the service was activated (which it was… 5 days ago) and that it would cost me an extra $1.57 per month. When it was supposed to be part of the package that we purchased. AT&T continues to innovate in the “finding ways to screw up” sphere.

Translation:

“It is delightful to play the fool occasionally; it is nice to throw aside one’s dignity and relax at the proper time.” (Horace: 4 Odes, xii. 28.)

[Source]

That pretty much sums up how I feel about Twitter.

Personally I thought phrase “Penis Fatigue” was funny.

But the caption is even funnier.

Watch above.

(Note: I use a screen capture program, so you’ll notice the audio is a little slow.)

See full clip at The Daily Show (but I don’t think it’s captioned!)

You may remember we’ve done this before with Episode 96.

The most current episode is number 104 and it clocks in at 1hr, 25 minutes.

Which is a long, long episode.

MacBreak Weekly has become the “late ’90s Kevin Costner movie” of podcasts.

So here, presented free of charge, is your guide to the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly.

Annotated Listener’s Guide

00:00:00 - Netcasts you love, from people you trust (Seriously Leo, a “netcast”. Get over it already. They’re podcasts.)

00:00:20 - Intro, sponsored by for cachefly, audible, Visa, Drobo

00:01:14 - actual start of show “We are here to talk about all things Mac” * Scott Bourne, amazingly bad Don Lafontaine impersonation * Leo tries to intro Merlin, but Andy talks over it * Intro YLNT * Scott doesn’t get YLNT because he just stepped into a recent episode, but he likes it * Some more YLNT references

00:03:30 - Andy I is introduced * Leo gets the name of Leo’s website wrong for the 4,000th time * Andy talks about moving his website to a new server * Now they’re talking about Star Trek, adding www to the front of his web domain

00:05:00 * Leo does the worst Kennedy impersonation I’ve ever heard. Oh, until Andy I. Merlin throws in “Ich bin ein webmaster”.

00:05:44 * An ad for Visa. Now we’ve had 5 minutes of show, but absolutely no actual content, so we’re going to commercial. Ok then.

00:06:30 * Talking about Don LaFontaine. (Now look, I loved this guy’s voice. I’m thrilled that he was once spotted using a Mac laptop. But does it have any [expletive deleted] thing to do with the average Mac user? No it does not.)

00:07:45 * Scott Bourne “Well, I know how much money he used to charge, but I’m not gonna say, but it was a lot of money.” Wow, thanks, that’s sooooo worth my time. This guy had a good voice and made a lot of money. Awesome, because when I tune into Mac Break Weekly, that’s what I’m looking for.

00:08:00 * Merlin talks about how LaFontaine saved time using ISDN lines instead of driving all over town. Interesting, not nearly the same pomposity as Scott, but Merlin is still a young man, and he has time to develop these skills. (45 seconds)

00:08:45 * We get to listen to Leo try to find an audio clip and Merlin try to guide him.

00:09:30 Leo “It’s not really Mac news”. * No, it isn’t, and we’re at 9 min 30 seconds. * Who is editing this?

00:09:40 * Scott now launches a conversation about other people whose careers might benefit from Don LaFontaine’s death. Classy. And Mac related. Oh wait, neither. * (One of them did some voiceover work for Apple, which is as close as this came to Mac news, but wasn’t.)

00:10:26 Top Mac News. 10 minutes later. * September 9th event “Let’s Rock”. Andy and Leo talk about their travel plans (or lack thereof) than the actual event. Then they describe the email that went out, which is great, because no websites carried it.

00:12:30 * Leo suggests trying to do a special Mac Break Weekly to talk about whatever these announcements are. * (As of 2008-09-10 there is no special Mac Break Weekly scheduled that I am aware of)

00:12:45 * Leo asks for speculation about what the event might bring, although they’ve already talked about it being “clearly and iPod event”. They talk about the leaked document that Kevin Rose received, which sound pretty much like what was announced. AndyI and Leo agree it sounds credible.

00:16:00 * Scott Bourne wonders if Apple is leaking stuff to Kevin intentionally

00:17:10 * Leo and Scott talk about other things that they would like Apple to announce: new Air, new Pro, even though new processors aren’t ready.

