Dulce est Desipere in Loco
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.)
[]
That pretty much sums up how I feel about .
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I had the chapel reserved for our wedding for over a month before I proposed. I got the last open time-slot for the day that we wanted to get married.
I proposed because my mom told me to. Well, not exactly, but kinda. (*)
We had joked about dating at least 2½ years before we got married. We got married 2½ years to the day from the day we started dating.
We graduated from college in May, got married in June, and I started graduate school in July.
We moved from one apartment to another a year before graduation so we could adopt our first beagle (Jerry) who we adopted on our 2nd anniversary.
My wife was out of the country when I got my first official job offer (a Sunday afternoon). She arrived back in the country on Monday, we drove from New Jersey to Florida on Tuesday.
When we left our Florida, I sold my car (a 1997 Saturn SL1, which I loved), and drove with 2 beagles and my Dad from Florida to Ohio. Tracey and Ethan (then 1 year old) flew from Florida to Maine for her sister’s graduation. We then bought a car from her Dad, she drove to Massachusetts to pick up my Mom, and the 3 of them drove to Ohio together.
For our 10th anniversary, I saved for a year to buy her an anniversary diamond. About a week before our anniversary, we drove past a billboard which we had driven past for years advertising a jewelry store, and without any idea what i had planned, she said “I hope you’re not planning to get me something like that.” I later showed her the ring (still at the jewelry store) which she said was beautiful but something she’d never feel comfortable wearing. So, instead I sent her on a cruise with her mom, mom’s mom, and best friend from high school. Yes, her anniversary present was a week away from both of us. Those of you who know me realize that I could hardly get her anything better. Plus, can you say “Mother-in-Law Brownie Points”?!
(I threw in an extra just in case you already knew one of the other ones.)
() While we were home on Spring break in April, I told Mom that I was going to propose in September and get married in June. A few weeks later, when I was back at college, Mom called early on a Saturday morning (I have no idea what time it was in Real People Time, but in College Student Time it was *early).
Me (mostly asleep): “Uh… Hello…?” Mom: “Hi hon. Ellen [mom’s longtime friend] and I were talking at the IGA [grocery store] and we both agreed that you can’t expect her to plan a June wedding during her last year of college if you’re not going to propose until September. I called the chapel and they only have one timeslot left for the day you want to get married, so I’ve reserved that for you.” Me: “Uh… Ok.”
I don’t remember if there was anything else after that. I went back to sleep, woke up several hours later and thought “Wait, what?”
It seems to have worked out ok. We’ve been married 13 years so far.
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Somewhere in the past few months I heard talk about setting his iPhone to lock — not just “Slide to Unlock” but actually have to enter a 4 digit PIN to open it up.
Now, I’m a fairly cautious person — well, let me clarify: by “I’m a fairly cautious person” I mean “Someone once told me that if he was going on a cross-country trip, he would want me to plan it, because I would make a contingency plan for every pothole along the way.”
(That person was my therapist. I’m not making this up.)
I have a distinct memory of thinking “Oh Merlin, you crazy paranoid man. Realistically, what are the chances that I’ll lose my iPhone? I mean, if they sell 10 million of them, how many people will lose them? And I’m going to plan to be one of them? Plus, how annoying would it be to have to enter that PIN every time I want to use my iPhone?”
Merlin added that every bit of personal contact info you have is probably on that phone. It’s a privacy issue not only for you, but for everyone in your address book.
“Oh Merlin, you crazy hippie, no one cares about my contact information. They’d probably just wipe all my information off the phone, or use it to call their friends in Russia.”
But despite all my protestations, I really am a cautious person, so I started locking my iPhone.
It is every bit as annoying as I’d thought it would be.
I may have even thought about disabling the PIN lock.
Then, last week, I left my iPhone behind at the courthouse when I went in to vote early.
My first thought was “Whew, at least it’s locked.”
So there it is.
A locked iPhone is not only more secure for your own data, but it’s also less useful for a casual thief who happens to find it after you left it somewhere. Can the lock be by-passed? Perhaps if someone had the technical know-how.
But most people who stumble across an unlocked phone will either poke around it, maybe use it, or maybe turn it in to lost-and-found.
A locked phone is almost certainly going to just get turned in with a “Hey, I found this sitting over there”.
So thanks, Merlin, for being slightly more paranoid than I was about this.
