Jeepers, people. Has Facebook gone wanky (again) or what? Don’t worry though, it’s okay, I have a fix so that your Live Feed works nearly like it did before the weekend of the Great Facebook Flop of Late 2009…… but before I get to the fix let me first mention that I found these instructions on Facebook… and of all people, it was sitting up on the wall of our friend Hollis Gillespie, a well known potty mouthed Atlanta author with movie deals and book deals coming out her ears. While I admire and respect Hollis’ creative skills it galled me that I, a graduate of Georgia Tech with a double-secret minor in computer technology, had to rely on a woman whose cellphone is held together by rubberbands (no offense Hollis).

So the fix.

If you’re not already there, go to your Live Feed. If you’re on your News Feed you’ll see the link above the box where you can type your status update.

Once there, scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen until you see a bar which states “Older Posts” on the left and “Edit Options” on the right. (This is just above the site’s footer)

Click on “Edit Options” until a dialog box pops up featuring the “fine controls” for how you view your friends’ feeds. Note the lower area entitled “Number of Friends”. There is a text entry field located here which allows you to tweak the number of users that will be screened for appearance on your Live Feed.

For reasons unexplained this number is set at 250. If you have over 250 friends this is a problem… so change that number to something higher. Once finished, click the “save” button in the lower right hand side of that pop-up box and it will disappear, hopefully taking your new higher limit back to headquarters and restoring some normalcy to your friend stalking addiction.

Happy Facebooking!

Related posts:

1. Facebook’s NEW News Feed
2. Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default
3. Facebook Videos Finally Play on iPhone without Flash?

(note: be sure to read my newest post about Facebook’s undocumented transition)
I got tired of not understanding the NEW version of Facebook’s News Feed and went all the way over to their help section (tiring, this) looking for answers. Why they didn’t send the explanation out to its users baffles me (I’ve re-posted their answer below for you lazy people).

To quote Facebook’s Help Page:

What is the difference between News Feed and Live Feed?
News Feed aggregates the most interesting content that your friends are posting, while Live Feed shows you all the actions your friends are making in real-time.

How does News Feed determine which content is most interesting?
The News Feed algorithm bases this on a few factors: how many friends are commenting on a certain piece of content, who posted the content, and what type of content it is (e.g. photo, video, or status update).

So THERE!!
Annoying? Yes.
Weird? Yes.
But I still call this a win. The app spam is gone and now I can simply follow the most interesting of my friends without even needing to pick and choose.

Let’s see how well this actually works.

Related posts:

1. Fix Your Broken Facebook Feed
2. Make Facebook’s NEW Status Updates Group Your Default
3. Facebook Videos Finally Play on iPhone without Flash?

Oh Netflix, you sexy little minx, you conduit to all my guilty pleasures, you must be nearly as exhausted as I am… or maybe you kids started celebrating New Years a little early this year? All I know is that after 15 hours of slinging pixels I arrived home, ready to crank open a little bit of Yu-Gi-Oh style monster-dueling before hitting the sack and five seconds into the disc I realized that you didn’t sent me Volume 8 and 9 like I requested, you sent me Volumes 9 and 10, which might seem partly right to an optimist, but is in fact, mostly entirely wrong.

Wha Hoppen?

Netflix, are you trying to confuse me and my burgeoning duel monster skills? Stop it!

Just to make sure that the error wasn’t mine, I clicked over to view my Returned Rentals, and sure enough Volume 8 was listed as having been returned the day after it was shipped. Take a look:

Maybe I just forgot Episode 8? Nope, I went and found the synopsis for the entire series (an altogether humiliating task) and can tell you right now that no, I have NOT seen any of this particular bit of thrilling monster card fighting. To wrap things up, I took a quick peek at my emails, and sure enough, on Monday you sent me a note saying that you would be mailing me Volume 8 for arrival yesterday…. see??

Now how is this possible?

I mean, come on guys. Clearly, our mail lady did not pick the disc up from you, drive it to my house, sit with me and watch it, and then take it back the next day.

Everybody knows that she only does that with Bridget Jones.

Every Wednesday.

Whether we want her to or not.

