Tweply – since nobody talked me out of it

I was hoping someone would talk me out of another stupid idea.  Damn you all.

So this is what you get.  An alpha thingy of Tweply.  http://www.real-ity.com/tweply/

No promises how well it’ll work, but it should work ok.  It looks ugly.  Well.. actually it looks more like nothing.  That’s how my design skills are.  Couple header tags, a center, some text and not close out the body.

Again, you have to give out your twitter password to use it.  But that’s how all twitter app things work.  Hopefully they’ll build an API that would allow 3rd party services login without having plain text credentials.  That’d be cool.

So try it out, use it for good things. Let me know any changes you’d like to see.

I’m going to make a thing for twitter

Anyone who knows me knows I’m addicted to Twitter.  I won’t go into details of my love affair with the beautiful beast, but let’s just say it’s a pretty integrated part of my lifestyle work flow.

However, there’s things I wish it did that it doesn’t do.  It’s not very flexible.

For example, you can send tweets from people you follow to your phone via SMS, and that’s a great feature.  But sometimes I only want things sent to my phone that I care about.  So you have two options.  When you make a tweet, and someone replies… you either don’t see it while you’re mobile, or you turn on mobile updates and see everything just in case someone replies to you.
In my case the third option is to every once in a while check the mobile twitter site and see if anyone has said anything, but sometimes you may get a @message without expecting it… you won’t know that even happened until you check the web site later.  All those options suck in my opinion.

So that’s when I took it upon myself to build a service called “Tweply” that simply looks at your incoming tweets and text’s them to you if it’s something you’re looking for.  That way you can tweet via sms, and get replies to that tweet via sms without being completely immersed, or completely shut out.

That’s where the story should end.  Damnit.

But now I decided to turn it into a service tha others can use.  There’s probably others that want to see just @replies to tweets they’ve sent as well when mobile.

I’m not planning on going crazy with this, but who knows.  The game plan is this:

Web page.  You put in your twitter credentials (sorry, but that’s how twitter rolls… ).  You then put in what string you’re looking for (generally will be @username, but whatever), and the method you want to be notified of it.  Eithier SMS or email.  I guess there will be a thing where you can turn it on and off too.  Every 5min or so you’ll get a notification if someone replies.

However, there’s still time for someone to talk me out of this.  Any takers?

Irregardless, it’s time to cowboy up

So I haven’t blogged anything about my job since I’ve moved to Omaha I don’t think.  Well, here’s my first.
Met our new “uber manager” today, or the manager of my manager.  Let me put it simply, i’m scared shitless.  I can’t think of someone I can relate to any less.

For hobbies, it’s Huskers football.  He also likes to fish and cook game.  He said the word “irregardless” and told us to “cowboy up”.  I don’t even know what “cowboy up” means and I refuse to google it.

He’s pretty hardcore and has pretty rough expectations of our teams.  That’s fine.  But seriously, I think he’s the reason there’s a sign on our building that says “firearms are not allowed here.”  I think he’d use shotguns to threaten our lives.

He’s the first guy in management I’ve ever met, anywhere, that has specificly told us not to go to him if there’s an issue.  You can only go to your direct manager, and if you ever want to talk to him… you have to tell your management first to tell him that you’re going to be talking to him.  I’ve never ever heard of anyone less accessible in my life.

I’m really not sure what to think.

25 things about me

This note-writing meme has been going full force on Facebook lately.  I thought I’d cave and do it.  Since I did, I’ll put it here as well.

Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click publish.)

1. As a young boy I shot a squirrel for no reason. I still feel bad about it.
2. I’m an activist for marriage reform. Something with such a high failure rate obviously has a flaw.
3. A web app I once built was in PC World magazine as one of the “best of the web”. I was so proud.
4. I get upset when I have to use Windows at work. It’s like being tasked to cook a whole meal with only a lighter.
5. I love coffee.
6. People see me as young in Chicago, and old in Omaha. Therefore I feel young in Chicago, and old in Omaha.
7. Growing up I would perform at least two theatre shows a year, mostly musicals. I started at age seven with Fiddler on the Roof.
8. My favorite number is 8.
9. I respect people for their music taste more than I should.
10. I’m an atheist, but I used to teach Sunday school in a Lutheran church.
11. I started an IRC (Internet Relay Chat) channel that’s been running for almost 15 years with many of the same people.
12. I wish I could get into reading. There’s so much good content that I don’t give myself access to.
13. I would love to be a professional musician in some fashion. But I know I’d never be good enough.
14. I haven’t had meat in almost two months. I don’t miss the food, I miss the convenience.
15. Before I turned 18 I did a lot of not so legal things online. It allowed me to learn programming languages, operating systems and network topology in a way school never could.
16. In high school I had a band that changed the lyrics of a song from “Tell me about the time you fucked your mother in your living room” to get a gig at a christian coffee house. We still never played there.
17. I never saw someone use chewing tobacco until I met someone from Omaha.
18. I once hosted a top ranked Podcast. But I altered the rating system to rank us that way.
19. I miss drumming.
20. I once wanted to be a hobo. Given the options I thought it would be the most freeing and the best opportunity to start fresh.
21. Being in a drum corps was some of the most fun I ever had. Until I started to care more about winning.
22. I swore off celebrating Christmas with my family after this past holiday.
23. Without Twitter (and a couple other sites) i’d have no friends in Omaha. I’m so thankful for the sites and the friends.
24. I’m listening to The Cars – “Just what I needed” right now.
25. I told myself I wouldn’t do this, but after enough people tagged me, and reading Katie’s, I figured I owed it to them. There’s a lot my new friends don’t know about me. This is like a cheat sheet.

Hello from Chicago

I dragged Cassie (well actually she drove most of the way) to Chicago this week.  Been here since Tuesday night, and it’s really nice to see the city again.

It is a little eye opening though.  Living here for so long, then going elsewhere, and then coming back.

All the odd looks and questions when I say I really do like Omaha, and i’m not just saying that to back myself up in the move.  All the logistics to do things and meet up with people. 

I haven’t used the CTA much at all, really ever.  A little here and there to go from place A to place B, but I pretty much drove myself everywhere.  I don’t have a car here now, and I feel pretty stupid when Cassie gives me a look like “shouldn’t you know this stuff?”  But I don’t.  I’m not a CTA user.  I know how it works, I know how to get to simple point to point things if I plan out the line ahead of time, but that’s about it.  So this trip is certainly overshadowed by her thinking i’m an idiot and I think she’d have more fun if I wasn’t here.  That really bums me out to know you’re holding someone back.  Especially when you thought you were doing something nice.  It sucks to to feel not good enough.

On a side note, my friend Corinne just moved to Chicago.  Go to her web site.  Follow her on Twitter, become her new Chicago friend.  She’s fun.  Link = Krin!