Family Meeting

When is the last time you and your family actually sat around and talked to one another? Not many families talk these days. Many families do not spend enough time talking about stuff. At dinner tables, there are not many times when the table is full and everyone is talking to everyone. It is very important to be close to your family because many times when I speak to people, they tell me stories about how families are broken apart, how parents dislike their children, and how children dislike their parents. Talking can always be a fun way to pass time quickly while the power is out and build a nice bond that was lacking for so long.

Hide and Seek!

Oh how I loved this game growing up. I remember it progressing into night Hide and Seek and all the neighborhood kids would participate. Good times, eh? Not to worry, you still can play this game old or young! I recommend playing at night so if your power goes out at night – perfect solution! All you need is a flashlight and you are ready to play hide and go seek in your house. Another fun thing to do with a flashlight is play flashlight tag. The person “it” has a flashlight and tries to find you, and then tag you.

Board Games

If you ever had the pleasure of meeting my parents and asking them if I liked board games, they would laugh and say no! I was never into board games, but I do have to admit, it can sometimes be fun with a lot of people. These days, they make them extra interactive and 21st century-esque. Many board games have been made into computer games. Can’t play those with the power out though. But don’t you miss the original games themselves? Games like Risk, Monopoly, and Clue are all great choices for you and your family to play. A way to make it more fun is to play in candle light. By the way, I dominate in Monopoly!

Read

The most easy way to pass time is to read a book. Take that book that you have been dying to read, but never had time for it. Read it by candlelight; It is so relaxing. I am not a big reader of books, but the next outage I have will give me more of a reason to finish up Stephen King’s Under The Dome.

Work

Do you have a deadline for something that needs to be done? Is it homework for school or work that your boss has told you to do? Do you need to type a paper? If so, right it by hand. Right your thoughts on a piece of paper and then when the power comes on, you will be well on your way to finishing the paper. If you need research, go to a library and research through books or through your own collection of books. That is, if anyone has an encyclopedia collection anymore.

iPod/iPhone/iPad

Though you need electricity to charge this gadgets up, they are equipped with a heck of a battery life so for me, listening to music is a must. If you have an I pod, this is a great time to listen to it. If you do not have an I pod, you can play a hand-held gaming device, PSP, Nintendo DS, or any others out there.

In the event you lose power, you will remember this post. Of course, when one is bored, we can come up with some with the craftiest solutions. We all take advantage of electricity and once we lose it, we don’t know what to do with ourselves, but if you look back at when we didn’t rely so heavily on electricity, it’ll make it easier to do without at least for a couple of hours.

What To Do When Your Power Goes Out originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on April 21, 2010.

All in all, it hadn’t been a good day. Bad traffic, a malfunctioning computer, incompetent coworkers and a sore back all made me a seething cauldron of rage. But more importantly for this story, it had been over forty-eight hours since I’d last taken a dump. I’d tried to jumpstart the process, beginning my day with a bowl of bowel-cleansing fiber cereal, following it with six cups of coffee at work, and adding a bean-laden lunch at Taco Bell.

As I was returning home from work, my insides let me know with subtle rumbles and the emission of the occasional tiny fart that Big Things would be happening soon. Alas, I had to stop at the mall to go Christmas shopping. I completed this task, and as I was walking past the stores on my way back to the car, I noticed a large sale sign proclaiming, “Everything Must Go!” This was prophetic, for my colon informed me with a sudden violent cramp and a wet, squeaky fart that everything was indeed about to go. I hurried to the mall bathrooms. I surveyed the five stalls, which I have numbered 1 through 5 for your convenience:

1. Occupied.

2. Clean, but Bathroom Protocol forbids its use, as it’s next to the occupied one.

3. Poo on seat.

4. Poo and toilet paper in bowl, unidentifiable liquid splattered on seat.

5. No toilet paper, no stall door, unidentifiable sticky object near base of
toilet.

Clearly, it had to be Stall #2. I trudged back, entered, dropped trousers and
sat down. I’m normally a fairly Shameful Shitter. I wasn’t happy about being
next to the occupied stall, but Big Things were afoot.

I was just getting ready to bear down when all of a sudden the sweet sounds of Beethoven came from next door, followed by a fumbling, and then the sound of a voice answering the ringing phone. As usual for a cell phone conversation, the voice was exactly 8 dB louder than it needed to be. Out of Shameful habit, my sphincter slammed shut.