So unless you can prove that you’re not in league with our voluptuous, restraining-order-encumbered mail woman, I want a written explanation of what’s going on down there at Netflix Central, and I want it now….. and…. if possible, I want in on the action.

You know, swag, and stuff.

Realizing that it might be a good idea let you know that my order was in wild disarray, I decided to “Report a Problem” on a disc that was clearly not next in my cue…

Evan Almighty

What the?? Steve Carrell, look buddy, love you and all, but you’ve got to learn to wait your turn in my queue.

Capiche?

So now, take a look at what I got when I went to try to explain this entire mess to the good (but hallucinogenically demented) people over at Netflix…..

Reveived? REVEIVED???

Dammit, Netflix.
You’re partying without me.
I guess this means we’re not BFF anymore?

Message Reveived, Netflix.
Message Reveived.

No related posts.

Here’s the deal.

In 2003 I owned one of the hottest toys on the planet…. a sweet black and silver Sony Ericsson T-616 cellphone (part of their 610 series).

It had a real (albeit tiny) joystick, a sophisticated operating system and a full-color screen WAY bigger than any of my friends’ phones. This thing was so far ahead of the curve that only the dorkiest dorks in town owned one. Needless to say that no one in my circle of friends and work colleagues had a phone that could begin to match the things my phone could do.

I’m serious. This was a nifty bit of cellular overkill and I LOVED it.

The T-616 was a miniature computer. It had a camera and it used Bluetooth™ (the usefulness of which nobody seemed to comprehend regardless of how many hand gestures I used to explain the concept of controlling the refrigerator with my cellphone*). That little marvel could do SMS (simple text messages), MMS (styled text messages with images and video)… it was even capable of sending and receiving honest to goodness emails!!

This was back in 2003, people!!!
Back when Saddam was still in power, the Concorde was still in service, and New Hampshire’s Old Man of the Mountain wasn’t just on the quarter.

After playing around with the T-616 I was certain that “texting” would be my favorite feature, a certainty which lasted less than a month as that’s exactly how long it took me to realize that the rest of my friends’ phones were as useful as a duck on wheels and that frequent texting was as expensive as a trip to the Gold Room with a stripper, please, sir, don’t touch the boobs.

There I’d be, at a restaurant, on a date, waiting for the girl to return from the powder room. With a couple of glasses of wine in me and a mind for mischief I’d whip out my T-616 and type up a message to a couple of my friends and hit the “SEND” key.

The next day I would get an angry phone call or three.

Blisteringly livid complaints.

“Dude. Stop sending me those damned text message things. I can’t get them. My phone won’t do that. I have to call a special number and get a code from my carrier and then log into a website to see what you sent, and it costs me ten cents every time I have to do that… so stop it. I’m serious.”

(very nearly a direct quote*)

After an intense period of threats and imprecations from these same friends (you people) I stopped sending texts altogether and withdrew to the lowest depths of the Drewcave, where I installed a bunch of dumb games on the phone and started using those to entertain myself whenever I was bored… robbed of the thrill of text messaging by the sheer incompetence of everyone I knew, I allowed my interest to wither and fade.

But in 2005 the price of the Motorola RAZR suddenly dropped and over the course of the year a bunch of my friends (you people) began sending me text messages.

Finally, I had playmates!!
I especially wanted to text some of the girls I knew…but there was a problem.

It was impossible for these girls to carry on a conversation that was anywhere near as sexy and fluid as something you get in an instant message session, chiefly because their phones required them to learn how to use a 12-key number pad to type in words from a 26+ character alphabet.

If you’ve ever tried this you can attest to how indescribably difficult it can be to accomplish, even if your phone uses predictive text input (T-9). Plus, the more you’ve had to drink, the more likely your message ends up resembling a rotor selection code for the Third Reich’s Enigma Engine.

As cool as my T-616 was, it had a clumsy numeric keypad and less storage space than an Atari 800XL (the newer ones). So I kind of thought I was upgrading when I began using a Motorola PEBL a few years ago, but all too soon I realized that it wasn’t really any better.

But I learned it the hard way.

