I do not have the tallies all in yet, but my estimate is that we raised just about $1500 for The Prostate Cancer Foundation and The Lance Armstrong Foundation at the party!

Thank you to all the people who came to the party, who brought donations both monetary and for the raffle, who helped me keep things running smoothly, and who had a great time.

As I get more pictures and information I will post them both here on my blog and through Twitter so that everyone can get a glimpse of the great fun we had. If you know who all won prizes at the event, I would really appreciate you sharing this information with me so I can share with our sponsors.

Pictures & Articles

@yosoykia took some awesome pictures and posted them on Ossumniss.

Terry Cabeen (@tcabeen) posted an article about Movember.

CBS4 News covered our event!

A roll of raffle tickets and only a small number of the prize envelopes

The movember style guide

@brandonblaine choosing his style

@keithives getting a shave from Brian Poskin

@tekee preparing to get his beard cleaned up into a pretty nice chin strap

@joeburnham pre-shave, getting his shave inspected, and then rocking some awesome handlebars

@markwmann pre-shave, getting his massive beard trimmed down to some amazing mutton chops

@mbernier talking on stage, Mo picture from the day after

@gpelz rocking an awesome Mo-sista ’stache

@kyleindenver pre-shave, starting the shave, getting shaved, being interviewed during his shave

Special Thanks

I wanted to give special thanks to a couple people who may or may not have gotten that thanks the night of the party:

Thank you to @cerippe and @rackhousepub for giving us this location to have this party, helping set everything up, having amazing food, great beer & whiskey, and for being awesome!

Jason Janell (@meatflag) and Kendal Ruth (@iamkendal) Thank you tremendously for manning the door all night and helping us sell so many raffle tickets

Ashley Kingsley of ASHER SOLUTIONS (@ashleykingsley), Miss Movember herself, thank you so much for helping to gather up so many awesome prizes and for introducing me to the really great people you got the prizes from.

Thank you to @markwmann for helping to organize the event and for bringing Troy Negley (TNegley at archstonemail dot com) our great DJ!

Thank you to @kyleindenver for helping to set everything up and introducing all of us to Brian Poskin

Thank you to Brian Poskin of Ollies for sculpting some amazing Mustaches out of the horrible facial hair most of us called beards.

Thank you to @mistymontano & @CBS4Denver for sending out a camera man and interviewing @kylindenver about our event!

Thank you to @NealStewart & Mike’s Hard Lemonade, Co for sponsoring our event by donating $5.00 for every person in the door and for sampling your great new Hard Cider drink.  I can safely say that people loved the new drink!

Thank you to @RedHeadWriting for introducing me to both Chris Rippe & Neal Stewart!

Thank you to all of the people, businesses and everyone who provided great prizes for the event.

Prize Winners

@snowkitten won the St. Supery Winery Tour

@keithives won The LoHi Steakbar $50 gift certificate

@gabelee won one of the St. Supery Magnums

@DKMayer won the Signed Joe Sakic Jersey Silent Auction

Did you win something? Tell me and I will post your name and prize here!

I guess we will have to try to go bigger and more awesome next year. Since we know we want to do it before Nov 1st, we can be better prepared for an even bigger party!

P.S. If I left anyone out above or you have pics to share just drop me a comment and I will add you ASAP!

#nsn – No Shave November (Twitter List)

Here is before I shaved this morning:

Here is after I shaved:

Who is that Guy?

I do not EVER shaved my chin.  So, when I do it always feels really weird.  I also decided to use a brand new razor this morning, because well…I am not going to be using one for the whole month. This means I am saving money!

No Shave November is an easy and fun thing to do.  Just don’t shave!

The idea is to grow the most impressive beard you can in the month of November.

