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Kyle Tolle reading ‘Twikini Releases v1′

Update:

As per the instructions on the Twikini website, I emailed CJ about this blog post. Within minutes he responded and sent out my serial number for v1.0. I can also happily say that it installed and connected to Twitter perfectly. I entered the serial number and am good to go. Very excited to test out all the new features I’ve not had a chance to see yet!  I take back what I said about the customer support: I’m quite impressed.

Twikini is a Windows Mobile Twitter client written in C++.  It’s lightweight, quick but is decently powerful. Twikini v1.0 just released and I’m hoping to give it a try soon.  I had downloaded v0.6 and really enjoyed it, but v0.8 never did work. I had upgraded because of DM (Direct Message) support.  Same bones with v0.9. Keeps saying there’s no network to connect to. I am hoping that I can get v1.0 to work.  I’d recommended Twikini in a tweet and Aoss tried it out.

A screen shot of Twikini

Trinket Software, the people who make Twikini, just introduce a pricing plan for the product, and I’m hoping to get a copy for writing this blog post. Did I mention I’m crossing my fingers that it works this time? I’ve @’d Twikini several times about my issues, but haven’t ever heard back. Customer service could be a bit better…

Have you heard of Twikini? Have you tried it out? What are your impressions? Have any of you had the same issue with getting it to connect to the internet? Please tell me I’m not alone!

Kyle Tolle Review, Software, Tutorial C#, client, mobile, twikini, twitter, Windows, Windows mobile

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Kyle Tolle reading ‘Update on OSU Email’

What Happened

Last night I wrote the post “Forwarding BuckeyeMail” and tweeted it to 8Help, OSU’s IT service desk.  In just a few short hours, I got a tweet from 8Help, a comment from Chuck, and a detailed email from 8Help, which is included at the bottom of this post.

From the email, we see there is actually an article about forwarding BuckeyeMail, but it’s not listed on the main FAQs. Instead, it’s listed on a page of a huge number of other articles, which is why I missed it.

I’m a bit confused because they say BuckeyeMail isn’t required, but if they’re getting rid of WebMail, what other choice do you have? I guess it’s not required in the same sense that WebMail isn’t required: You can forward your email to another account, so you don’t have to use it?

What I Learned

From the feedback, I’ve gathered some insight on this whole process.

• OSU still uses your name.##@osu.edu address for all mailings. Whew!
• Setting up BuckeyeMail changes your osu.edu email redirect policy, and forwards all @osu.edu mail to @buckeyemail.osu.edu automatically. I really wish they would have an option to keep this from happening when you’re actually setting up BuckeyeMail, or at least a more apparent notification that this user-given value will be overwritten.
• Forwarding BuckeyeMail isn’t as clean a process as I thought it was.
• There’s still hope, because we can avoid most of that mess by just changing where our @osu.edu address forwards.

What To Do Now

So here’s a list of new steps to take:

1. Again, forward @osu.edu email to another account of your choice. This re-establishes the  forwarding you may have had before. It bypasses the BuckeyeMail system all together.
2. Since there is a chance someone could decide to email your BuckeyeMail address, there’re a few options.
   • Have Gmail check your BuckeyeMail. Since there won’t be much mail going here, it’s okay that Gmail only checks once an hour.
   • Set up an autoresponder in BuckeyeMail to tell the sender you’re not using that address. This feature only works in IE though, which is stupid. (I hate MS and their IE only garbage. It doesn’t even “degredate” to other browsers. It just doesn’t work.)
   • Send your BuckeyeMail to another account. There are a number of caveats with this method that I didn’t know before:
     1. Forwarded email is sent as a “Fwd:” from your BuckeyeMail account instead of transparently passed along, as I’ve come to expect Forwarding to mean. This archaic “Forwarding” is automating you opening up the email, hitting Forward and typing in the other address – so it comes from your @buckeyemail.osu.edu account. Addresses from the original email are in the body of the email, but it kills the work flow of just hitting reply, since it’s sent from your buckeyemail.
     2. Redirected mail completely kills the email headers, so you can’t tell if it was sent to anyone other than yourself. Not sure why this would even be useful since it modifies the original message by killing the headers.

