From the monthly archives:

March 2008

Tweet me on TWITTER, Tweety!

by RhodesTer on March 26, 2008

I’ve added a new gadget that I want to make you aware of.  Now, before you go thinking that I must be some kind of goofy gadget guy who loves all these bells and whistles that are coming out today, allow me to assuage your concerns – I can hardly keep up with them, and I find most of them to be annoying little nuisances that are destroying the simplicity of the Internet, if there’s still such a thing.

I’m from the Pac-Man generation, meaning I’m more comfortable with a little yellow guy negotiating a maze under joystick control, instead of the complexities of WOW, which stands for “Wickedly Over-Whelming”.

But coffeesister is a pretty good gadget judge, and once in a while she adds one that I find intriguing, so I have her add it to mine (I try not to mess with the html, lest I make a mess of it).  The latest addition is a TWITTER widget, which you’ll see over to the left, just over my ABOUT RHODESTER box..

(UPdate – it’s now to the right at the top in the lefthand sidebar, on the shelf next to the coffee maker.)

The widget is not TWITTER itself.. it’s just a widget that someone made to allow my twitter stream to be shown on my blog sidebar.  My twitter stream has nothing to do with any biological functions, it simply refers to the “tweets” I put on my TWITTER.  Tweets are little mini-blogs of one or two lines – kind of a status update, like MySpace and FaceBook have been doing for a while.  Only it turns out that TWITTER is an ingenious design, in that TWEETING is ALL it does, and you don’t have to go to the TWITTER site to tweet.  You can tweet from your chat program, a widget on your desktop or your mobile device, be it a phone or some kind of wireless thingy.

Yes, they call it “tweeting”.  Tweeting on TWITTER.  It all makes perfect sense after a few beers.

I’ve just started tweeting, and here’s what’s got me so excited that I’m going through underwear about five times faster than usual.. GOOGLE CHAT is the only live chat program I use, and I keep a module open when I’m online, in case anyone who knows me wants to say HI or borrow money (heh, good luck with THAT!)

When you join TWITTER and start tweeting, they allow you to add TWITTER as a friend in Google chat.  It’s solely for the purpose of tweeting, which means you don’t have to actually chat with a live person.  It’s only the TWITTER computer on the other end, and if you send it a line like..

“doing laundry and waiting for the mail”

..it immediately puts it into your twitter stream.  In my case, it shows up in my blog widget right away, just because I know how concerned you all are with what RhodesTer is up to moment by moment, and making sure that his underwear is clean, especially after having discovered a gadget like TWITTER.

You can also follow the tweets of your friends using the chat module if you’d like.  It sounds excruciatingly dull, but it’s really quite addictive and interesting, just like The Southern Conservative.

It’s still an ongoing, raging debate as to whether or not the human race is descended from monkeys and, whereas the jury is still out on that, I think it’s perfectly obvious that the people who designed TWITTER, which allows you to TWEET, are descended from birds.  These birds have thought of everything too.. not only can you tweet from your chat module, mobile device or desktop, I’m sure that someday soon you’ll be able to do so from your microwave, fridge and television set. Possibly, you’ll just think a tweet, and it’ll show up in your twitter stream.. how awesome would that be?

Also, you don’t have to follow the twitter streams of everyone in the world, which would be a tad overwhelming.  There’s a “PUBLIC TIMELINE” page on the TWITTER website that shows the twitter streams of the most recent people who’ve tweeted, and none of them are more than a few seconds old whenever you look at it.  This means that people all over the world are tweeting all of the time, in different languages, while sitting in chairs, walking along sidewalks, driving their cars or flying through the air.

I didn’t say they did it safely.

When you join TWITTER, you can opt to just follow the tweets of certain people, and you can choose to let anyone follow yours, or just your friends.  I have about 9 people I’m following the tweets of,

(UPdate – I now have about 9 zillion.)

and they all show up in a widget on my desktop, whereas I’m the only one who shows up in my BLOG WIDGET, because I don’t want to inundate you with too much information.. that would just be wrong.

