I don't know if you can tell, but I am worn out!
I am sorry to say there are not a ton of Movember updates for today. I went to KC on black Friday to get my new truck, replace some parts & do maintenance, and then today I drove the whole day away from KC to Denver. Basically, I did zero amount of work on anything pertaining to computers, the internet or Movember (other than grow my beard) this weekend. I am crashing pretty quickly so it is off to bed for me. I have to get up and be a programmer in the morning, so sleep is imperative.
November 27th, 2009 § 0
I decided that both growing my beard and my hair out was a bad idea. I had entirely too much hair atop my head, so one had to go. I gave myself a haircut.
Please RSVP for the party we are holding on Dec 4th, there will be over $1500 in prizes available!
Movember Links:
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As the month is closing out, I am finding that the Movember party is getting closer much faster than I anticipated. Despite this, I am getting tons of help from great people in Denver. There are so many prizes in the works right now that are not even mentioned on the event page, I just hope to get the info up before the event!
My requisite #movember picture of the day:
It'll fill in eventually...I hope
Important No Shave November/Movember Links:
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I am helping to organize a party for Dec 4th to benefit The Prostate Cancer Foundation and the Lance Armstrong Foundation. Both of these charities are aimed at ridding the world of Prostate Cancer, or at least demote it to the level of the common cold.
The party will be at The Rackhouse Pub on Kalamath and Alameda in Denver, CO. We already have a ton of prizes lined up (see the eventbrite page) and some great people coming. Since the event is to celebrate the Mo (Mustache or Moustache if you’re english) we are going to be having some barbers come and clean up our No Shave November Beards into Awesome Metal Mustaches. We’re going to leave it up to he barber to decide what they will look like, should be fun!
In order to continue to get great prizes, sponsorship and to keep my sanity I really need you to RSVP ASAP if you are going. There is a core group of people who have been working hard to make sure that this event is big and lots of fun, so please show your support for the cause and these people by hitting the RSVP button and reserving a spot for our party on your calendar. Plus, all you have to do is show up, drink some beer, and enjoy all the mustachioed goodness of a Movember party!
The beard so far
Important No Shave November/Movember Links:
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About Me/BackStory
I might regret admitting this: In almost EVERY SINGLE situation, if a friend or even an acquaintance needs help of any kind I am there 100% to help out in any way possible. I will help friends move, give free advice on WordPress or other web stuff, pick up a friend from the airport at 11:00pm because her flight was cancelled, I have even run into the burning house of people I didn’t know. It’s who I am and what I do, I always have.
Sometimes, I even go out looking for ways I can help. I have been known to ask NPOs like the 1010Project if I can promote what they are doing through my Twitter feed, on Launch Your Project or in any other way. I even have been working on a shadow project that could generate revenue and I am going to offer it to NPOs and other benevolent organizations first and for free.
I do these things because it makes me feel good and whenever possible, I put myself in a position where I can help out. I do not tell you these things to put myself up, or to make me seem like a good person. Fuck that. I say these things, because I am trying to lay the ground work for the story I am about to tell.
In elementary school in Prairie Village, Kansas I grew up in a part of the neighborhood where there were not very many kids. I had my friends who stayed at their grandma’s house two doors down and I had Jaymee Duncan who lived up the street. Jaymee and I would ride bikes and play “Man Hunter”, we would hang out, or sleep over at each other’s houses on the weekends. Jaymee was such a good friend that when I was kicked out my house in high school, he let me stay in his room with him in the basement of his mom’s house for 6 months.
At some point, Jaymee got to be good friends with some guys who I eventually met and came to like quite a bit as well. One of the guys, who turns out to be almost exactly the same age as me (by a couple days at the most), was named Brandon. Brandon was not the smartest guy, but he was a good friend who was happy to just hang out with you, get drunk or high with you, and who would blindly have your back in a heartbeat. He would jump in a fight for you if slightly provoked. It’s just the kind of guy he was.
