twitter And twhirl Took Over My Life

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Yes, I follow and am followed on twitter.
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And I will probably never forgive the local radio talk show host that mentioned one morning that fateful day in October he could be followed on twitter.

I almost never agree with a darn thing he says but now, I thought, I can fire zingers at him from afar without sending email or dialing the phone.

One show used chat to communicate with its listeners but I grew tired of the chatter and saw that many of my comments were ignored or got lost in the clutter.

I had signed up for twitter in March of this year while delving into the Live web broadcasting for a friend. I thought twitter would be better then a chat client.

I sent one tweet and didn’t see the point. Nobody cared what I was doing and I could not think of one person I wanted to ‘watch’ every minute of the day – not even my true love Mariah Carey (does she twitter? She makes me twitter - pant, pant, pant - gotta check – nope, don’t see her).

Plus I didn’t know anyone else using it and searching the site generated lists of people I was sure I did NOT want to follow.

From March to October of this year, no one had followed me on twitter so boo hoo, what did I care.

It was worse than chat sites – at least there was one weirdo always wanting your ASL.

Then this talk show host said we could follow him on twitter. I went to the home page and Firefox still remembered my username and password – damn.

I found the talk show host in about .02 seconds and became a follower in even less time. Too easy (what a freaking understatement).

Of course I had to add some of the people following him because I knew who they were and I wanted to ‘see’ what they were saying to each other.

Within three or four hours I was stalking following more then 40 people and about half were stalking following me. I even had some ‘spam’ followers. Welcome to the world of twitter.

The saddest thing, not one tweet, NOT ONE enhanced my life in anyway. NOT ONE. But I was nosy and downright voyeuristic. I soon became hooked.

I knew when the personal lives of my stalked kept getting interrupted by the newsies I was following with breaking stories or advertising their latest post or article that I needed another twitter account to separate the newsies from normal people.

So with two twitter accounts I was kept busier then a cat in hurricane winds on a sandy beach switching users at the main twitter web site.

Noticing that many of the blogs I followed also had twitter accounts, I added yet a third account to follow my favorite bloggers.

Keep in mind, I already had over 150 RSS feeds in Google Reader to keep track of info ranging from News Sites to blogs to Google/Yahoo groups to comic strips I like to read.

So, happier then the aforementioned cat on a sandy beach in a hurricane, I was keeping track of so much stuff I found I was not capable of surfing the net AND watching TV at the same time.

I had to rewind and watch the same five minutes of House at least TEN times – I could not concentrate on the TV without scanning the computer screens (yes I run two of them) to see who had sent the last tweet, email, blog post etc.

For years, I have worked at a computer, programming, managing networks or surfing the Internet while watching TV – news channels, movies, documentaries, comedies – anything.

I could do two things at once and sometimes even three, if the phone rang - I never missed a word of dialog. I might have to rewind a bit to catch a steamy nude scene or giant explosion I missed with my eyes but my ears never missed a thing.

But I was getting bogged down. Between email, Google Reader, twitter and normal surfing, I was going nuts.

My attention span was about four seconds and I could not do one thing let alone three.

I went searching for a client and found Digsby but it took care of twitter AND Facebook (boo) AND MySpace (gag) and all chat users as well as email. It only showed new messages and tweets for 1 or 2 seconds which forced me to pull up the main window and scan every account to figure out which one had changed. It pissed me off more then helped me.

And then along came twhirl. I saw someone had posted a tweet five minutes ago using twhirl instead of the web, digsby or tweetdeck so I went searching.

I installed my new BEST twitter utility – I could track all FIVE (don’t freaking ask) twitter accounts from ONE program. I never had to login in again and I could control which accounts were active at any time and how often they updated. And with one click in the tray I could kill twitter completely.

But the best things – it ‘dinged’ every time I received a new tweet, reply or direct message and displayed same in the corner of the screen so that I could read it almost in real time.

I could ‘filter’ out certain boring, blah, blah, blahtalkative users that post at ten tweets a minute without un-following them.

I loved it – until the dinging completely overrode any noise from the TV and I became a Pavlov dog. ‘Ding’ and my eyes went to read the message in the corner of the screen interrupting whatever I was doing.

When I discovered I had re-read the first paragraph of an email seven or eight times or had started proof reading the same post nine or ten times, or that I had no idea, not one tiny glint of what the show was about I was watching on TV, I decided enough was enough.

I could exit the twhirl program but when I re-started it, it would ‘ding’ at me for three or four minutes while it caught up with all the tweets I missed.

I could mute the speakers but then I would miss email and other notifications and any music I was listening to.

I was about ready to pull the plug on twitter completely when one of my bloggers sent notice of a new post and I immediately clicked the link adding it to the 50 other pages waiting for me to read.

I accidentally clicked on the wrench of a twhirl window instead of the link and noticed things I had missed or had been added since I stated using twhirl – such as how loud the notification sound is and how I am notified – I can kill the message appearing in the corner and the beep is so faint I do not hear it four feet from the computer – I remember that sometime last week I was waiting on a reply tweet to a question I had asked.

The kitchen timer had rung telling me my cinnamon rolls were ready and I had shut off the timer and had peeked in the oven to see if things were done when I heard twhirl ‘ding’.

I am sure I did not run, but I did get back in time to read the tweet that had just posted in the lower corner of my screen before it disappeared.

Then my expected reply came and about thirty minutes later I put the remains of my cinnamon rolls in the sink and wrote that cookie sheet off. I had let them ‘die’ in the oven.

I knew it was time for intervention and the little wrench on that twhirl window was my savior.

After some experimentation I have reached a workable situation with twitter and twhirl and even changed the way my email program ‘talks’ to me.

All the screen flashing and popup windows appear on one screen which I do not see when I turn my head to watch TV.

And said notifications only happen every fifteen minutes instead of every two minutes.

My world is almost back to normal while twhirl still makes it easy to read some stupid tweets from crazier tweeples then me.

At least I know what the last episode of House was about.