00:18:00 * Merlin says “Hey, can I do that speculation thing that you do?” about Alex Lindsay’s obsession w/ a tablet Mac. Basically: if these are new iPods, what does that mean for a tablet? * Leo thinks they might announce a tablet at this a special event. (In September? Right. Just in time to miss all the people who would buy them for college? * AndyI talks about all the undeniable things that are going to happen before we get a tablet (unless Apple does all the software for the v 1.0). “Not 2008, maybe 2009 / end of 2009 at the earlier” and points out school/Christmas.

00:20:00 - Speculation about possible timelines for new Apple hardware.

00:24:36 - Commercial! * Drobo. Firewire Drobo. * Oh, Scott had one in beta.

00:26:45 * Drobo tip even though you can yank a drive “live” it’s not something you should do all that often! A minute later, Leo talks about his eyeglasses.

00:28:36 * After talking about Drobo jingle ideas (yes, really) they finally stop talking about Drobo. * 4 solid minutes of Drobo talk. Now that tip was pretty handy if you have a Drobo, but it’s in the book.

00:28:45 - IMEI numbers * calculate how many 3Gs Apple made, thinking that Apple may make 10million goal, which was a “bold goal” for a non-cell phone company 2 years ago. * 3rd largest share of smartphone business, and 2 years ago they weren’t in the smartphone business. * Will sell in China.

00:31:20 - Chrome * “Andy, have you played with [Google] Chrome yet?” * Andy hasn’t used it yet. * Leo hasn’t used it yet. * Merlin hasn’t used it yet. * Scott hasn’t used it yet. * It’s not even available for download when they start talking about it. * When they do start talking about it, they quickly mention that it’s Windows only. * Andy I thinks this has the potential to be the best thing ever. * Merlin thinks it has the potential to be the worst thing ever (another proprietary browser). * Somehow Andy becomes convinced that his opinion is the only logical one and Merlin is being a PITA about it. Merlin keeps asking why he thinks it’s going to be great when it’s not released and no one knows how it’s going to actually play out. Merlin is strident, Andy was (IMO) rude and seemed completely taken aback that Merlin wouldn’t just accept his word for it, based on a comic book, that this is going to change everything for the better.

This conversation went on for 7 hours. Ok, 20 minutes, but it felt like forever.

About a program that no one had used, and that (while based on the same technology that Apple uses) is not available for the Mac. Gee, could you maybe talk about this the week that the Mac version comes out, since it’s a weekly show about Macs? Crazy idea, I know, we should speculate now!

00:52:05 - Merlin: “I’m very much not in the business of guessing about stuff based on a spec and a comic.” * To me that’s a fairly profound critique of why the whole conversation had been a waste of time, and Leo responded by saying * “But that’s what we do on Mac Break Weekly.” Merlin replied “In that case, I like it.” [laughter]

00:52:30 - Why use more than one browser? (Merlin answers, why he uses Safari but loves Firefox)

00:54:00 - Leo brings it back to Chrome, trying to explain how this will be totally awesome.

00:54:49 - Scott Bourne explains that he had no idea that there are such a thing as “web standards” by saying “It’s a standard if everybody likes it.” (Seriously?)

00:55:30 - Leo wants to get Merlin on his project to “open up” Twitter. How is this Mac related? If you answered “It’s not Mac related at all!” you’d be correct.

00:59:20 - The start talking about picks of the week. They spent nearly 30 minutes talking about Chrome, which doesn’t run on Macs and wasn’t even released and no one had used, and bitching about Twitter, which Leo again claims has disabled “Track” to monetize it. OTOH you can use Summize (Twitter Search) and make a feed for whatever you want to track. Sounds like a lot of bluster to me, and absolutely NOT.MAC.RELATED.

00:59:20 - Audible picks: Michael Palin book (Leo jumped in with a “he’ll make a great VP!” joke which probably would have been funny a week ago)

01:01:30 - Leo explaining Audible in the exact same gushy terms you’ve heard every other week.

01:02:00 - Picks of the week: Ubiquity (incl. some Mac history)

01:04:30 - Slife

01:10:00 - Andy I: BBedit 9

01:15:52 - “Photomatics” from Scott Bourne

01:21:00 - Wrapping up

01:25:31 - EOF

Now, if you want, you could do the math to figure out how much time they spent actually talking about actual Mac related topics.

