People ask what I'll do in retirement to keep myself busy. I'll tour the country in my custom hi-tech RV ... yet old mainframe analysts like me still love to teach today's programmers a thing or two.

Specifically, I'll teach those who wrote @hootsuite's web UI & app.

I purchased a $760 Linux laptop just for this project. Oh, sure, I could buy 6+ years of @hootsuite PRO for that price -- except the PRO version doesn't do all I want. And some of the things it does, are done in bizarre fashion.

By "bizarre," I mean it's almost like...

... @hootsuite said "we'll make our customers type & mouseclick to the point of tedium so their bosses can see them 'working' all the time."

My project will tackle the tedium. It'll add functionality. And--

--yeah, it'll remove some arbitrary limitations.

I'll pour the project onto @github so @hootsuite and everyone else can learn from it.

Oh, and DOCUMENTATION! Yeah, that too: https://twitter.com/vmyths/status/894260363889442817

I can hear you already: "Rob, why would you do analysis & redesign for free for a major firm?!?"

Well, it was either @hootsuite or @Questionmark. I honestly doubt I could salvage the latter's current product line. #triage

"Rob, you didn't answer my question." Crud, you saw through my deflected commentary!

@hootsuite fills a vital need yet I surmise (perhaps wrongly?) it focuses more on the specifics of Facebook & YouTube than Twitter. I aim to make its Twitter support more robust & specific.

They also step the user through inefficient procedures. I aim to highlight that.

Hey, my Linux laptop came w/ a Win10 DVD! #squirrel What OS should I load? Kali? Mint? CentOS?

Now where was I... Ah, yes: why would I do free analysis & redesign for a major firm. Back to our thread!

We've grown so fast with web UIs & phone apps that programmers sometimes skip a thorough up-front analysis. #WordPerfect stood as a testament to thoroughness ... while @Questionmark makes me think a faculty of teachers started coding it on Day One. #imho

"Would you just answer my question, Rob?"

I've nothing better to do than to show people how the 1989 author of a CompuServe 'bot would do a @hootsuite-like 'bot today.

So there, nyah!

Okay! Now that I've got a dedicated Kali laptop (NOT a dual boot), we can begin @hootsuite's lesson. Students, turn to page 1 of your textbook at https://github.com/rsnbrgr/BarnOwl 

Students, as this is mostly a *documentation* project, you'll find my work in the wiki at https://github.com/rsnbrgr/BarnOwl/wiki

The "BarnOwl" case study is stable enough (even with Sprint's unreliable connectivity!) that I created a new account to send a random daily puzzle created from a template that I can change at will -- something @hootsuite *can't* do: https://twitter.com/QuoteCryptogram/status/1067682010930561024

The "BarnOwl" case study can also send a random tweet on a particular day of the week built from a template you specify. Again, @hootsuite can't do this. Here we see a weekly "Humpday Humor" tweet that goes out at a time of my choosing: https://twitter.com/vmyths/status/1067749953718689796

Next up I'll build a "Saturday Video" file for my YouTube humor. It'll take longer to write those tweets in a text file than it will take to set up BarnOwl to send out those tweets!