I’d be somewhere, maybe a concert or a hockey game, and in an intense moment of profound emotion I’d be moved to share a thought with one or more of you and would type out a message simmering with wit and verve, heart and soul, only to discover (later*) that you received:

“Hex h?m cr th keeha poemo 9ot fvep say!”

::sigh::

The truth is, I just can’t type on this damned thing.

Now you know the truth. I’m hardly ever drunk, my phone just sucks balls.

But it’s your fault, you know. You people.

If you’d only started texting with me back in 2003, when I was ready to begin, I’d have already migrated to a full QWERTY keyboard phone. I’d be master of a CrackBerry or an iPhone a G1 or a whatever. I’d have thumbs of STEEL.

I’d be a real boy.

It was you, all of you, who held me back.
That’s right, all of you are responsible for retarding my texting growth.

You’ve made me some sad Quasimodo of Texting and I hate you for it.

But there’s more!! My Hugo-esque tragedy has another chapter!!

Among the many assorted elements of texting etiquette (or “Textiquette”) of which I have been pitifully unaware is the fact that there are, in fact, Hours of Operation for text messages which are not, in further fact, the same as emails.

Did you know this?? Why didn’t you tell me? Do you HATE me??

This cardinal rule of text messaging was brought sharply into focus a few weeks ago by two tantalizingly hot, bright and friendly-as-a-puppy 20-somethings, who interpreted an 8am Sunday morning text message from me as the equivalent of a booty call… instead of the friendly (and almost entirely innocent*) salutation it was intended to be.

Imagine my confusion when I received a message which read:

“dude. texts are not accepted between the hours of 1am and 10am unless they are emergencies! but thanks ”

Please note that this was the exact moment at which I began to understand the profound difference between text messages and emails… I began to understand that text message are not the same as emails and that people who send text messages are expecting immediate replies.

Holy crap.
I had been the equivalent of the 1997 AOL user who typed all of his emails in UPPERCASE LETTERS.
I had pooped in the punchbowl of text messaging.
I was a pirate at a tea party with poop on my feet.
I was a n00b.

Oh the ignominy.
Oh the turmoil.
Oh the Passion, theSturm and Drang.
Oh the unexpected junior high school confrontations in darkened IM corridors.
And ultimately: the shunning, the shunning, the shunning.

All because of text messages.

And it’s all your fault, you bastards.
You’ve allowed me become this texty clown.
You juked me into living in the technological backwater of T-9 predictive input.
If you’d only switched over with me in 2003 but….

…look at you now,
with your fancy iPhones and BlackBerrys and Whatsits.

Sending each other texts.
Laughing at me.
Just, look at yourselves. I hope you’re happy with yourselves.
Where were you when I needed you??

Enjoy your newfound technological superiority while it lasts, because it’s about to end.

You’ve awakened a sleeping giant with a nimble set of thumbs.

I’m going to do what I set out to do in 2003 and this time you won’t stop me.

You can’t stop me.

I’ve started shopping for a new phone.
You heard me right. A new phone.
A hot phone, a sexy phone.
A phone with a full keyboard, for texting.

I’m going to learn to text good and proper this time.
I’ll memorize the polite hours of operation.
I’ll use apostrophes and umlauts, circumflexes and diacriticals.
I’ll spell things properly (and improperly per textiquette and cultural mores).

I’ll go slow, slow, quick, quick, slow.
I’ll be clever and glib, whipsmart beyond reason.
You’ll thrill to my every text and I’ll leave you wanting more.

Clever girls will sob at the complexity of my mind and dumb girls will send me pictures of their boobs and, best of all, my phone will have enough memory to actually be capable of opening the files!!

No more will you receive messages like:

“Basu 7ar ysu4″

or

“I#n hbving stbh a goof tine?”

or

“Haia 8ra naus akawiz yot qtsrz!”

No.
Soon, and very soon, I’ll be able to text with the best of you, and those booty calls?

They’ll be for real.
Oh yes, for real.

Unless of course I’ve had too much beer, in which case you won’t be able to read them.

And I won’t be able to Ya3A#9a???*

(* an early promise of Bluetooth technology)

No related posts.