sisu

When Twitter automation tools attack

"I'm back in business but flooded with a cete of badgers = commercial followers," we twittered this morning (see below for details). Speaking of badgers, one thing led to another in the course of twitter banter, and we ended up at this morsel of Aesopian wisdom that they aren't teaching in public schools anymore, from Fable LII, "The Fox and the Badger": "Like other dealers in untruth, the Fox had not invented what he had said: he had told parts of the facts, and by his manner of telling them, he had led the Badger to misapply them, and draw undue conclusions." WH chief of staff Rahm Emanuel's "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste" comes to mind. (John Connor Press Associates photo)

"I literally doubled my followers every day all day until I was in the Top 200 Most Followed in the world," goes the "testimonial" at Hummingbird, "The Pro Twitter Marketing Tool" — AKA a "twitter automation tool" — that we found flitting about in our Site Meter stats this morning. Could they be the ones who had hijacked our account yesterday, getting us temporarily suspended by twitter? Hummingbird's get-rich-quick sales pitch :

Companies like Dell and Woot.com are earning Millions of Dollars on Twitter, leveraging tens of thousands of customers ready to buy at a moment's notice …

It was painful to see, yet another amazing internet market place, dominated by just a few "top" companies with an unlimited war chest to throw around. I spent hundreds of hours studying these Twitter Power Users and discovered every single trick they employed to generate literally thousands of new followers a day …

I took what I had learned and began developing a software program that quickly and easily distilled all of these secrets into a simple, easy to use tool that would literally auto-pilot me to the top of Twitter.

The Hummingbird folks are asking the fool to part with a mere $197 in return for untold riches. There's one born every minute. We put two and two together this morning when we noticed our email being flooded with new followers already boasting tens of thousands of followers. We're keeping our eye out for these pound-foolish would-be followers and summarily blocking them as they "poor" in.

Update: Final thought. While things are more or less under control, we've still got the nuisance factor of having to individually block each of these would-be followers. Next step, a twitter help ticket to find out how we can get these weasels out of our den.

Twitter suspends SissyWillis due to "strange activity"

Twittering suspended? Passionate bird watcher and listener Tiny is uncomprehending at the thought.

Checking in on our twitter account this afta, we were horrified to learn that we'd been blackballed on accounta "strange activity":

Account Suspended. This account is currently suspended and is being investigated due to strange activity. If we have suspended your account mistakenly, please let us know. See Suspended Accounts for more information.

We followed instructions and sent in a request for redress:

I just received an "Account suspended" red flag. I have done nothing to deserve this but DID notice a few minutes ago someone had used my account/logo to post a link to some dangerous thing that gave a warning. I immediately deleted the tweet, and now this.

"Your ticket will be submitted to Twitter Support and we'll email you a ticket confirmation. Accounts may be suspended for a minimum of 30 days for research." Minimum of 30 days? Gasp!

Meanwhile the above two suspicious-sounding requests for our name, password and permission to use twitter.com "items from your keychain" keep popping up on our screen. Paranoia setting in. Maybe just a routine computer system reaction to being shut out by twitter?

Tiny is not amused. Nor are we. Obama cyberthugs carrying out "Big Guy's" instructions to stifle dissent? Was it something we said in 140 characters or less? We haven't been much of a fan since December 11, 2006, when we caught then candidate Obama calling us a racist. Prepare for twitter withdrawal symptoms. Just as we were really getting into the thing, along the lines of Amba's recent tweet:

I'm finding Twitter positively giddy lately. I'm following astronauts and astronomers and an accountant, plus my friends. World expanding.

World imploding. Black hole ahead?

Update: What hath twitter wrought? This just in via imail from Goomp:

When I click on Sisu an invitation to connect to twitter comes up. What is my user name?