Why I Screwed Up

I thought forwarding from BuckeyeMail was a transparent process, because before I set up the inbox rule I had resubmitted the @osu.edu forwarding form, and then tried sending test emails to my @osu.edu address.  I thought this form was obsolete, however, meaning I thought all OSU mail went to BuckeyeMail regardless. Since this isn’t so, the test emails never actually reached the BuckeyeMail servers, so I didn’t see the wonky forwarding setup there.

Here’s the email I got from 8Help. Very detailed and concise – These guys rock!

The Email from 8Help

Kyle,

Thanks for sharing your blog post with instructions on forwarding Buckeye Mail. We have a similar article we’ve had available for just under two weeks at http://8help.osu.edu/4093.html that goes into a little more depth and includes some warnings.

Just to clarify – students are not required to use Buckeye Mail – all official university communications should be going to your tollename.##@osu.edu address for you to read, and from there forwarding to @gmail.com.

If someone (another student, perhaps, or someone you e-mailed from Buckeye Mail hitting reply, etc.) “guesses” and tries to mail you directly at tolle.23@buckeyemail.osu.edu, however, that wouldn’t be forwarded using that process. There are a couple options for taking care of messages that might be missed due to this.

One is setting up Gmail to POP your messages from Buckeye Mail, per http://8help.osu.edu/4070.html

Another is to set up an Automatic Reply in Buckeye Mail basically saying “I don’t use this address, make sure to mail me at name.##@osu.edu (or even Gmail directly if you prefer).

Another is to setup Inbox Rules that automatically forward or redirect all incoming mail to another address, per http://8help.osu.edu/4093.html

The warnings for this are spelled out in the article – but because of your blog post, I just want to make sure you’re aware that messages *forwarded* int his manner will appear “From” your Buckeye Mail address – NOT the original sender, so you won’t be able to just hit This option behaves just like hitting forward on a message from an e-mail client. The Subject is also appended with “FW: ”

If you choose to Redirect instead of Forward, there are other issues – the original sender and subject are preserved, so that you can hit reply and have it go back to the sender … BUT… if there were other recipients on the message (other To or Cc addresses), those are NOT preserved – so hitting reply-all would only reach the original sender – you won’t be aware of other people who may have been a part of the conversation.

That’s a lot to digest, so hopefully it all makes sense – let me know if you have any questions.

–
Max Treboni
IT Service Desk, OSU Office of Information Technology
Request forms and knowledge base articles are available on the web at http://8help.osu.edu
Service hours are available on the web at http://8help.osu.edu/1691.html

Kyle Tolle School, Tutorial 8help, buckeye, Buckeyemail, email, forward, mail, ohio state, OSU, redirect, update, Webmail

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Kyle Tolle reading ‘So I Called a Sex Line’

So my undergraduate career is coming to an end. Luckily, I have a job for after I graduate, and seeing as it is out of state, I have to orchestrate my getting out there.  So I was calling around to some moving companies today, trying to get quotes.  I’d heard about one through a friend and looked up their number on their website.

I call the number, hear a voice but the call was dropped or something. So I call back. This time the call doesn’t get dropped. I’m a bit confused, because the lady reading the recording I hear sounds a bit too excited to be a moving company voice.  She keeps talking, and that’s when I hear, “You’ve come to the right place for nasty talk with big busted girls who love to get off. Shoot your load between a pair of double Ds…” And that’s when I notice, I’ve reached a freaking sex line?!

So it turns out I was one number off on the moving company’s phone number, which lead me to that sexy sexy lady… recording. Only $1.99 a minute? That’s definitely better than how much it’s going to cost me to move my stuff. I’ll definitely enter my credit card number.

And that’s when I decided to dial the correct number and get that quote.

Kyle Tolle Personal Adult, Lady, Misdial, Money, Moving, Phone, Sex

Listen to this Reading:

Kyle Tolle reading ‘Forwarding BuckeyeMail’

UPDATE:

Please see my ‘Update on OSU Email‘ post for the feedback I got on this post and what I learned about how the BuckeyeMail system works. Fixing the forwarding is way easier.