So, my tweets are the only ones that show up on my sidebar, because it’s my blog.

A part of the fun is that I can put a little blurb on there that I don’t necessarily want to blog about, and I can do it easily from my chat or mobile phone.

Don’t you WANT to know when I’m in the shower?  Now you can!

If I know you, and you join up because of me, then let me know and I’ll follow your tweets.  You can follow mine too, without loading this blog.  You can opt to have them sent to your mobile device, desktop widget and/or chat module – or not.  YOU’RE the one in control, and you have a zillion options, which is the nice thing about using TWITTER to TWEET.

On a final note, coffeesister invites you to follow HER tweets too, and she’ll likely follow yours.  As for the nuts and bolts about adding TWITTER WIDGETS and all of that stuff, please ask HER.. I haven’t a clue.

Call me Pac-Man.

(UPdate – I added the current Twitter widget ALL BY MYSELF because I’ve since grown to become a technical genius, but please don’t ask me to speak in binary code just yet.)

RhodesTer on Twitter/Subscribe to this blog

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{ 11 comments }

Sunday Snapshots

by RhodesTer on March 23, 2008

WordPictures From The Week

Coffeesister pours over a POTTERY BARN catalog with a look of puzzlement, as she sits in the Coffee Bean at the local supermarket. She never knew there were so many different shades of beige which can be applied to furniture, bedding and lamps. She poignantly points out to RhodesTer that most of the pieces offered are the same shade as the foam on her cappuccino, yet no cappuccino makers are offered in the catalog. The irony!

Meanwhile, RhodesTer puzzles over the goth bag girl they call Sara, and wonders why she’s bagging broccoli instead of modeling for millions. Her beyond-pretty face should be shared with the minions, and used to peddle products internationally. If we could just do something with that god-awful hair, she’d be pestered by paparazzi. A brief chat with her reveals the sad truth – the modeling world would eat her alive. Naivety seems to be her virtue, and she’s as deep as a puddle in a desert pond. Delightfully clueless, she is, which is rather endearing yet unfortunate for her. Of course, money and fame don’t mean a thing, except that you’re rich and famous.

The two young gentlemen are waiting for their car, which the valet attendant has scooted off to fetch for them. RhodesTer is seated on the bench and wonders if either of them are old enough to drive, just as their middle-aged female chaperon shows up. Oh, it’s HER car! She’s the one driving them around! Their white dress shirts are loose fitting, and their ties are just a bit skinnier than they are. RhodesTer greets them with a smile, and asks how their evening is going. “Fine sir,” replies the nearest and youngest. He hesitates before taking the plunge.. “Sir, may I ask you a question?” “Certainly,” replies RhodesTer, knowing full well what the question will probably be, given the preface. “Sir, have you ever talked with missionaries like us before?” RhodesTer ponders the slew of comebacks that bounce around in his brain, dismissing the most inappropriate ones, given that he’s on duty at the hotel and wearing a shirt that indicates such. He decides to go with the safest.. “Hmm, I’m not sure if they were EXACTLY like you.. maybe a bit taller.. and one of them was possibly Irish.”

The middle-aged female chaperon shoots a dark, darting glance that seems to indicate she finds sarcasm to be inappropriate during the process of proselytizing, while the boys secretly grin. The other one hands RhodesTer a Mormon tract, which he doesn’t toss into the trashcan next to him until the valet attendant has been tipped and the three are on their way. Sarcastic, but sensitive.

The weather in Palm Springs gets hotter, as does the still-carless RhodesTer as he peddles his bike to and from the hotel. He thinks of friends in other places who are trudging through March snow and braving blustering, biting winds that chill one to the bone. As they scrape ice from their windshields, RhodesTer considers context as he happily wipes a bit of sweat from his brow and continues on his way.