We checked on Tuck's computer, and he gets the same prompt. What one must do is click on "cancel" to close the prompt window, but who would know? Will our stats now plummet? [Tears hair out. Exits stage right]

Update II: "This is the first time I've heard of Twitter suspending a blogger, Sissy," emails Pam of Pamibe:

Was your account hacked? And why when I clicked on your site did I get a Twitter prompt? Too many questions and no answers.

I think I'm going to delete my Twitter account. I don't use it anyway. ;)

Don't ask us. We just blog here.

Update next morning: "Yesterday's news," we twittered:

1. Twitter suspends SissyWillis due to "strange activity" Now back in business, but what was that about?

2. Re twitt account's recent suspension, am back in business but flooded with a cete  of badgers = commercial followers

Makes us think that brief hijacking of our account was about trashy trolling for potential customers. Anybody out there know anything about that?

Tiny plays Powerball

What to do when it's damp and gloomy outside of a late spring morn? Tiny suggests jumping up onto your favorite chair and curling yourself up into a squirrel ball for maximum power-napping potential.

Update: We suggest clicking over to Modulator's Friday Ark #245 for maximum cute-animal potential.

The sounds of silence

I am not there. I do not sleep.

Three things. Three pieces of music that break our heart. Can't listen to 'em without breaking up, so if you need a good cry . . . Used to be two, but thanks to blogpal Stoutcat now three:

1. Mozart's Ave verum corpus Our thoughts: "You don't get to be the same again"

2. Schubert's Ave Maria Our thoughts: "They also wondered greatly at my piety"

3. Do not stand at my grave and weep Our thoughts: "Do not stand at my grave and weep."

There's nobody that could take your place, Baby face.

Sigh.

Update: "I ran across a post by a Catholic blogger which she called, 'The Sounds of Silence,' writes blogger Carolyn of Carolyn's Cotton Corner:

This got me thinking about whether there were some types of music which had an effect on us which was similar in some respects to the effects of purposeful silence.

She relates the concept to mindful eating, the secret recipe of our Cold Turkey Cookbook.

The company was the same

"Still being able to have a lobster bake on the Coast of Maine tells me that all is not yet lost out there," says Tuck. Eat your heart out, Mr. statist POTUS. Read Andrew Foy's and Brenton Stransky's "Revisiting Hayek" and call us in the morning. Meanwhile Hannaford's cooked the lobsters so we didn't have to hear their screams. We did all the rest. Steamed corn on the cob, potato salad on beds of Boston lettuce (center), mighty Caesar salad (top). How sweet it was. No croutons better than our own roasted ones with garlic and olive oil. As for the dressing, anchovy paste instead of anchovies soothed the savage breast. We can't bear to see their beady little eyes staring out at us from the can.

 

Goomp was happy as a clam. Brandy Alexander Pie for dessert was the frosting on the cake.

 

Update: While the rest of us clawed our way to the meat with crackers and picks, Goomp leisurely enjoyed two lobster rolls (above left) lovingly prepared by ourselves.

Do not stand at my grave and weep

"Do not stand at my grave and weep . . . I am not there."

"Cheney has emerged as the ultimate antidote to Obama"

"How much do we love Cheney? Thiiiiis much!" twittered blog buddy Stoutcat of Grand Rants amidst the cacophony of 140-or-fewer-character sound bites that filled the twittersphere with song yesterday. (Unattributed photo from All American Patriots)

"Cheney has emerged as the ultimate antidote to Obama," Fox News VP Bill Sammon told Laura Ingraham last night. We caught the quotable quote — together with C-Span reruns of our Dick's dulcet discourse on the Bush Administration's pro-active response to terrorism yesterday at the American Enterprise Institute (full text and video), together with toe-curling snippets of Mayor Shinn's President Obama's bloviating, finger-pointing presponse staged at the National Archives against a blow-up of the US Constitution [A blow-up of the US Constitution? How apt. –ed] — in the wee hours this morning. Here's Bill:

In fact, I think this is the debate conservatives were longing for throughout the campaign … and as a result [of Cheney's effectiveness] Democrats will redouble their efforts to destroy Dick Cheney's reputation.

