Embedded: Twitter puts outage
Hide and seek. Did I scare you?
Earlier this week, Twitter went down. It went down hard. It was scary. I know because I was there. I now officially have the PTSD. At last, I’m finally somebody.
The duration of the outage was about 45 minutes. That’s approximately twice the amount of time Apollo 13 spent out of radio contact when it was behind the moon. I just got a double dose of what it must have felt like to be in Mission Control. And I’m a non-smoker!
It was the longest outage since Twitter’s IPO and the second crash in the last nine days.
The outage was described in the strongest possible terms as the “longest outage since the IPO.” What those two things have to do with each other I have absolutely no idea.
Some in the media took the opportunity to write quippish jokes about the mayhem. (Hint: It was too soon.) Jokes, I must say, that practically wrote themselves.
- “Twitter Suffers Outage During Biz Stone’s Panel at SXSW” – I don’t know what a “Biz Stone” is but I bet it was pissed. Source: WSJ.
- “Twitter Outage Takes Site Down for 45 Minutes, Users Stranded” – I bet a lot of them were forced to hitchhike. Source: Newsmax.com.
- “Twitter goes down, chaos and productivity ensue” – What the fuck are you implying? Source: Washington Post.
- “‘We Experienced Unexpected Complications’: The Language Of Twitter Outages” – Hey, that’s the hip new lingo. Source: Lifehacker Australia.
- “Twitter Goes Down: Something is Technically Wrong” – You have a firm grasp of the obvious. Souce: The Next Web.
- “Twitter Briefly Goes Down, Silencing Millions Of Horrible, Unnecessary Twitter Jokes” – That hurts, that really hurts. Source: Huffington Post.
Again, as your intrepid embedded reporter, I was there on the front lines. What follows are my eyewitness firsthand accounts of the action as it unfolded.
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Call to Action: Defining My Conservatism!
Freedom!!!
Friends, please listen up. I’m trying to find a way to help an online friend.
A guy named Tim who runs a blog called “Defining My Conservatism” crossed my path recently. We followed each other and stuff. We had some engaging interactions and I consider him to be a kindred spirit in the political world, although we reside on different sides of the proverbial aisle.
I just got word from our mutual friend Cathy that his twitter account @myconservatism has been suspended, apparently because of a one word tweet about Obama.
Apparently some people are “flagging” twitter accounts. Not because they did anything to break the rules but merely because they expressed an opinion different than their own. I find this sort of thing repugnant. If this world was only populated with people who had the same opinion as me I’m sure some would still find a way to call the other 99% assholes.
This is my plea. This is my call-to-action. Do what you can in the name of friendship and the American way. Do it because you’re my friend. Do it because you hate me. I don’t care why, really, but if you feel so motivated, anything you can do to help will be appreciated. I don’t care what side of the aisle you are on. I hope you’ll agree that this sort of thing should not be allowed to happen.
- Visit the Defining My Conservatism blog and express your support.
- Tweet and mention @myconservatism and express your support. I’m told it helps if you also mention @support and @twitter in your tweet.
- If you know any way to help a person who has had a Twitter account suspended, please comment below and let me know. I’ll pass it along to Tim.
We shouldn’t attempt to shut down voices simply because they disagree with our own point of view. We’re supposed to have freedom of speech in this country. It’s supposed to be a pretty special and unique kind of thing. What happened to Tim was portrayed to me as a thing done by progressives against conservatives, but I’ll bet its more bipartisan than that. Whatever. Either way it’s wrong and needs to stop.
Thanks for whatever you can do!
Speak No Evil, Tweet No Evil
Here in the Abyss we are proud to afford equal time for opposing points of view. In this episode, humor columnist Michael A. Stusser finds himself under a cloud of negativity and seeks out a “positivity intervention.” Let’s watch!
Speak No Evil, Tweet No Evil
Michael A. Stusser
Perhaps it was the corrosive nature of the websites I frequented. Maybe it was the inebriated pack of bullshitters I hung out with and our constant blasphemous banter, or the incessant cable-news cycle where frenzied and extreme viewpoints crowd out reasoned deliberation. Then again, it could have been the naked photos I found of my wife with another man that finally sent me over the edge. Regardless of the last straw, an omnipresent cloud of negativity was slowly but surely poisoning my future—and I aimed to do something about it.
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Silence of the Garbage
Every story has a beginning…
Ack. God, I hate that shit. Of course every story has a beginning. No shit, Sherlock. And every journey begins with a single step. Blah blah blah. Unless, of course, it’s The Never Beginning Story. I’ll bet that story doesn’t have a frickin’ beginning. Because it’s never beginning. Hells yeah! That makes sense to me. I may have to do a 42-part web series on the never beginning story. I’d like that.
Here, let me take a crack at this sort of nonsense. “Every story can be told at least two ways.” Cryptic enough for ya? Whatever. This is my story. And it all begins on a Tuesday morning not too long ago…
—
I was still groggy. It was completely dark out and something had awakened me. I realized someone was there, a few feet away, standing in the darkness, watching me.
I knew it was my wife. Through the plexiglass that separated us (conveniently sprinkled with air holes) I sensed that see she was angry. Her nostrils flared. She was about to speak.
“Don’t,” I said, interrupting her before she started. “Something has gone wrong, hasn’t it?”
“Good morning, Tom,” she said. “Yes, something has gone wrong.”
“Closer,” I said. “Closer, please.”
She took a step forward and the light from my room illuminated her a bit more fully.
“Tom, you …,” she started, but I sniffed at the air between us, thick with tension, and she hesitated.
“You don’t smell of garbage,” I said. “Sometimes you do, but not today. No, not today. It’s my job isn’t it? A man’s job, but sometimes you still have to do it yourself. You stand there in your fancy shoes and try to pretend your husband always does his share of the chores. But today he didn’t, did he?”
I sniffed at the air again, longer this time. “No, he didn’t. And neither did you. But the smell of garbage is still there. Not from you, no. From the kitchen. From the bin that your husband didn’t take out. Isn’t that right, Clarice?”
“Yes, it’s Tuesday morning, isn’t it? Monday is when he takes out the trash. Because we all know what happens if he doesn’t.”
“Do you know what you look like standing there with your fancy shoes and your faith in your husband? You look like a rube, Clarice.”
Her eyes showed momentary surprise. She was shaking now.
“Last night you heard it, didn’t you? The awful sound of your garbage not being picked up.”
I pressed on.
“You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? Wake up in the dark and hear the silence of the garbage not being picked up?”
“Yes.”
“And you think, if you could somehow motivate poor Tom, that garbage would be gone by now, don’t you? You think if the garbage was gone, you wouldn’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful silence of the garbage not being picked up.”
“I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“Thank you, Clarice.”
—
Eh? The other way of telling the story? It goes like this: “Tuesday morning my wife told me I forgot to take out the trash.” Now you tell me. Which version did you like better?
Shouts from the Abyss 
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