The inane conversation went on and on. Mr. Shitter was blathering to Mrs. Shitter about the shitty day he had. I sat there, cramping and miserable, waiting for him to finish. As the loud conversation dragged on, I became angrier and angrier, thinking that I, too, had a crappy day, but I was too polite to yak about in public.

My bowels let me know in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get crapping soon, my day would be getting even crappier.

Finally my anger reached a point that overcame Shamefulness. I no longer cared. I gripped the toilet paper holder with one hand, braced my other hand against the side of the stall, and pushed with all my might. I was rewarded with a fart of colossal magnitude – a cross between the sound of someone ripping a very wet bed sheet in half and of plywood being torn off a wall. The sound gradually transitioned into a heavily modulated low-RPM tone, not unlike someone firing up a Harley. I managed to hit the resonance frequency of the stall, and it shook gently.

Once my ass cheeks stopped flapping in the breeze, three things became apparent:
(1) The next-door conversation had ceased
(2) my colon’s continued seizing indicated that there was more to come
(3) the bathroom was now beset by a horrible, eldritch stench. It was as if a gateway to Hell had been opened. The foul miasma quickly made its way under the stall and began choking my poop-mate. This initial “herald” fart had ended his conversation in mid-sentence.

“Oh my God,” I heard him utter, following it with suppressed sounds of choking, and then, “No, baby, that wasn’t me (cough, gag), you could hear that (gag)??”

Now there was no stopping me. I pushed for all I was worth. I could swear that in the resulting cacophony of rips, squirts, splashes, poots, and blasts, I was actually lifted slightly off the pot. The amount of stuff in me was incredible. It sprayed against the bowl with tremendous force. Later, in surveying the damage, I’d see that liquid poop had actually managed to ricochet out of the bowl and run down the side on to the floor. But for now, all I could do was hang on for the ride.

Next door I could hear him fumbling with the paper dispenser as he desperately tried to finish his task. Little snatches of conversation made themselves heard over my anal symphony: “Gotta go… horrible… throw up…in my mouth… not… make it… tell the kids… love them… oh God…” followed by more sounds of suppressed gagging and retching.

Alas, it is evidently difficult to hold one’s phone and wipe one’s bum at the same time. Just as my high-pressure abuse of the toilet was winding down, I heard a plop and splash from next door, followed by string of swear words and gags. My poop-mate had dropped his phone into the toilet.

There was a lull in my production, and the restroom became deathly quiet. I could envision him standing there, wondering what to do. A final anal announcement came trumpeting from my behind, small chunks plopping noisily into the water. That must have been the last straw. I heard a flush, a fumbling with the lock, and then the stall door was thrown open. I heard him running out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

After a considerable amount of paperwork, I got up and surveyed the damage. I felt bad for the janitor who’d be forced to deal with this, but I knew that flushing was not an option. No toilet in the world could handle that unholy mess. Flushing would only lead to a floor flooded with filth.

As I left, I glanced into the next-door stall. Nothing remained in the bowl. Had he flushed his phone, or had he plucked it out and left the bathroom with nasty unwashed hands? The world will never know.

I exited the bathroom, momentarily proud and Shameless, looking around for a face glaring at me. But I saw no one. I suspect that somehow my supernatural elimination has managed to transfer my Shamefulness to my anonymous poop-mate. I think it’ll be a long time before he can bring himself to poop in public — and I doubt he’ll ever again answer his cell phone in the loo.

And this, my friends, is why you should never talk on your phone in the bathroom.

(Not News): The Best Bathroom Story Ever originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on November 22, 2009.

On Bootup: First Impressions

So fellow editor Anthony sends me this VMware image and asks me to write a review about this OS given our shared fascination about it and his lack of time to write one himself (and I humbly accepted ). I fired it up after writing a .vmx configuration file to go with it, logged in using an anonymous Google account and was immediately greeted by this:

Welcome to Chrome OS.

But wait, let’s rewind a second here: before I reached the “omg your security is at risk – run for your life!” Chrome OS greeting page, I had to log in and remotely authenticate to Google using a Google account. So right away, Google receives my IP and subsequent location information upon computer bootup/login.

(refer to another article here, which criticizes Chrome OS for being too big brother-ish)

Of course, if you wanted to badly enough, you could root the system yourself by mounting it’s disk elsewhere and forcing all networking to go through a proxy system such as Tor for the ultimate privacy, but that would also make the system slow as hell and is too difficult for most users. You win, Google: here’s my location and the typical time of day that I boot up/log in to my computer running Chrome OS.