While the usual suspects continue to feel a "thrill going up [their] leg" at the sound of their master's voice, others — like the Telegraph's James Delingpole, smitten at first with Barack Obama's "measured, steady voice with its pleasant but authoritative timbre" — are beginning to see the light:

Never mind the bizarre reputation Obama has acquired as a great public speaker: his speeches are fast beginning to sound almost as excruciating as anything in his predecessor's "enhanced interrogation program" …

Now, it's becoming clear that this carefully worked, glacial poise is all there is to Obama. He's just a hollow man spouting empty rhetoric [Better late than never. We've been onto the "Purple prose that is Obama's presidency" for some time now].

Compare and contrast the flatulent pomposity [The fellow DOES have a way with words!] of Obama's speech with Cheney's angry, from-the-heart, tell-it-like-it-is reposte.

Spooked by the ring of truth behind Dick Cheney's words, President Obama is quietly slipping into "Bush clothing," as Charles Krauthammer explains:

The Bush policies in the war on terror won't have to await vindication by historians. Obama is doing it day by day. His denials mean nothing. Look at his deeds.

"Not to be picky, NYT, but O's speech was prebuttal to Cheney's since Dick's was sched. 1st and O's sched. to step on it," Mary Katherine Ham chided the "Paper of Record" yesterday. Indeed, Obama may have scheduled his anti-terrorism anti-man-caused-disaster speech to step on "my Dick's" message, but, as we twittered back to mkhammer, "Instead, O stepped IN it."

Update: Blog pal Stoutcat links with Mary Cheney's dad's totally awesome surprise appearance at CPAC 2010:

Handsome, direct, smart, succinct, conservative: What's not to love?

Big time!

"There is no finer cat than I am"

Goomp's sweet-tempered seal point blue Siamese, if you please, Mr. Perkins (AKA Purrky), put his best paw forward the other day as he licked a silken gloss onto his luscious fur coat.

Then nestled in for some serious power napping at the foot of his favorite companion animal, the Goomp himself.

Update: Lots more favorite companion animals at Modulator's Friday Ark #244.

"Cook a little, tweet a little! TWEET TWEET TWEET!"

"Cook a little, tweet a little! Cook a little, tweet a little! TWEET TWEET TWEET! Cook a lot, tweet a little more!" tweets the divine Miss Amba of Ambiance, echoing Alma in The Music Man's "Pick-A-Little, Talk-A-Little" (screen shot above), in our favoritest ever twitter response. It started with The Anchoress's what-hath-Twitter-wrought tweet, the plaint of all bloggers transitioning to the new "thang," from Karl Rove's "I must have a productive wk—which means less Twitter!" on down (or up):

Good lord, I've twittered all afternoon and done none of my work. :::shakes fist::: curse you interesting people! I will now go cook!

"Cooking and twittering are a good mix. You needn't sacrifice one for the other," we twittered back. This is way fun. I'll have another serving, please.

Border skirmishes

On front-porch border patrol yesterday, Tiny allowed neighborhood lothario Earl Grey — caught by our camera's eye below in mid "uh-oh" moment as he realized he was being watched — to pass through her realm without incident.

A handsome devil with a pronounced Chelsea Gray look about him, Earl is the rare pussycat whose company Tiny seems to enjoy, and the feeling is mutual. They often form a clowder of two basking in the sun.

Peering out from behind her freshly leafed-out hosta hunting blind this morning, she drew a beed on a "furson of interest" we didn't see at first. Following her gaze, we perceived a soupçon of movement along the bottom of the high retaining wall.

An opossum! It waddled among the border-garden leaves for cover, then froze in position, playing possum, as we approached for a photo op.

Tiny wanted to pursue the matter, but we just said no.

A gesture of appreciation for her efforts from top agent Tuck.