Now, does anyone know how to make an iPhone wallpaper that has “If Found Please Contact” information on it?
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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.)
(but I don’t think it’s captioned!)
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I’ll keep this short and simple.
Situation
I wanted a wireless nunchuck for the Wii.
Step 1
I bought a for $30 from Amazon.
It wouldn’t sync.
I called the toll-free number for tech support and was shoved to a voicemail box and told to leave a message and someone would call me back.
That was two weeks ago, and I’m still waiting.
Actually, I’m not. I returned it to Amazon.
Step 2
I saw the same product for the same price at Wal-Mart.
I bought another one. (Call me an idealist.)
I couldn’t get it to sync.
I was about to return it, but asked my wife to try.
She got it to sync.
The Review
It worked OK but not great.
I tried it with and there are several points in the game when it dropped the connection (it reconnects quickly, but when you’re in battle, every second counts).
The fatal flaw is that when you have to twist the nunchuck in a specific way to fight the bad guys (and gals), the Nyko controller just could not do it.
The Verdict
Returned.
Step 3
I purchased a for $40.
I can hear someone complain, “But, but, but…. that’s $10 MORE than the other one!”
Yes, it’s true. But (and this “but” is so big that Sir Mix-a-Lot would like to marry it) there’s one huge difference:
It’s rechargeable.
It comes with a simple USB charger which you can plug into the back of your Wii (I had totally forgotten there were USB ports back there) and it will recharge when not in use.
(The other one uses two AAA batteries.)
AND if you would like to use a non-slip “sleeve” for the Nunchuck, the recharge port can still be accessed with the sleeve on it.
The Review
It worked flawlessly.
It synced on the first try.
It worked fine with The Force Unleashed test mentioned above.
The Verdict
I’ll probably buy another one.
Note
As of 2008-10-16 there is only one review for the Intec unit at Amazon. Someone claims that they bought two and one stopped working two days after he bought it. To me, that falls in the category of “Stuff Happens”. Return it for a replacement (I believe shipping will be free) and try again. YMMV. Caveat emptor.
Minor Nit
The Intec unit flashes constantly when it has synced. The Nyko stopped flashing when the sync was successful. There’s no reason it ought to flash when everything is OK. A flashing light ought to mean that your attention is required. A solid light ought to mean “Everything is working fine.”
Update:
The main annoyance with it after a few days is that it does not always sync after it has been idle/asleep. The base (which connect to the Wii remote) doesn’t seem to start the sync process.
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[Warning: this post contains strong language and a minor spoiler about a movie that you really shouldn’t go see anyway.]
Every Star Wars movie after Empire Strikes Back has sucked.
Return of the Jedi was the worst of the original trilogy. Lucas was trying to wrap up everything into a nice, neat package and forgot that the movie needs to be entertaining. There are some entertaining moments in ROTJ, but overall, it’s the weakest link.
The Ewoks are too cute. The dialogue with the Emperor is painful, and the ending part where Vader dies was truly groan-worthy as he endeavored to have a “After-School Special” moment with Luke.
“But there were problems in the first two movies too!” Yes, there were. If you go back and watch A New Hope, you will hear some truly awful lines of dialogue. Luke whines. Han talks about how fast the Millennium Falcon is using a unit of time instead of a unit of speed. And you know what else? Shut up.
Yes, shut up. When you saw the movies, even when they re-released them in the 90s, you didn’t care about the few bad lines. You didn’t care about what a dumb name the “Hyperdrive Motivator” was. Why didn’t you care? Because the movie was still pretty good.
Even when I was watching ROTJ, I could smell the rot.
Then.
Then.
Then Lucas went back. And tweaked them. Which is to say that he added all these little cutaways. Most of them were completely useless. Most of them were designed to get a cheap laugh. Most of them had nothing to do with furthering the story.
Take, for example, the scene with Han Solo and Jabba from Episode 1. The scene was cut from the original movie, and had actually been filmed with an actor playing Jabba instead of the giant slug he became.
But Lucas would not be stopped. He wanted to add the scene, so he was going to add it. And who is going to stop him, after all, he’s George “Swingin’ Dick” Lucas. You gonna tell him ‘no’?
So what do we get? We get a scene which adds nothing to the movie, nothing to the series.
Oh, and I forgot. In the original scene, Han walked behind the actor who was playing Jabba. Now Jabba has been replaced by a giant slug, so Lucas has Han step on Jabba.