If I remember correctly, Brandon left for a while to go to Texas to see his mom and live with her for a while. After some time, he headed back to KC and hooked up with a guy he knew or met or something. The two of them started selling Xanax, and reportedly were making about $2000 a week. Needless to say, they got busted by the cops because they were not all that clandestine about their pharmaceutical business and Brandon’s friend rolled over on him. What this means is that his “friend” basically told the cops everything and then some to get a deal. Brandon, being the type of guy he is, said nothing because “you don’t rat out yer boy“, Brandon’s words.
Brandon went to jail.
He has been in and out of jail for almost 7 years. During one parole time, he got into coke and some cops (not his PO) found out and told him he had to help them get his coke dealer or he would be put back in jail. They set up the sting at Brandon’s workplace and when the deal went down, they raided the place like bored Prairie Village cops do – guns a-blazing, screaming, and generally excited to be involved in anything other than harassing 16 year-olds for minor traffic violations. Again, needless to say, Brandon lost his job. Well, part of his parole was that he had to have a job. Being a convict, he couldn’t get another one. Being depressed about what had happened, he made more bad decisions and went back to jail. Over the next 5 years, he was in and out and couldn’t stop “dropping dirty” – Brandon’s words again, for when he had drugs show up in his mandatory piss tests. So he is back in the slammer, he says for the last time.
Brandon has somehow always remembered my phone number, so before he went back into jail he called to check in and tell me what was going on. He asked for my address, which I gladly gave him.
About a week ago, I got a letter from Brandon. He told me about jail, about his plans to find a solid footing when he gets out, and how much it sucks in prison. Some quotes (just as he wrote them in the letter):
“I have to go eat lunch, its hamburger. I am not going to eat though I sold mine for a stamp.”
“Prison is a lonely place, I have no moral support from my family at all. Its heartbreaking. But luckily I have goods friends like you and Jaymee. Jaymee once told me that no matter what happens we would still be friends. I would like to think it applys to you to. You have seen me at my worst and still fucked [around] with me the next day and I got love and respect for you for that.”
He asked me to call his mom, so I can get her address and send it to him. Apparently, he does not have access to a phone at all.
My Dilemma
The next part is what is killing me, and made me want to write this blog post and ask for what you would do.
He sent me a couple money slips, and asked me to send him some cash. $300 or about $22 a month, which he says “I put it on our friendship that I will pay you back. If I didn’t need help I wouldn’t ask”.
I am torn because Brandon got himself in this situation despite the advice and pleas of his friends. I am also torn because of the quality friend that he was to me when he was out of jail. I hear from him sometimes more often than I hear from other people I knew in high school that have never even seen inside a jail except on TV.
What would you do? Would you fill out the money slip and send him the cash?
I plan to find out his mom’s address, write him back, and to send him a sheet of stamps so he can write back. I just don’t know if I should send him the money. Please help!
—-
To answer a question: He says the money is for toiletries and things of that nature.
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These are all of the features I would like to see in a single twitter app. If there is a twitter app that already has all of these features, then tell me, so I can STFU and get my perfect app. I would love it if this could happen.
Twitter Features
- Following/Unfollowing
- Allow me to follow or unfollow people from the app. I know the API has this feature.
- Search
- Yep, I want to be able to search.
- Yep, I would like the results to be in a time line like my normal feed
- Yep, I would like to have multiple searches
- Nope, you don’t have to keep these running in the background, just run them when I look at them.
- Please try to get all the ones since the last one I looked at, or allow me a limit, or tell me about a limit, of how many you will pull if there are too many since the last time I looked.
- Hashtags
- You’ve got reply functionality, now link the #hashtags to the search page for them.
App Features
- Always on top
- Give me the option. (Thanks pwitter!)