But I won’t, because the answer for me is simple:

Our of nearly 90 minutes of MBW, I felt like I got maybe 20 minutes of interesting stuff. Yeah, they talked about the iPod event, but really there wasn’t much there.

It’s a waste of time, and I’m officially done.

Instead, if I need something to listen to, I’ll listen to You Look Nice Today because, to be honest, I was really only listening to hear Merlin talk about Mac stuff.

I hope Merlin will occasionally post some Mac “picks” to 43Folders because I find his stiff incredibly useful, almost as much as the Mac Gems on Macworld and even more than MacOSXHints, two sites I love and visit regularly.

Leo, et al: sorry, but I’m done. You don’t have to care, really. If someone has the gall to show you this URL, please feel free to say “Who the [blank] is this [blank]? Doesn’t get ‘get it’ that the free and open spirit of MBW is what makes it special, and if you edit it down to, say, 30 minutes, you’ll lose the soul of the show?”

I know you think that. I just disagree. Doesn’t make me right or wrong, just makes it the wrong podcast for my iTunes subscription list.

Which is an error I have corrected.

U.S. Congressman Marsha Blackburn (R - TN) on MSNBC earlier today:

When it comes to the experience question, if you’re going to give me the choice between a man who has run a committee in the US Senate, or a woman who has been a wife, a mother, a businesswoman, a PTA chairmen, a mayor, and a govenor, I’m going to take the experience that woman has, because of this: it is more well-rounded. She has more life-skills. Leadership is a transferable commodity, and women are experts at that. They build leadership skills through so many different areas of their life. They’re not single focused. And if you’re going to give the American people to get someone who has a wealth of leadership experiences from many different platforms in their life, and many different disciplines or give them the opportunity to have someone who has been a chairman or a ranking member of a committee in the US Senate, I think the American people are going to speak out and take that woman with a wealth of experience.

So, apparently PTA experience is an important skill for being one of John McCain’s heartbeats away from the presidency.

Oh, and apparently Barack Obama has no family (Barack has been “on a committee” but Palin is a wife and mother).

How does she breathe with all that horseshit in her mouth?

• 4 Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
  • Matthew: written for a Jewish audience, serves as a connection from the “Old” Testament to the “New”. Gives a nice genealogy. On the other hand, the Jewish leaders who opposed Jesus are treated most harshly.
  • Mark: Assumed to be written 1st of the 4 official Gospels. Barebones, everything seems to happen “immediately”. Probably written by a disciple of Peter.
  • Luke: Believed to be written by a physician. Has the most parables. Luke also wrote “Acts” the 1st book after the 4 Gospels
  • The first 3 are called “synoptic” gospels, which means “of one eye” since they mostly talk about overlapping events. John is different.
  • John: is believed to be written MUCH later. Contains much more developed imagery, theology, abstractions. Of course has the famous John 3:16 (For God so loved the world that God sent His only Son…). Probably written down by a disciple of John.
  • If Mark is 1st, and Matthew and Luke have things in common with Mark, we assume they read/heard about Mark. But what about stuff that is in Matthew and Luke but is not in Mark? Scholars assume there must be another source, which is called “The Q” which sounds all mystical and fancy, but is just based on the German word for “Source”. A lot has been said about Q but there is absolutely no empirical evidence that it ever existed.
• The letters, especially the letters of the Apostle Paul, are believed to have been written down much earlier than the Gospels. That is to say: the books are not listed in chronological order.
• There are other Gospels. Anyone who read The da Vinci Code knows this already (aside: that book was a great novel and terrible history, no serious church historian takes it seriously, at least none that I am aware of). The Gospels of Thomas and Judas are perhaps the most famous, but none are generally believed to be as reliable as the 4 listed above, for various and mostly boring reasons.
• Yes, the “Jesus Seminar” tries to indicate what is more- or less- likely to be actual sayings of Jesus, but they can’t really prove much conclusively. Also, you’ll find a whole lot of books about trying to find the “historical” Jesus. That’s pretty difficult to try to find, and not a great use of your time, IMO.
• Please ignore the book of Revelation entirely, any movie made about it, or anyone you see on television who is talking about it.
• Kirk Cameron is to Christianity as Ronald McDonald is to fine dining.
• If you are interested in some academic-but-accessible Biblical criticism, checkout Bart Ehrman’s writing (and yes Leo, you can even get an audiobook of one of his books)

Update: My recommendation to ignore the book of Revelation is that, to beginners and non-believers (who are the only ones I expect to learn much from such a beginner’s guide) is that it is the culmination of the previous 66 books, and needs very careful study, or else you are likely to get some whack-job trying to tell you that 666 refers to some modern political figure. The Revelation is like a scalpel, in the right hands, a powerful tool; in the wrong hands, a dangerous weapon.