Right. Like Jabba wouldn’t have resented that at all. No response.
So after deproving (the opposite of “improving”) the first three movies, Lucas set out to make three more.
Which gave us Jar Jar Binks.
How did Jar Jar get approved? Because Lucas didn’t have anyone to say, “Um George, the Rastafarian swamp lizard thing is not only offensive, but annoying as hell.”
You’ve got the leader of the Gungans who vigorously shakes his head and spews spittle everywhere when he’s excited, upset or happy. Yeah.
My Theory As To What When Wrong
The long delay between the first trilogy and the second trilogy was explained by Lucas’ contentious divorce from his wife. The story went that he didn’t want to give his wife any money from the future movies, and she wanted to say they were products of the marriage, so she was owed half.
I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not, but I can tell you that what ruined the second trilogy was very clear to me:
Lucas had grandchildren.
He made the second trilogy for them.
Don’t believe me? Watch them with a 6-year old. I have. Again, and again, and again.
Little kids love Jar Jar. I’m not sure what the medical explanation for this is, but I believe it has to do with the soft-spot on the top of the head not being hardened.
Ask him which of the 6 movies he wants to watch, and he’ll pick one of the first 3.
The awful dialogue between Anakin and Padme doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.
The goofy stupidity of having battle droids that say things like “Roger Roger” and “Uh Oh” doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.
The absolute absurdity of having General Grievous, who is 99.99% robot, who has a hacking smoker’s cough doesn’t bother him; he’s 6.
When Count Dooku and Yoda face off, and Dooku says “It is obvious we will not be able to settle this with the force, but with the lightsaber” he doesn’t ask “WHO TALKS LIKE THAT?!” because he’s 6.
When you have Chancellor Palpatine saying “No, no, no, no” like some bizarre scarecrow, he doesn’t care.
So if the majority of the movie is entertaining to a 6 year old and annoying to the rest of the population, either Lucas is amazingly stupid, or he wrote it for 6 year olds — like his grandchildren.
What Went Right
The good parts of the second-trilogy is quite simply the battle scenes. Lucas does them well. It’s why the Death Star invasion at the end of the 1977 movie was so good, why the Hoth battle and Luke-vs-Vader in Empire was so good, and why the best parts of ROTJ were the battle scenes.
In the second-trilogy, we get a multitude of light-saber battles, including Darth Maul, whose lightsaber battle with Qui Gon and Obi-Wan is by far the best part of The Phantom Menace, and why the Jedi battles are the best parts of the next two.
Which Brings Us To Today
We went to Clone Wars because of the aforementioned 6-year old, but I was hopeful. I wasn’t bothered by the fact that it was all-CGI. As many others have said, a lot of the second-trilogy was CGI anyway, so why not just go all-out?
What did we get?
Some good battle scenes.
But not enough.
Not nearly enough.
The 6-year old loved it.
I did not.
First of all, the story starts and you’re not given any help figuring out where this movie fits in. If you are expecting it to be after the last movie, you’d be wrong — as you would soon figure out. Eventually I figured out that it was between the 2nd and 3rd movies.
Which, by the way, makes this a… what? Prequel? Prequel to a prequel? I don’t think we even have a word for what this is.
My hope started to die off fast. The voiceover at the very beginning of the movie is so far over the top that it puts us squarely in the ridiculous. It isn’t quite as bad as the “SUNDAY SUNDAY SUNDAY! MONSTER TRUCK PULL” guy, but it’s close enough that the comparison came quickly to my mind.
There’s plenty of gawd-awful dialogue that makes you wonder if the writers have ever been in a discussion with normal human beings here on earth. Fortunately, we are not asked to endure any of the bile-chunk laden, vomit-inducing “romantic” language between Anakin and Padme.
But It Gets Worse
I that there was a “new Hutt” in this movie who “speaks like Truman Capote” and I thought “Oh man, people are just getting way over-wrought about this before it is even released.” And then I kind of forgot about it.
Until it happened, and all I could think was “OH MY SWEET BUTTERY JESUS, YOU HAVE GOT TO BE [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] [EXPLETIVE] KIDDING ME, RIGHT?”
Let me be absolutely clear: imagined someone playing Truman Capote. Now imagine that the director asked you to “Gay it up a little.” And you did. Now, imagine that he said “No, more. Really really gay it up.” And you did. Then imagine the director kidnapped your family and held them at gunpoint and threatened to scar and/or rape them with a cattle-prod unless you made it so amazingly over-the-top that people would actually lose brain cells as they tried to imagine if you had really CREATED SUCH AN OBSCENE CARICATURE.
