Saturday, March 28, 2009

Now *that* is the type of reputation I want!

So a few days ago, I got a facebook message from a friend on facebook:

"Hey I've got a couple guys up here who are going to see STAR TREK in IMAX at midnight on opening day.. would you be willing to combine groups?"

Read it again. Go on, I'll wait.

Nowhere in there does he ask *if* I'm going to the Midnight showing. He starts with the assumption that I'm not only going to see "Star Trek", but that I *allready* have plans to do so.
The movie comes out on May 8th. I got this message in early March. That's about TWO months in advance.

And you know what? I allready had my babysitter set up and the night requested off from work.

A few days ago on Twitter, I had posted a pic of a "Beam-Up Badge" from my Froot Loops box. A friend asked me to post a pic of them *when* I collected them all.
He has no doubt in his mind that I will keep eating Froot Loops until I collect all 5.

Now *that* is the type of reputation that I want.

Friday, March 13, 2009

How I like my burgers

I enjoyed a really tasty $6 Burger from Hardee's today, so I figured I'd talk about it.

Every now and then, someone wil be kind enough to pick me up a sandwhich. I love sandwhiches. But I don't love certain toppings.
So if you want to buy me a sandwhich, this is the way to do it.

Go to Hardee's (or Carl's Jr.). Seriously. You *won't* be disapointed.

And I'll understand if you're not willing to spring for the $6 Burger. Just follow the rest. (and if you actually end up at Burger King, follow these too).

Cheese, bacon & ketchup.
That's it. That is all I want on top of that pattie. Maybe some jalapeños. Not everywhere has them.

Of course, you might not remember that. But PLEASE remember this: NO PICKLES!!!

Once again:


NO PICKLES!!!


If there were pickles on the sandwhich, I won't eat it. Period.


And now on to chicken sandwhiches.

Let's say you're going to Chick-fil-A. Just tell them no pickles, and pick up a few things of BBQ sauce. Simple. And I like the "fat chicken" lemonade. I also like Dr Pepper. No ice.

Friday, March 6, 2009

Can I Move Your Comment?

So I belong to more social networks than I know what to do with.
This is why Ihave so much automation and forwarding going on.
My Brightkite forwards to Twitter which forwards to Facebook.
This blog is imported into Facebook as a "note", and a status is posted to Twitter (which goes to Facebook).
You may have noticed that MySpace gets ignored.

My photos are another story all together.

But let's say you like what I have to say. Depending on what network you're on will depend on how you reply. It'll also affect which comments you see.

If I make a post on Brightkite, someone might comment on brightkite.

The same update could get me an @reply or a RT on Twitter.

And then I could get a comment or a "like" on Facebook.

But even though I've received all of this praise, it's spread too thin.
I want to be able to scoop up all of the comments into one place.

(The same goes for this blog post. Chances are, I'll get an @reply on Twitter that my blog readers won't see that my facebook friends won't see, which will be lost in a sea of tweets.)

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

*SuS Qel #tlh #suess

In honor of Dr. Suess' birthday (which was yesterday), I'm posting my Klingon Dr. Suess-ish rhyme that I wrote on Sat, 13 Jan 2007 08:23:34 -0600 (accoring to gmail...)

Anyone want to illustrate?

DoS DaghoS
SoS DaloS

'aqroS HoS
ngep'oS DatoS

Qo'noS DaghoS
joS loS QonoS
qoS moS, Qo'noS ghoS SoS

choS DaloSbe', bIQoS--bIjoSbe', yoS Da'oS

SoS woS DaroS
bInoSchugh, HoS DamoS

tlhoS DungoS *voSmoSghoS

-----------

(*SuS Qel Ha'DIbaH 'oS *voSmoSghoS'e')

@replies vs mentions on Twitter; why you need to be watching both)

I joined Twitter in October of 2007. A lot has changed since then. As someone who doesn't sit in front of a computer all day, it took me a while to realize I needed to be clicking on the "Replies" tab.
Twitter is kind enough to sort all messages begining with @roneyii (my handle) (known as an @reply) into a nice little bunch. It keeps me from having to sort through hundreds of tweets.
There's a problem though, not every message to me *starts* with "@roneyii" and sometimes a message isn't *to* me, but *about* me.
For example, my friend says the following, "@ex1 @roneyii Are there plans tonight?"
Twitter considers this an @reply to @ex1, and since I don't follow @ex1, I'll never see it unless I go to my friend's profile.
Or, "Had a great time with @roneyii today!". I'll see this one in my stream, but once again, not in my @replies.

Where are these messages?
Well, nowhere special. Chances are, you're missing out.
According to Twitter Search (http://search.twitter.com), these are called "mentions".
And at the moment, Twitter doesn't have a "mentions" tab.

There are a few ways to work around this.

(Twitter /used to/ have a feature called "tracking". It would send you an SMS EVERY time a tweet contained a keyword. So, if I tracked @roneyii, I'd ensure all of those messages made it to my phone. Sadly, tracking is no more.)

One, you can setup an RSS feed from Twitter Search.
Search for @roneyii (well, *your* name) and you'll see every occurance, @reply AND mention.
Click on the link for the RSS feed for these results.
Then do what you would normally do with an RSS feed.
Or, you can setup a dummy Twitter account have a service such as TwitterFeed forward the RSS directly to that dummy account. (It's best to set that account to 'private'.)

This has the drawback of only processing 5 tweets per 30 minutes.

Your second option, is to join TweetLater. Their "@replies Digest" is very useful.
I have an hourly e-mail delivered to my in-box with every occurance of @roneyii. Even if I'm not on twitter, I don't miss out.

Third, I haven't had much expierience with the various Twitter clients, but I've recently started using Tweetstats Mobile. From the name, I at first thought it was one of those "ranking sites", but it turns out to be what m.twitter.com /should/ be.
One of the tabs is labled "ego". This includes all occurances of "@roneyii" that aren't considered @replies AND all occurances of "roneyii".
I have noticed quite a few RTs without the "@".
This works fine if you have an odd handle, my wife, @dalyn, however, had a bunch of tweets about Dalyn Rugs.

I use all of these options, and I hope that at least one of them will work for you.
If you have any others, please pass them on.