Here are the rules:

1. Shave your face on November 1st
2. Grow your beard during November
3. You can trim/shave:
   1. Your Mustache out of your mouth – dude seriously
   2. Your neck – I have yet to see a good neck beard, prove me wrong if you want. I am shaving my neck

Links:

• Twitter List – I’ll add you, just tell me you are in!
• Twitter Searches:
  • “#nsn”
  • “No Shave November”
  • “Novembeard”
• Novembeard the Site! – email your JPG in and they will post it to their site
• Join the Metal Mustache Team!

Send me your pics, and I will share them here!

Pro Note: I will post my beard pics on the blog and on Facebook as the beard develops. Join me, share your pics!

I have been playing with Twitter Lists today, since I was given the privilege today.  The first thing I thought was, I would really like to get a list of all my Denver friends. So here you go:

Denver Area People – 500 users

Denver Area People 2 – 500 users

Denver Area People 3 – 288 Users

Denver Area Businesses – 12 users

If you know someone who should be on this list, please tell me and I will add them in.  Just contact me on Twitter!

Twitter API with Zend Part 1.  Post Moved to ReinforceMedia.com

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.

In your .htaccess just do this:

This will ignore php files, and any files that are requested deeper into the site like JS or CSS.

So, when I built ProbableFollow.com it was perfectly clear to me why I was building it.  It seems that maybe I live in my own little bubble where flowers bloom, the sun rises every day, and as I skip and whistle through the forest while all the wonderful animals harmonize with me.

It turns out that my idea has caused some controversy and some very confused tweeple.  Some people seem to think that I am making a statement and pushing my non-twitter-purist ideals on them because they have a low follow back probability.  Some people seem to think that I am aggrandizing those that follow everyone back, just because I put the 98%+ crowd on the homepage.

So, I will explain what your percentage means, from my point of view:

0% - You never follow anyone - OR - follow so few people relative to those that follow you that it doesn’t even register as a single percent - OR – you are really popular (@aplusk) and there is no way you could ever want to, need to, or think about following all those people back.

1%-10% – There is a good chance you have not discovered TweetDeck, or figured out all the filtering options - OR - You are a person who believes that you should only follow people you know who are good friends. “Following anyone else would cause too much noise” - OR – you are really popular (@aplusk) and there is no way you could ever want to, need to, or think about following all those people back.

11%-35% – You are careful about who you follow and probably often remove people who are too noisy (like @guykawasaki) or who do not contribute anything to your day, knowledge of the world, etc.

36%-60% -You are either careful who you follow and haven’t cleaned up the riff-raff yet - OR – just started using an auto-follow app/site.

61%-80% - I have found that when I was in this percentile, I was following more people than who followed me and was stuck at the following limits that Twitter imposes (they typically allow a 10% difference) - OR – you went on a following rampage, hoping to get more followers.

If you are pushing the following limits and want some more freedom, I suggest using Dossy’s Twitter Karma and unfollowing some people.

81%-95% - You probably have an auto-follow app running on your account, you probably follow people when they talk to you, you know what TweetDeck is and you use it religiously.

96%-99.4% – You find it very important to follow people back and typically stay on top of making sure that everyone who follows is followed back.  Probably, you were actually working and got behind on your following, or it is Follow Friday.

99.5%-100% – This is a special place that is hard to stay in.  You are religious about following everyone back - OR – you never follow anyone unless they follow you - OR – you stay on top of cleaning house when someone doesn’t return the favor.

—–

If you don’t like these descriptions or agree with them, please tell me why in the comments below.

Since Startup Weekend, I have noticed the impact that having that many top-notch people around in one place has had on those same top-notch people.

Many different blog posts, tweets and general conversation has come out of this weekend.  So I am going to do my best to aggregate some of that information here.

Twitter Posts #swb09

LilBiker’s Startup Weekend Boulder 3 (note: Neal and I are in the picture towards the bottom of the article!)

LilBiker’s Flickr Set of Startup Weekend Photos

Presentation Video of all of the Startup Weekend Ideas.

The Official Startup Weekend Boulder 3 Page

Startup Weekend’s Idea Fuel (Illegal Pete’s)

—-

If there are any other links that I am missing, please tell me and I will add them!

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