To Abe, Bryce & Dave

I recently experienced a lot of encouragement and support from two wonderful friends of mine. It goes a long way to combat discouraging thoughts, procrastination and despair about ones situation in rough times. It can be a call to action that gets the wheels of the mind turning again and inspires you to get back on the horse. I’m not talking about generic “be all you can be” or “believe in yourself” comments, but the type of attention that only someone who knows you can give.

I’m addressing you guys specifically because I know you’re in the same boat as me. We are all trying to make it on our own right now: starting businesses, selling our talents and trying to carve out a place in the world for ourselves, on our own terms. This brings on a roller coaster of doubt, anxiety and excitement that makes it tough to stay on track.

I have known each of you for a long time. I have worked with all of you in one capacity or another - so I say this from experience. You each have something to offer the world and you’re on the right path. You can make it as an author, Abe. You can make it as an artist, Bryce. Your business will work, Dave (and so will your music). Keep going. We’re in this together.

If you aren’t one of the three people I’m addressing, you might be asking yourself why this is an open letter. I’m simply suggesting that you encourage a friend. Now!

The following conversation has been re-threaded to prevent seizures and consciousness disassociation. Also, reading the following will be more enjoyable if you first put on some 3D glasses.

Crispy Lettuce: Some of these dudes in Asimov’s piss me off. 3 degrees, have awesome jobs and write reems of scifi in their spare time. wtf
Cookie Monster: haha, yeah, some people I think are born to withstand distraction. can you imagine living in a time when geniuses were legends, like Da Vinci, Franklin, Tesla. fuck, Ben Franklin still intimidates me
Crispy Lettuce: Be nice if that came about again
Cookie Monster: the dude was a 1000 year champion of the universe
Crispy Lettuce: Instead of ashton getting the attn he does
Cookie Monster: like an age of legends
Crispy Lettuce: Mmmm
Crispy Lettuce: I need to go to space and mine things. Need scientists to get lots of money to make that possible. I can’t have a deflector shield without them
Cookie Monster: I want a space game to come out. something rad
Crispy Lettuce: Haha
Crispy Lettuce: No, CM, no. Stop glorifying game makers. We want real ships
Crispy Lettuce: No more sim space mining, no more sim space mining!
Crispy Lettuce chants
Cookie Monster: maybe my childrens children can do the mining
Cookie Monster: well, what are you doing about it? you should be a lobbyist and try and bring down the military spending and redirect it at intergalactic operations
Crispy Lettuce: yeah!
Crispy Lettuce: Uhhh being enthusiastic about the privatization of space?
Cookie Monster: get the fucking lead out
Cookie Monster: enthusiasm doesnt make spaceships. try and get in at an aerospace company
Crispy Lettuce: I have checked them all
Cookie Monster: your enthusiasm may be too low
Crispy Lettuce: They only want Space Avionic Commando Machinists LVL 3. I’m missing like 6 degrees in particle physics
Cookie Monster: dude, Ben Franklin would have 8
Crispy Lettuce: I know, I suck
Cookie Monster: you are not doing Ben justice
Crispy Lettuce:
Cookie Monster: epic life fail. I am ashamed to know you
Crispy Lettuce: I have failed u, Ben!
Cookie Monster: I will just get in my space game. you can go get more degrees
Crispy Lettuce: Nooooooo! But who will manage the mining drones?! I can’t do it all!
Cookie Monster: I dunno man, maybe some other dork, I will be on patrol around Ganymede. blasting space shit
Cookie Monster: into space shit
Crispy Lettuce: That’s it, no space for u
Crispy Lettuce: No u stay here and live in ur games
Cookie Monster: I have a space shit transmutifier
Crispy Lettuce: No Ganymede
Cookie Monster: F U, I go where I want
Cookie Monster scoots around Ganymede

Alright, so apparently hijacking Twitter trends isn’t a new idea. As I passed the link around to my previous post, I learned that this was already going on. However, I hadn’t seen an example of how its being done until today. The instances I have seen are just messages that contain all the keywords of the current trends in a single message. Unintelligible spam. Not sure why anyone would do that unless their account got compromised. Even though I wasn’t suggesting spam on that level, some people were reserved about helping me out because of this preexisting blight.

Another thing I learned was that URL compressing services flag your URL after awhile as being suspicious. I have no idea what the criteria is to warrant being flagged, but it happened to my links a couple times. They redirect you to their site and say the URL has been flagged for being shady and then let you click on through to the actual page. Maybe they scrape the Twitter timeline and look for their links? If a message containing one of their links is repeated past a certain threshold it gets flagged? I’m always thinking about the logic behind stuff like that. Usually the real answer is boring and unsophisticated, haha

I think this is a good example of why failure is important. I would have never learned these things unless I had tried out my idea. It was also really cool to see my friends jump in to action without any questions. I’m not calling you all sheep of course, but you were ready to help when I asked. Thanks peeps! *hugz*

While I haven’t heard anything from Twitter yet, I did get an interview for some contract work. That pretty much consumed my weekend - getting a portfolio together and all that. I’ve got a ton of resumes in the water and I’ve had a few bites here and there. Hopefully something will materialize in the next couple weeks.

On to the next adventure!