Ohio State is rolling out it’s new BuckeyeMail service. They’re releasing it in phases, and I only just got the chance to sign up for it.  Annoyingly, I had to muck around with resetting the password and wait several days for my account to unlock (from trying what should have been the correct password too much).

When I finally logged in today, I found that I had missed several days of emails because the @osu.edu address now forwards to the @buckeyemail.osu.edu address, which I couldn’t log in to.

For the webmail system, there was a web form you could fill out to forward your email to another account. The settings are not migrated from webmail to BuckeyeMail, however. You’re going to have to set it up on your own again.  It’s not overly hard to find this or set it up, but there is no 8Help BuckeyeMail FAQ for this. I decided to write this tutorial to show you how to set up BuckeyeMail to forward to another email account (like Gmail).

This is not the same as setting Gmail up for POP access, which 8Help does have an article on. Forwarding the email allows you to get it instantly in Gmail instead of waiting for Gmail to check the BuckeyeMail servers for new mail. It’s my preferred method. Now, on to the tutorial!

1) Go to “Options”, in the upper right hand corner of the page.

2) Go to “Organize E-Mail” in the left side menu.

3) Under the default “Inbox Rules” tab, click the “New” button.

4) In the new window, select “[Apply to all messages]” in the first dropdown.

5) Select “Forward the message to…” in the second dropdown.

6) A new popup appears. Type the email address to forward to in the “Message Recipients”, “To—->” field. Click “Ok”.

7) The email address is turned blue and underlined. Just click “Ok” again.

8) The popup closes and you’re brought back to the previous window. Click “Save” to save the rule.

9) The rule is saved and now all your email is forwarded to the address you supplied!

Now you’re ready to go about your normal business. Gmail beats Microsoft’s offering anyway.

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  Please leave me feedback on whether you were able to follow these steps, if you encountered any problems along the way, or you just love me!

Kyle Tolle School, Tutorial Buckeyemail, email, Fowarding, Gmail, ohio state, OSU, Webmail

Listen to this Reading:

Kyle Tolle reading ‘Outcast Offshoot’

Walking rings around the outcast
third of all the men.
Tearing strips from their gear to
mark them as lesser ones.
Then we ate the strips out of spite
with just a pinch of irony.
They’ve become a cantankerous splintering of the glorified whole;
a mutinous and strangling growth.
We stood their dreams on their heads
and slit their ghastly necks in two.
A bowl to catch all the fluid to
reduce, reuse, recycle.
Cold compress and a drainage ditch to squeeze
out and away all the treachery
from their decentralized veins.
A horrid, pleasant smell which you have never known
until you have drained those dreams
and watched the remaining men sour.
Can you say you’ve never tasted rotting hope?
Never snipped the clutching tendrils?
Ahh a few men did outlast many others,
but an hour in a frozen lake thawed their resolve.
We see the way you glance and scoff our duties.
I’m only here because I don’t feel what you can.
I’m only here to do the job you are “too good for.”
I’m only here to trim outcast offshoot.

Kyle Tolle Poetry

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Kyle Tolle reading ‘Ohio State University is Obsessed with Swine Flu’

A few days ago, OSU sent out three emails to every one about someone maybe having swine flu on campus.  New emails have been consistently showing up in my inbox since then.  They’re basically updates any time someone new is either suspected to have it, probably has it, or definitely has it.

I’m tired of these emails.

Why should I get an email every time someone gets sick?  Yes, I know how to cough into my sleeve so as to avoid getting myself and others sick.  I know to stay away from someone sick.  I’m not stupid.  These emails make me feel that OSU believes the students have no common sense.  Such advice as “Make sure to wash your hands” doesn’t really add anything to my knowledgebase…

Today, after getting what has to be the 4th or 5th email regarding Swine Flu from OSU, I decided to reply.