Chrome OS Settings

Moving past the “holy shit” tabs, I proceeded to open my own and start using the OS:

Well, go on, start being amazed already!

I found the menus to appear kind of Windows 98-ish what with the gray color next to all the shiny chromeyness and all, but whatever, it’s still an alpha testing build and probably can be skinned to hell and back at the OS level too.

Note where that menu is, too: there are three little menu buttons (which are hard to click when the mouse moves way too fast) in the corner that allow a window into the OS settings. They allow you to turn on/off your NICs, view your battery life, and the typical help/about pages etc.

But one thing that it lacks: an off/shutdown button. Once you are booted up, there IS no turning off the computer without holding down the power button or pulling the battery out (both of which are bad for the filesystem). I guess this is considered a “feature” of Chrome OS. How revolutionary!

Incognito Browsing = Porn Time!

In the screenshot above, you may notice the “New Incognito window” button underneath the usual “New tab” and “New window” selections. So what does this do?

It opens up a new chrome browser window, only completely sandboxed from the browser history and cookie storage for an “off-the-map” browsing experience:

Incognito browsing welcome page. Note how specific it is about the smiley thing.

The first thing that came to my mind: “they’re actually catering to porn watchers.” Yes, that’s right: take your netbook running Chrome OS into the bathroom, fire up an incognito window, and when you come out two minutes later (or longer, depending on chrome’s speed) there will be no trace of your activities. Just be sure to close the incognito window, of course!

But in order to accomplish this, one needs plugins installed for Flash or Java to view videos on the Web:

Chrome OS Plugins: Flash and Java

In my tests, the builtin Flash plugin didn’t work due to excessive crashing:

Note the “flash crashed” and Linux path notice under the toolbar, and the incognito icon in the corner ( )

But, it worked fine in YouTube (a Google-owned subsidiary):

Spaghetti beats cheerleaders any day of the month.

So Google got in bed with Adobe for out-of-the-box Flash integration pretty early, it seems. But Java? No. Silverlight? Don’t even joke like that. Stand-alone (.mp4/.mpg/.ogv etc.) videos? Forget it: even Google video removes the downloads for videos in these file formats upon detecting the Chrome OS user agent.

The Chrome OS useragent, by the way, is the same as Chrome’s only with “CrOS” thrown in there to shown that it’s the operating system and not just the browser. Adjust your shitty browser sniffers accordingly.

Where’s the Applications Menu?

I find references to an “applications menu” and “desktop” all over, but can’t find one:

The WHAT?

If I can’t find the applications menu as an experienced user/programmer having looked all over the place, then how can they expect netbook-using housewife users to locate it? Or maybe it just isn’t implemented yet since this is still technically an Alpha release.

And closing all browser tabs, instead of dropping down to a “desktop”, simply turns the screen blue under the cursor for a few seconds before launching a new Chrome window, restoring the last URL you closed.

Builtin Advertisements

Ironically, I discovered this while trying to install the Adsweep plugin for Chrome OS to remove ads from pages since they were slowing down my 300MB RAM virtual machine. The DNS resolution (over NAT) was so slow that the download page timed out and I saw this:

Note the first link: paid-for ad?

They suggest another site for you, based on their top search results for the URL’s terms. And if the top result happens to be ad-funded, then guess what? So even WITH my Adsweep installed, if a page times out due to Chrome/Linux’s apparent shitty DNS resolution, I am suggested a paid link. Great.

Other Miscellaneous tid-bits

Other than these issues, I overall enjoy the OS as a whole, even though I’m no Google fan (too big-brother-ish for me). I have always thought the idea of the web as a platform and a computer that could boot straight into a browser seemed like a great idea with the great proliferation of web apps in recent years, and Google delivered.

And Chrome couldn’t be a better browser to put on top of it all, using Webkit for pristine rendering:

Chrome OS passes the Acid 3 test 100%

Overall I was pleased, and look forward to future builds when the project continues to improve and gets better nearing release. With that said, I leave you with a final screenshot to demonstrate Chrome’s window manager’s appearance:

Chrome OS “About” screen

You can find the image floating around the web, if you wish to try it yourself

Google Chrome OS Review: The Housewife’s OS originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on November 21, 2009.