Did I mention this character was a Hutt aka giant slug?
The only way this character could be any more ridiculous is if he was wearing a pink-tutu and delivered his dialog in stuccato bursts between thrusts as he was sodomized by The Village People as they sang “I Feel Pretty” in four-part harmony.
Oh, and guess what? He turns out to be a bad guy.
Um “spoiler alert.”
Sorry. Actually I’m not. There’s no way this movie could be spoiled. You could set this movie on fire and urinate on the ashes and not ruin it.
But since the cat is out of the bag, isn’t it nice that Lucas created over-the-top gay caricature “uncle” who turns out to be a bad guy?
Way to be creative there, Georgey boy. So, can we expect that someday you’ll go back and release a “Special Edition” of The Phantom Menace where Jar Jar is smokin’ weed and listening to Bob Marley while cleaning a rifle wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt? Because that would be less-offensive.
Please, let this movie fail
The only hope we have for this to be the last Star Wars movie is if it is a horrible box-office failure. (Or have an asteroid land on George Lucas.)
Please, do your part.
Do not see this movie.
If anyone asks you about this movie, tell them you heard it was horrible, painful to listen to and offensive. Even if you don’t care about the stereotyping (really?), you should care about good movie making.
Star Wars, which was once the pinnacle of science-fiction movie making, became a bad joke with the second trilogy, and is now a bad, unfunny joke — which is to say, tedious.
It needs to end now. It needs to be put into a nice retirement community where it can bask in the glow of What Used To Be, until some new director can come up with a vision of what a great action/science-fiction adventure can be for this generation.
Just keep Lucas the hell away from it, because the stench from the shit on his hands will ruin the whole thing.
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Star Wars: The Force Unleashed was recently released. I’ve been looking forward to this game more than any game since… well, ever.
While I am a huge computer geek, I’m not a huge gamer, and haven’t been since the demise of the Atari 7800 (which I still own and love).
Lego My Wii!
We picked up a copy of Lego Star Wars for the Wii several months ago.
At first I was annoyed at how hard it is. And it is. I’ve yelled at the TV plenty of times. There are things I don’t think you can figure out without the excellent free .
Save that page, bookmark it, learn it, love it.
Having said that, once you get used to how Lego Star Wars works, you can figure out the game, and it remains challenging and fun. I think it’s the most fun game that I’ve played on the Wii, and I’m strongly considering getting the Lego Indiana Jones and Batman games as well.
The Force Unleashed
The Force Unleashed has been on pre-order since the day it was announced. I watched, and re-watched, the trailer for the game several times. I was, as the kids say, “stoked”.
Last night I finished the game.
And it was… good.
But if you’ve got $50 to spend on just one Star Wars game for the Wii, get the Lego one.
Why?
Two Players:
- The Force Unleashed has a “Duel Mode” but not “Dual Mode”. Which is to say that you can fight against one another, but not with one another. This seems a huge oversight for such a group-oriented platform as the Wii, especially when so many of these games have a multi-player mode.
- Lego Star Wars lets two players fight together, and allows one player to drop out at any time. This means that Ethan and I can play together for awhile, and if I get a phone call or he gets bored, we can either pause it, or the other person can keep playing.
Saving Games
- The Force Unleashed makes it far to easy to accidentally overwrite a saved game. I know, because it happened to me.
- Lego Star Wars offers much better control.
Length of Game Play
- Lego Star Wars takes a long time to complete, but once you’re done with it, you really feel like you’ve gotten a lot out of the game. And we’re still playing despite having completed it.
- The Force Unleashed took me a few days to finish, and during that time I had two frustrations: things that were too easy, and things that were too hard. The mindless drones (e.g. storm troopers) are easy to pick off, but there are a lot of them. The bigger enemies are really difficult to kill off, but once you figure out The Secrets, it actually gets to be fairly boring. I found myself thinking “OK, I know what I have to do to defeat this guy, but man it’s taking a long time.”
- Overall Challenge
- Lego Star Wars is hard. Sometimes maddeningly so. Without the guide mentioned above, I never would have finished it. But
- The Force Unleashed is hard, but a lot less enjoyable so. It’s not so much a matter of figuring things out as it is “Keep doing these things over and over again until you win.”