- API limitations awareness
- know your limitations, compensate. If I get 100 tweets per minute, you still don’t need to check every minute, if it means I am going to get 100 error messages from your app. I would rather it be late, than see how your algorithm for pulling tweets is broken. (had problems on twitteriffic once an hour and pwitter 3 times in the first hour I used it)
- Multiple twitter accounts in one feed
- I choose the outline color for each account
- Click the reply button in the feed item and replies from that account
- Reply button functionality
- I know why the @username always goes to the front of the twitter post I am writing, but I would like the option to turn that off. I want the @username to go where my cursor is in the message. Having to copy/paste or write it out myself sucks.
- Retweet option
- I want to be able to 1-click to put a whole tweet in my typing box, with the letters RT and the original twitterer’s name
- Don’t use via, seriously wtf!?
- Mark feed items as read
- Many of the programs out there do this, many don’t (pwitter I’m looking at you)
- Also, when you get more items from my feed, please remember where I was, and leave the last tweet I touched in the active window
- I don’t know about you, but I don’t watch my twitter feed. I take mini vacations from work to check it.
- Idiot Proofing
- I have a feeling most of my request fall under this, but bear with me anyways…
- I always send half a tweet, because my enter button is too close to my quotes button ( ” ), so ctrl + enter option is really nice (thanks pwitter)
- Status Updates
- Update my status on Adium, iChat, etc. Twitteriffic does this with style.
- Would be cool if it would update my status on FaceBook, LinkedIn, etc. too
Display Features
- Timeline
- Pull EVERYTHING since the last feed item I looked at
- For multiple accounts, this means for the last item I looked at for each account, respectively
- Pull items in the order they were tweeted, don’t add a bunch of crap at the bottom. If you pull all the new stuff, you don’t have to worry about making sure I don’t miss something. (Twitteriffic pulls Replies and DMs to the bottom of your feed, why!?)
- Replies
- Make sure that replies to me have a background color that is easy to identify quickly.
- Also, please make sure that it is easy to identify when I have that feed item selected.
- These should NEVER look like all the other feed items, they are special, so make them look that way
- Background options
- Make as many colors as you want for backgrounds, but at least include black (spaz I’m looking at you)
- User Icon on left of twitter post
- Do not wrap the twitter post around the icon, that’s annoying
- Or allow me the option to customize this
Extras
- Image posting to TweetPic (again idiot proofed)
- drag + drop into the tweet window would be amazing, I don’t really like having to use a browse/upload feature
- Tr.im support
- I like tr.im because it is one of the shortest url smashers out there. Also, they are great guys
- Growl support
- It’s great to have this, but please make sure it works. Half the time, the apps I have seen have it, but the notifications never come up.
Bonus Points for Style
- Grouping My users
- Tweetdeck does it, but I don’t like how they do it. It would be better if I didn’t have to employ a monitor-sized window to see all my groups
- Allowing me to group them across multiple accounts = super mega mega bonus points
- Make it free – also see 3rd item in “Plugins” below
- I know this is a hugely tall order for all the features that I am asking. BUT, if you can put ads in every 20-50 feed items you could make good money.
- I understand you have to make money, and rightly so. Putting an ad in for a free item is totally cool with me.
- Now, if you can put in ads based on the content of the tweets around the ads…I might actually click them and not ignore them.
- Plugins
- Make an interface that will allow for plugins. This way you don’t have to write ALL of this code at once, and you can allow 3rd parties to write code for you.
- This will allow anyone to choose their own suite of features and customize your software to them.
- You could charge for plugins.
I will probably think of more things I would love to have, I know I am taking a pie-in-the-sky approach to my feature requests…
Added After publishing
- I would like to be able to ctrl+click or apple+click to open the link without losing the twitter window. So I can open a bunch of links without having to track down my window or have my mouse lose focus on the current window.
- I want to be able to search within my timeline. I am tired of losing quality twitter posts that I want to revisit or retweet.
- Suggestive features to choose a name from people I follow. Could suggest as I type after the @ symbol, or just be a drop down.
- From @xstaticstacey: add the ability to see all replies all the time
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