Below are some screenshots of this temporary feature (for historic purposes) and a little information about it.

Article Sections:
#treat
#trick
Technical Details
Final Notes
Update: Screencast Added

#treat

Although not nearly as interesting as it’s Halloween-themed counterpart, the #treat update displayed this design over the timeline:

But the #treat easter-egg isn’t nearly as fun as the #trick easter-egg:

#trick

First, right after the update solely containing ‘#trick’ is “published”, this drop-down message is displayed after the new background is loaded:

Then, after a progressive timeline/tweet modification, the next change appeared:

By far, this was my favorite modification of the two. Also, it earns more of an ‘easter-egg’ status than the former because I don’t recall ever seeing #trick trending throughout the day as I did #treat.

How it works

This is a little techy, but basically Twitter added a hook into their JavaScript’s AJAX tweet-publishing code that did some simply string matching to detect the single strings “#trick” or #”treat”, in order to perform a special action in response.

The background of the page, at least in the case of the #trick’s biohazard image, is a transparent PNG laid over the page’s background. I know this without even looking at the code because the coffee-colored background was visible under the biohazard image before it was changed to black to further complete the process of setting the new design.

The usual now-famous Twitter drop-down box was recycled for the “Happy Halloween” message, only using a black background with a yellow Arial(?) font in the case of the #trick design. I assume absolute-positioned transparent PNGs are what allowed the spider webs/witches to lie over the drop-down messages.

And note that the tweet is never published – some hard-wired control flow code prevents it from reaching Twitter’s servers in favor of redesigning the client’s appearance.

Enjoy!

I saved the screenshots in case someone missed it, and for historic purposes.

I actually discovered this by simply seeing people tweet about #trick/#treat (with other words in their tweet) and by seeing #treat within the Trending Topics.

Twitter actually provided a description for the egg within the trending topic for #treat. Without their explicitly stating it, I (and presumably other users) would have never thought to tweet JUST #trick or #tweet. Besides, unless I’d already seen it I’d look like a spammer or idiot with a published tweet containing only #trick or #tweet.

But, that said, I really enjoyed this new added feature today, along with Google’s “This space intentionally left blank” thing on their front page.

I hope everyone out there enjoyed this as much as I did!

Update: YouTube Screencast Now Available

A Twitter “Happy Halloween” – Trick Or Treat? originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on October 30, 2009.

You might find some of these humorous, you might not, but they’re all true. Again, I apologize to our tech-expert readers, but just ignore this post – there are more to come soon. For those considering getting a kitten or in need of a good laugh, read on…

So I have a new kitten, and here are some things you should keep in mind when getting one yourself:

Declaw ASAP

My leather Lazy-Boy chair, R.I.P. Same with the carpet next to my bedroom (goodbye security deposit) and the same for my foot. Somehow, foot = creature under covers which must be attacked at 4am.

Declaw your cat/kitten. There’s a set amount of time before this can be done, but as soon as the time passes it is in your best interest to do so. Learn from me and my shredded armchair.

Anything Not Bolted Down Is A Cat Toy

I have had my keys carted away about three times within the past few days, causing me to be late to work one day. Same goes for a few things around the house, such as a salt-shaker in my kitchen.

If you don’t hide it, put it up (WAY up) and wind up “losing” something, check underneath almost every surface around the house that the object can fit under – it’s probably there. You may even find some places you never even knew existed.

Store-Made Toys Are Useless

I bought one of those little kitty-hell things I’ve always seen in Wal-Mart from time to time for kitty to play with instead of, say, my keys or checkbook. What happened, you say?

Kitty stared at for about five minutes before attacking my watch.

So its pretty much useless to actually pay for stuff. A crumpled up tin foil ball provides more fun than a scratch tree, at least until it joins the ranks of the other tin foil balls collecting under your couch.

Clean Laundry = Cat Bed

My nice, washed any dryed clothes are now covered in a thin layer of white cat hair. Put your clothes away ASAP after washing/drying them – otherwise they will become a habitat for fur. Trust me.

Spay/Neuter

And the list is as follows (for my male kitten):

• A stain on my armchair from piss
• A Cracker Jack-style “special surprise inside” of the back of my closet (A.K.A. turd)
• A puddle RIGHT NEXT to the litter box (almost isn’t the same as making it)
• A fresh coat of piss in the corner of my kitchen before work one day
• And finally, a second piss stain on my armchair.