The happy homeless lady always greets RhodesTer with a smile as he whizzes by, while the gloomy homeless lady ten blocks farther along turns her back on him and society. They’ve both staked out bus stop benches that look exactly the same, so why is it that the former seems to be a cheery depository of mirth while the other is as dark as the depths of hell? You can’t tell RhodesTer that human beings don’t have good or bad spirits hanging around them, he won’t believe you.

Palm Springs is in full spring break swing, and so are the noisy girls in the room down on the end. RhodesTer can hear their party tunes as he approaches – it seems to be an Avril Lavigne song, but he’s not sure. Whatever it is, the girls know it by heart, and shout the lyrics at the top of their lungs as RhodesTer knocks on the door in response to the multiple complaints that have been generated. His knocks and announcements of “SECURITY!” go unheeded due to the volume level, leaving him with no choice but to open the door with his pass key, whereupon he bears witness to a sight that he hasn’t seen in ever.. a roomful of teen girls dancing and singing in their undies. It’s a live-action YouTube video, and RhodesTer is glad he took the refresher course in CPR, but wonders how to effectively apply it to himself.

Semi-nudity seems to be the in thing this season – just ask the six year old pantsless autistic boy who was wandering the hallways late at night. He won’t answer you though, due to the autistic thing, and he didn’t answer RhodesTer either, when asked what room mommy and daddy are sleeping in. Police were called and time went by, before daddy finally showed up in a panic to claim his clueless little boy, who had no idea how scared mommy and daddy were to awake and find him gone.

Back at the Coffee Bean, the young man they call Glenn asks RhodesTer if the hotel is hiring any valet attendants. RhodesTer considers Glenn’s girth and lies through his teeth, knowing full well that the plump young fellow would never fit behind the wheel of a Porsche, let alone fetch it quickly enough to please the patrons who are in a hurry. RhodesTer instead steers him in the direction of “banquet server” and, while giving Glenn his recommendation, he secretly hopes Glenn doesn’t eat his way out of a job – the cakes, cookies and jellyrolls are for guests only.

The construction crews are SO CLOSE to completing the project next door! There’s going to be a new PETCO, and all kinds of other stores within a block, which has coffeesister all excited about shopping for merchandise AND a job, to make money to SPEND on the merchandise. And so the economic circle spins. As it does, RhodesTer hopes it’s not nearly as noisy as all the construction has been.

RhodesTer and coffeesister still miss TAZZY terribly, and suspect that his fluffy little ghost has finally departed. His sister, Shadow, is different – in a good way. She played with nothing for a full two weeks and now she suddenly plays with them, which she’s never done before. He left her instructions before leaving her for good.

It’s Sunday, and Easter to boot..
Praise Jesus and pass the cookies, please.

RhodesTer on Twitter/Subscribe to this blog

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{ 11 comments }

HOLLA

March 22, 2008
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ONE (or MORE), for the ROAD..

March 19, 2008

I was on my way home from the store with some beer strapped to the back of my bike for coffeesister and I to drink tonight, and the bungee cord snapped..

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PUSH one two three BREATH one two three..

March 11, 2008

I have to go get certified in CPR later today.

This stands for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and, although I’ve been certified before, I have to go REcertify because I’ve forgotten how to do it and it’s a requirement in my current job.
It’s kind of like playing the lotto.  You can look at getting CPR certified as being [...]

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Life lessons at the bus stop

March 8, 2008
Thumbnail image for Life lessons at the bus stop

I probably have to admit that I’ve been trying to hang out with German Shepherds for a long time now, when I really belong with the CockAPoos.

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Coffeesister and I..

March 5, 2008

..have decided to throw a dance party, and you’re all invited!
Unfortunately, this is the only DJ we could get with our budget..

Not seeing the video? click here

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Widgets by candlelight

March 3, 2008

Coffeesister and I have been on somewhat of a night schedule lately.
At about one in the morning we were watching a TV show when the power went out, plunging us into a deep, silent darkness.  We had no choice but to light a candle and talk for a few hours until it came back on. [...]

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