I have not watched the video mentioned in the comments below, and therefore can’t vouch for it.

To Doug Stewart: I include the Gnostic Gospels because they exist, and calling them “vile heresies” is not going to do much to dissuade non-believers from being interested in them. You might try engaging people in a discussion as to why they are discounted by many, perhaps most. It will take more than dismissive Christian-specific jargon.

To ChrisMtP: I don’t agree that “fear” is the word that I would want to emphasize. A more consistent word might be “love” (the perfected form of which is said to cast out fear, as well as the explanation from John 3:16 as to why Jesus came to earth from heaven.) As for what will matter in 1,000 years, well, stuff? Probably nothing, but what will we do today, what will we do tomorrow? That will matter today, and tomorrow, and perhaps for eternity.

This is a conversation between Terry McAulliffe and Jon Stewart.

Except the captioner apparently was looking forward to The Colbert Report, because s/he kept referring to Jon as “Stephen”

(Total: 90 seconds, First time is about 44 seconds in, second is about 1:09.)

Twitter used to work really easily on the iPhone. If you wanted the “Mobile” page you went to m.twitter.com and if you wanted the “Standard” version, you went to twitter.com.

Twitter then added the ability to easily switch between the “Mobile” and “Standard” by clicking a link at the bottom of the page.

Which then broke the usefulness of being able to bookmark the m.twitter.com or twitter.com sites separately.

This annoyed me and others, but like so much else about Twitter, it seemed like a case of “We changed it, we think it’s better, and we’re so busy trying to keep the whole thing online that we aren’t going to worry about something extra like that.”

I found a way to work around it.

Bookmark for mobile site: http://m.twitter.com/account/home.mobile

m.twitter.com shows 10 posts per page, but Hahlo and other clients can access 20. Twitter “temporarily” cut off access to the paging part of their API months ago (and has recently slashes the number of API calls-per-hour in half, which is hopefully less-temporary than the disabling of the paging part of the API which has been off for 6+ months.

I had been using this shortcut:

http://m.twitter.com/account/home.mobile?page=3

to get to the 21st-30th posts in my Twitter history, i.e. the first posts that Hahlo and other clients can’t access.

(Ideally I’d like something that looks very much like “Hahlo with Paging” and would then never, ever, ever use m.twitter.com again, but since Twitter is reducing the usefulness of its API to 3rd party clients, the need to use m.twitter.com appears to be sticking around like an unwanted relative/roommate/ex.)

Let me also go on the record as saying that I’d gladly subscribe to Twitter for more API calls and to increase stability, but every “explanation” I hear for why Twitter is broken/down again/etc seems to indicate that it isn’t just a money problem. Whatever it is, I hope they get the bugs worked out sooner rather than later.

Really Lame Workaround

“What if you bookmarked the links that toggle Twitter from Standard to Mobile?” I thought to myself.

The URLs are right there are the bottom of each page: http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=s will set your Twitter page to the Standard/Full version, and http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=m will set it to the mobile page.

But, you’d have to have pretty damn quick reflexes to hit the link, then the + to bookmark it.

Or you could do what I did:

1) Turn Airplane mode ON (and refuse to enable data whenever iPhone asks)

2) Launch Mobile/Touch Me Safari

3) Open a blank tab

4) Type in http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=s (or use http://xrl.us/TwitterStandard if you prefer something easier to type)

5) Click the +

6) Choose “Add to Home Screen” (NOTE: you will be left with a white icon because it can’t fetch the site icon. A minor annoyance IMO).

7) Save it as “TwitStd” or whatever you prefer

8) Repeat the above process, using http://twitter.com/sessions/change_ui?ui_type=m or http://xrl.us/TwitterMobile for step #4 and a different name for Step #7.

Is it elegant? Hell no. But it works.