It’s like there’s a vendetta against my favorite chair or something, if you notice.

Kitty Hungry?

Then you’re either going to feed it now, or else face the consequences (lost sleep early in the morning, destruction, being attacked in your sleep, destruction…)

It usually happens around 5am – I wake woke up at 6:30-7 for getting ready for work. First, the stare you can just feel in your sleep. Then, the soft meows. Then the loud meows. Then getting walked on several times.

Anything after that usually includes the sudden disappearance of said cat, only for you to later discover an act of destruction that took place somewhere during that time frame (usually in the form of piss or hidden necessities)

Heed My Words

They are so cute, what with their little eyes and such. But don’t be fooled – that little prick will cause destruction on a scale the likes of which you’ve never seen. The kitten itself was free, but the total amount of damage and food/litter costs are terribly expensive.

I mean, come on. It’s insane.

So take my advice if you are getting a kitten/cat as a pet. Otherwise, you will join me in the pain I have already experienced. And it isn’t fun or cheap, either. Enjoy your demon kitten.

Tips For New Cat Or Kitten Owners originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on September 10, 2009.

And in most cases, especially after a little research on the product, I’m right.

The Teeth Whitening Thing

I see these everywhere:

I hate these teeth ads

…isn’t it hideous?

I automatically draw a negative opinion of the product, whatever it is, that’s being advertised here: the ugliness of the ad just makes my skin crawl, and on top of that, it’s everywhere I go.

A little research showed that many people including several credible sources are calling it a scam. All the more reason not to “buy into” over-advertising, and a very good reason why Anthony hasn’t put any ads on this website.

“Back To School” Ads (the ones that dance)

Yahoo! Mail has the tendency to attract horrible ads like its some kind of magnet or something. And these ads are by far the most annoying, with the dancing characters distracting me from reading my Email to no end.

I don’t have a screenshot, but I’m sure half the population has seen these annoying ads in one form or another: they’ve featured dancing skeletons, a dancing rave chick, and walking moms (“Obama Asks Moms To Go Back To School” etc.)

Another aggressive ad campaign that leads me to suspicions as to the advertised product. Even worse are the “GET YOUR DEGREE ONLINE NOW!” commercials, but the two are very on par with each other.

Evony

Nothing much to say as to how annoying these ads are. I know you’ve seen them yourself on every website, but here are a few in the Annoying Hall Of Fame:

One of many annoying Evony ads

NSFW, but shown in the sidebar anyway

The worst one

Here lieth a problem with ads: Most are displayed in the sidebar of the page, right? Well, when one is glancing at your screen (e.g. at work), the first thing they see is whatever is in the sidebar. So if one of these ads are in the sidebar, then guess what?

And as far as Evony’s ethics go, I found this out about the company: they steal images. In an excerpt from the image owner’s blog, this little tid-bit of information regarding an Evony ad was uncovered:

The Evony Ad (using the stolen pic)

The original image, which Evony stole

On top of that violation of ethics by Evony, there are multiple other critical points by other bloggers and news sites (such as the Guardian), many of which are being sued by Evony. These posts can be found here, here, and here.

So once again, the product behind the overly-aggressive and spammy ad campaign is a sham, with the Guardian claiming that they are linked to a Chinese World of Warcraft scam (goldmining). On top of that, the “queen” that half the ads coax you to come save doesn’t even exist, which they tell you after you register.

Other Miscellaneous Annoying Ads

Any ad by Network Solutions, Inc. is annoying to me. They all feature some double-meaning opening phrase and South Park-like talking heads that somehow end up talking up Network Solutions’ hosting and domain name service.

GoDaddy’s ads on their own website (as well as their attempts to get you to upgrade your package while purchasing) is equally annoying, and ironically out for the same goals as Network Solutions.

MagicJack overadvertises – just look at this:

And finally, the Snorg Tees ads are too racy to be placed into the sidebar of every web page I’ve been to. NSFW ads are just terrible, and Adblock Plus just doesn’t come on the browser we’re forced to use at our workstations at work.

On A Lighter Note…

We were joking about what an ad for The Coffee Desk would look like if we chose to follow the guidelines set by those ads above, and here’s what we came up with…

Tongue-in-cheek The Coffee Desk ad

Feel free to plaster it all over the Internet

The Most Annoying Ads On The Internet originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 30, 2009.