Do you send out an email for every person who gets the flu each year? No. So why is this any different?  I really don’t want to get an email 3x a day telling me about someone else getting sick because they were either in the wrong place, or didn’t follow common sense about health and wellness.  Will you soon be sending out messages when someone has the sniffles?

These emails are sent from the Emergency Management email address of OSU. I have no idea if the email address is monitored, so it’s likely the email didn’t ever reach anyone. But it still felt good to send.  Is someone getting sick with the flu honestly occasion to break out the Emergency Management system? Their use of the “H1N1 flu” makes things sound much more dire, because it’s cryptic and therefore SCARY!  I really wish they would have sent an email last winter when someone slipped on ice and hurt themselves so they could tell me to be careful because ice is slippery and falling down means you could hurt something. I couldn’t have guessed that myself.

What are your thoughts? I’m particularly interested in hearing from Ohio State students who have received these same emails. Anyone else who has been inundated with the swine flu media barrage is welcome to comment!  Shoot, even if you’ve not even heard about the swine flu, you can say so!  I have honestly not heard that much about it, mainly because I don’t watch the news, but the little I have heard is really annoying. Scare tactics for the lose.  Can we punch the government for inciting a riot over this illness?!

Kyle Tolle School email, illness, ohio state, OSU, School, sickness, swine flu

Listen to this Reading:

Kyle Tolle reading ‘Establishing Myself’

My start with computers came around 8th grade; back when you could still do stuff on a computer without the internet. Today, if there’s no internet, the computer isn’t even worth bothering with!  I played some video games, signed up for some writing websites, and even experimented with my own websites, but hiding my identity was paramount.  I always remember hearing people talk about how dangerous it is for people to know who you really are, where you really live, etc.  I would say that’s true for kids, but maybe it was also more about the times.

In the early 2000’s, the internet was mostly static.  You went to pages for information that other companies produced.  Some user generated content was out there, but there weren’t many platforms to enable mass adoption.  On anything I signed up for, even writing websites, I made sure to hide my identity because there were so many evil evil people.  If anyone dare find out my first name and the city I lived in, that was the end of the world!  Skip forward to today (2009, in case you forgot), and the internet is insane! A huge percentage of the internet is user-driven and user-created.  Not only that, but the internet is an area for personal promotion. Blogs, Twitter, portfolios, websites, photo albums, video, and tons of other things are rampant.  Don’t get me wrong, there are still bajillions of people who go by handles, but an ever increasing number of people are going around signing up for these services with their own names.

Since I am a developer (software, art, writing) whose career is centered around the computer and internet, I’ve started using my own name on these websites. Not only does it help make me #1 on the Google search for Kyle Tolle, but it allows me to create a consistent personality across all these services.  My name’s Kyle Tolle and if you want to find me on Twitter, I’m kyletolle.  12seconds: kyletolle.  Personal website: kyletolle.com. Goodreads: Kyle Tolle. You get the picture!  It does really help when there are only maybe 3 Kyle Tolles across the whole USA.  If you see a Kyle Tolle somewhere on the web, it’s quite likely me.

It still wasn’t too long ago when I hid behind other aliases, but I’m definitely moving away from that.  Makes me sad when I can’t change my username on websites like Digg and Last.fm, but oh well.  It feels good to establish myself on the web.  I’m definitely me, and I am now making it known on the internets!  Creating a consistent, recognizable presence across all these different services is a cool experience, especially when I’m known by my name instead of ChalkBoi980090288AJF87.  Hello, webosphere, Kyle Tolle has arrived!

There are times when I’ll sign up with a pseudonym, but those instances are mostly relegated to one-off signups: to get some quick help, or see an article.  If I’m not actively involved with a website, I’m just going in as anonymous.  A side effect of using services with your real name is that you think more before posting. If you’re a douchebag online, people will be able to see that, and will rightly think you’re a douchebag in real life.  Without that wall to hide behind, it’s more important to not be an idiot.  Then again, the types of people who’re abusive on the internet aren’t likely the ones to be interested in developing anything of value in the first place. Oh burn!

Kyle Tolle Personal identity, internet, personality, services