Force Unleashed Secrets Unleashed
When fighting major enemy, you will see either a nunchuck or Wii remote on the screen with 4 arrows (up/down/left/right). When you see that shake the holy hell out of the one shown and only the one shown. If you get it wrong, you will not cause as much damage.
Do not die. Major enemies will regain a bunch of strength if you do. This is probably the most frustrating part of the game, as they seem to get a disproportionate amount of their strength back.
In order not to die, use the “Force Dash”. A lot. Get behind stuff and then hit it. This is “the only way” to win. Also, when you are thrown or knocked off your feet, press “B” repeatedly and turn it into a jump.
When you are low on strength, be sure to run around and check the corners of whatever space you are in (room, field, whatever) for little red/orange canisters which will renew your strength.
Build up your “Force Lightning” strength by buying it in the “Force Powers”. Let’s you do damage from afar.
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So today I got a little political.
Barack Obama’s campaign has an actual presence in our little neck of the woods, and I’ve been in communication with the local coordinator for awhile. I’ve been to a couple of events, worked on a letter to the editor about Obama not being a Muslim (and otherwise in favor of truth-telling), and today I made some phone calls.
I had no idea what to prepare, so I tried not to imagine what it would be like.
Which worked fine right up until the time when I started imagining what it would be like:
Setting
Image: A roomful of people making calls, “generating buzz” and being part of the process of making the world a better place by helping to get someone elected who seems to have some new, better, different ideas and ways of doing things.
Reality: there were 3 of us. Two guys who are working there pretty much full-time, and me. The office was covered in hastily hung political ads, with some visual aids to help you remember what you were supposed to do.
Mission
Image: Engaging in thoughtful conversation about the two candidates and hopefully persuading someone who Obama is the better candidate.
Reality: Handed a script which basically said “Are you: 1) Supporting Obama, 2) Leaning Towards Obama, 3) Undecided, 4) Leaning Towards McCain, 5) Supporting McCain?” and then went from there, with a couple sample ideas of how to engage in conversation.
(So much for my thoughts about push-polling some anti-McCain questions: “How would you feel if you knew that McCain could only be kept alive by drinking placenta smoothies and soaking for two hours in the blood of freshly killed leggy blonde virgins?”)
The Actual Calls
Image: some for, some against, some undecided. Some upset that they are being interrupted. Some blasting off as to why Obama will ruin the country because he’s a Muslim who eats Baptist babies, some questioning how in the world McCain can have any level of support in the double digits.
Reality: I went through about 5 pages of phone numbers, and spoke to 3 actual people.
Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. I spoke to more people than that, but most of them either told me that the person I was calling for was not home, didn’t live there anymore, or I had the complete wrong number.
Then there were the answering machines.
And one that sounded like a fax machine (SCREEE-CRRRR-ZZZZ!)
One of the calls went like this (names changed because I don’t remember the actual names):
Me: “Is Edward Scissorbutt available?”
Her: “Well, he’s out in the garage.” (Imagine a voice that sounds like the deepest stereotypical white southern not-rich person you can imagine.)
Me: (Thinking: “Does she mean his body is in the garage? Did he commit suicide by running the car with the door down? Or maybe she killed him and stuffed his body in the trunk. Note to self: you’ve been watching too much CSI.”)
Her: “Ya want me ta get ‘im?”
Me: “Um” (this is not in the script) “I could call back—”
Her: “I’ll get ‘im. He’s just in the garage messin’ around.”
Me: “Ok, thanks.”
Her (to him): “You got a phone call.”
Him: “Who is it?”
Her: “I ain’t got any idea.”
Him: “Well just give it here.”
(Sounds of phone being exchanged.)
Him: “Hello?”
Me: “Is this” (oh crap who is this supposed to be? Eyes dart down the call sheet) “Edward Scissorbut?”
Him: “Well yeah.” (Note: he didn’t sound all that happy. I’m not sure if it was with me or just life, but I was bracing myself.)
Me: “Hi, my name is Tim and I’m with the Obama Biden campaign here in Ohio.” (Oh crap I forgot the next part, eyes darting along script, wait, that’s not the script, that’s the call list. Panic PANIC PANIC SAY SOMETHING ANYTHING)
Me: “Are you still at 4328 Maplewood Rd?”
Him: “Naw I’m at 83921 State Road 8334 (some other city).”