“Michael Jackson Alive”

Proof It Is A Hoax

That’s all folks. Move along, nothing to see here, other than Mashable completely wrong again (refer to the 4chan hacking post for our other Mashable-bashing session)

And for those that still wish to read fake news, here is the news that Richard Nixon died, reported earlier this year.

“Michael Jackson Alive” Video Confirmed A Hoax originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 30, 2009.

Screenshots

I’ll get right to it: below are some screenshots of other compromised Facebook accounts, posted by the hackers themselves. Some even have 4chan visibly open in another browser tab within the screenshots (which will open in a new browser window/tab).

Compromised Facebook Account, actually pretty humorous.

Yet another one, this one being pretty twisted.

"Your teeth match your skin!" - hilarious (although cruel)

More 4chan racism

The one that started it all

More about the attacks

The unnamed Christian dating service I mentioned earlier had an exploit in the website that allowed the entire list of usernames and passwords for the site to be exposed. The files were then placed into “christian.txt” (seen in some of the screenshots), then posted on 4chan where they were spread amongst other hackers.

Not for certain, but I believe the use of the same password for both email and the dating service allowed the hackers, armed with the user database contents of the dating website, to enter the email accounts of the victims where they could retrieve a generated password recovery email from Facebook.

If this is the case, then Facebook may not have been the only target of the attacks, although it is certainly the most prominent. You can see Yahoo! email accounts open in background tabs in some of the fuller screenshots, as well as 4chan and the “Christian.txt” file listing the users.

Before we get in trouble…

We don’t condone hacking. I posted the screenshots because I thought I should elaborate the cause of the Facebook photo everyone has been talking about, but other than that I don’t find many of the attackers’ comments very funny, except for a few harmless non-racist comments such as the teeth insults.

In case my educated guess as to the cause of the attack is correct, let me say that I or anybody else here didn’t participate in the attacks. Honestly.

And finally, don’t do this. I’m sure these attacks caused many people a lot of grief, especially the more twisted suicide threats and others that may have caused law enforcement to get involved. It just isn’t funny at all, especially at that point.

That said, I hope everybody knows what really happened with this now. Don’t re-use passwords, and webmasters: sanitize your inputs. That’s all, folks.

Facebook Hacked By 4chan, Accounts Compromised originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 22, 2009.

Twitter's Population in pie chart form

(now that we’re right-side-up again…)

I’ve complained about Twitter’s spam-to-human ratio many times before but it seems that since those posts, Twitter spam has only continued to spiral out of control.

Bot Spam

Not having a profile picture (or one appearing a little too revealing), and only one or two tweets consisting of “Come view my pics! (you have to register)” is a clear sign that the new follower is a spammer.

That, and spammy tweets originating from “API” (application programmer’s interface) rather than the web, txt (text messaging) or a well-known client is also a sign.

But do we block them? No, of course not. Unlike email spam, having a spammer follow you on Twitter is still a follower, so we rarely block them in favor of a higher follower number.

Promoters and Marketers

These guys bug me.

Before you say I’m being hypocritical, our Twitter account is used both personally as well as to inform followers of new posts. The marketers/promoters I’m talking about are trying to make money off Twitter by tweeting links to sites that I assume pay them or something.

They act like humans and look like humans, but in reality they are copy-paste human robots that rarely interact with those that follow them back (they follow random people in these hopes).

RSS to Twitter

We all have run across them – all’s quiet for a long time, then BAM! 100 incoming tweets from an RSS tool filling up your client at once.

It’s annoying as all get out. And they’re all links to a crappy blog or something, too.

Humans

The few, the proud, the outnumbered. These days, if you want to be taken for a human without any question, you’d better lock your account and make followers request to view your updates first.

This has several advantages – keeps down on stalkers (they’re out there), prevents a raunchy tweet (or two) from reaching employers’ eyes, and also lets you know who knows what you’re doing.

That and non-spammy tweets are a refreshing sight on Twitter these days, where humans are outnumbered by the legions of spammers and other unsolicited accounts.

Final Notes

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the art of marketing, but when it starts to invade social media like it has done to Twitter (with rape being a more appropriate term), then I have a problem with it.

And I’m sure I can’t be the only one who feels this way, either – let me know your opinion on the growing Twitter spam/promoter problem.

Twitter’s Population originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 19, 2009.

The Coffee Desk Upside-down
(click the image link for the full screenshot)

In Case You Missed It… originally appeared on The Coffee Desk on August 19, 2009.