Me: “Oh, um” (shit this isn’t on the script, because this isn’t what I’m supposed to be talking to him about, what the bleep do I say next?) “Have you, um, updated your voter information?”
Him: “Nah, I ain’t done that.”
Me: (OH! I’ve got a script for this part!) “Did you know Ohio recently changed their law allowing you to vote by mail or in person anytime after September 30th?”
Him: “No I didn’t know that.”
Me: “You can vote in person at the court house” (Oh crap he doesn’t live here anymore that’s probably not where he can vote shit shit shit) “OR I could send you a vote by mail form. Would you like me to send you the vote by mail form?”
Him: “Well sure!”
(I confirmed his new address. Then I realize I haven’t asked him who he’s going to vote for. I may just have offered to send a McCain supporter a voter registration form. If he wins Ohio by one vote it will be my fault!)
Me: “So, can I ask if you’ve decided to support Senator Obama?”
Him: “Well hell yeah, I’m a Democrat.”
Me: (Whew. Ok, get out before you blow this.) “Well that’s great, I’m really excited about it. I’ll get that voter registration form to you as soon as possible. Thanks!”
Him: “Thanks buddy, good night.”
I realized then and there that I should stand up and walk out of the building, never to return. Not because I had done so poorly (which I had) but because it’s doubtful I’d ever feel better about a single call than I did right then. I helped someone vote who may not have been able to do so otherwise.
The Power.
But I knew I couldn’t do that.
I told Seth what had happened, and he told me to ring the bell.
“Oh wait,” he said, “I forgot to tell you about the bell! Whenever you get an undecided to sway towards Obama or a McCain supporter to support Obama instead, or get someone registered, you get to ring the bell.”
Me, thinking to myself: “Oh this is so juvenile. Really? A bell?”
Him: “Go ahead. Ring the bell.”
I sighed internally and rang the bell.
Dude, I’m not kidding, I felt like the angel who got his wings.
I realize it’s just a dumb psychological trick that has absolutely no redeeming value or meaning, but wow, I totally want a bell on my desk and every time I accomplish something, I’m going to ring the bell. Maybe I’ll hook it to a food dispenser and a pellet will come out or something.
I kept making calls.
And kept getting nowhere.
I was calling people who are defined as “Sporadic Democrats” which is to say that they don’t often vote, but when they do, they vote Democrat, or tend to.
Seth also explained that these are often people who move around a lot, which is why I was getting a lot of wrong numbers.
Or answering machines.
Now we were calling between 5:30-6:30 so it’s entirely possible that a lot of them just weren’t home from work or maybe they work second shift or two jobs. But I only managed to track down 3-4 of the actual people I was looking for.
One said that she and her husband were Democrats but undecided. They didn’t have any questions for me about Obama, they had watched a lot of stuff already, but were waiting for the debates.
Another said he was a Democrat and would never vote for McCain, but wouldn’t say that he was going to vote for Obama either. When I asked if he had any questions I could answer, he said: “Well, if you could tell me for sure he’s not a Muslim…”
AAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!
Me: “Well, I can. He’s not a Muslim, he’s attended a Christian church for a number of years—”
Him: “Well I’ve heard both stories on the Internet.”
Me: “—attended a Christian church.”
Him: “Well I’m sure not going to vote for McCain.”
Me: “Ok, well I hope that we can count on your vote for Obama. Good night!”
Him: “Goodnight”
Last Call
I wanted one more ring of that bell. So I kept on going. I was tired and frustrated and hungry and tired but I kept on calling.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Disconnected.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Wrong number.
Answering Machine.
Answering Machine.
Finally I got a woman, she identified herself as the woman I was looking for.
Me: “Hi, my name is Tim and I’m with the Obama Biden campaign here in Ohio.”
Her: (Click)
Well I can’t blame her. I hate getting calls at home too.
So that was it.
No more bell ringing. Left feeling kinda frustrated by the whole thing. I probably could have stayed longer but I was beyond tired and wasn’t up for any more.
But for at least one guy, it made a difference.
It’s a start.
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What is TwitReport?
TwitReport takes the email that Twitter sends you when someone follows you and turns it into something more useful.
What does TwitReport tell me?
This is what TwitReport tells you about the new follower:
- Full name (if given)
- Twittername
- Bio, Location, URL (if given)
- How many people they follow
- How many people they are followed by
- Total # of Favorites
- When they joined Twitter
- Total # of posts
- Percentage of @Replies
- Average posts per day
- 20 most recent posts (and a link to more if they have more than 20)
What sets TwitReport apart are the “Relationship Reports”:
- Who do I follow who follows this new person?
- Who do I follow who this person also follows?
- Who follows both me and this new person?
You also get links to:
* Follow them
* Send them a DM
* Block them
* See a larger version of their picture
You can also, if you choose, get a DM with basic stats information when someone follows you. (You control whether these DMs are sent or not. See below.)
Compared to TwiMailer
recently launched with a much better PR campaign than TwitReport.
It actually does less than TwitReport does, as far as I can tell, with one exception: TwiMailer gives you a link to follow someone right in the email. TwitReports give you a link to the the new follower’s Twitter page and you have to click that, and then click follow.
TwiMailer does not give the “Relationships” information, nor does it make it easy to use with multiple Twitter accounts. It also does not offer “Block” links (something I assume will change soon).
Oh, and you don’t have to change your email address in Twitter.
TwitMailer and TwitReports are not competitors
I have no financial stake in TwitReport, just hours spent.
If TwiMailer would include all the TwitReport information, I would happily suspend development.
Ideally, though, this ought to be what Twitter is providing.
So How Do I Use It?
Couple of options:
When you get a “New Follower” email (like the one shown above), simply forward it to
twitreport AT tntluoma DOT com . The only important thing is that you Do Not Change The Subject Line (adding a FWD: or FW: at the beginning is not a problem). [Update 2009-02-15: See note below under ‘Auto DMs of New Followers’]Send a blank email to the above address with the Subject: twitreport foobar (where “foobar” is the Twittername you want to get a report for). This is helpful if you just want to check someone’s information even if they don’t follow you.
Setup an automatic forwarding rule in your mail program.
That last option is by far the slickest, and it’s what I do.
If you use GMail, all you need to do is setup a filter with the following criteria:
- From: “@postmaster.twitter.com”
- Subject: is now following you on twitter!
which should look like this:
and then click Next Step
- Check “Skip the Inbox (Archive it) [Note: this is recommended but not strictly required. IMO it just makes sense to ignore the official email because the new one should arrive in a minute or two]
- Forward it to (the above address, shown in the image)
- Click “Update Filter”
Note: Gmail will not forward email that you have already received, so don’t ask.
A Note About Forwarding
Apple’s Mail program (and others) will let you create a “rule” to forward automatically, but it does not maintain the original Twitter headers, so you will not get the Relationship Reports.
Auto DMs of New Followers
on Twitter came up with a very cool idea. He asked if it would be possible to get a Direct Message (DM) whenever someone new starts following you.
Turns out this is possible, but there are very specific criteria:
You must be following . The DMs will come from that account. It is a very low volume account which generally only gets very sporadic posts when I am tinkering with the scripts. Which I don’t expect to do very often.
You must be forwarding the New Follower Emails automatically. The way Gmail does it works, I don’t know about other methods. They must keep the ‘X-Twitterrecipientscreenname’ header intact.
What info is included in the DM? Currently it includes their Full Name (if given), Followers/Following/# of Posts, how many days since they joined twitter, and their Bio. Oh, and if their updates are ‘Protected’ it will tell you that. (Subject to change. Have a suggestion? Leave a comment below.)
Q: What if I want to follow but don’t want the DMs?
Simple: change your email filter which sends the New Follower Emails so that it forwards to ‘twitreport+nodm@tntluoma.com’ instead of ‘twitreport@tntluoma.com’
One More Thing…..
Make sure that you go to and verify that there is a checkbox next to “New Follower Emails”:
otherwise the rest of this is pretty much useless!
There is an account too, but you can leave comments, ideas, etc here too.
Change Log
Version 1: Nov 2008
Based entirely on web scraping using ‘lynx’ and several commandline Unix tools
Version 2: Early Feb 2009
Begun to use API calls for most information. More information now available and less error-prone.
Version 3: 2009-02-15
* Notification emails now include the new follower’s Twitter Icon. If you’re anything like me, you may recognize people more by their icon than their name.
* Direct Messages now supported for new followers
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This from :
Recalling to mind this trenchant bit of wisdom: “The only consistent feature of all your dissatisfying relationships is you.”
made me think of this clip of Ron White from his lovely performance :
[Warning: contains strong language (F-word)]
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