A Letter from Twitter Jail (with apologies to Martin Luther King, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Caine, Ronnie Barker and Buster Keaton - and Dan Brown for this prose)

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# A Letter from Twitter Jail
## (with apologies to Martin Luther King, Stanley Kubrick, Michael Caine, Ronnie Barker and Buster Keaton - and Dan Brown for this prose)

By @JuliusFlyhweel (aka Bob Blanchett)

### "Confirm your phone number" Wut?
I'd just arrived at the Rooftop Loft Cafe at the Strikingly Beautiful Victorian Comprehensive Cancer Centre to have a quickish drive-by coffee with my Friend, Twitter Buddy (and a real Doctor Doctor) @drng.
I fired up my trusty Chromebook and connected to the wifi. and 

Then Twitter threw me for a loop.

I'd seen this before occasionally and thought oh well, Twitter is picking up "Strange Activity".

I hit "Send Code".

Nothing.

Waited a bit. No SMS. Hit it again.

Still no SMS.

I had Twitter 2FA enabled via Google Authenticator. 
I had backup codes stored safely elsewhere. 
I had control of the email for my twitter account.
No Problems. Walk in the Park. 

Reset the Password and back in again, lickety split.
Good practice to change/rotate the password on an opportunity like this. Sweet.

Enter your code through your generator app:
Done. Enter. 
OK so 2FA isn't complaining.

Confirm your phone number. Bugger.
No SMS. Still.

### RUOK?
I started to get messages via other channels from Tweeps who connect on other platforms.
Lovely folk I have met or corresponded with since I joined twitter in 2010.
People who i've laughed and dined with, people who have visited me in Hospital.

Who had noticed that something was awry.

### First Offender. 
I of course couldn't get past "send code" to see what is going on.

I asked around to get someone to send me a twitter profile screencap to help fill in the gaps of what might be happening. 

A Horrible Sinking Feeling was beginning to dawn on me.

### Laughter.
@drng arrived.

"You're in **Twitter JAIL??**

It takes a lot to make a Scientist in Australia **Laugh his arse off** these days.

Glad I did.

He checked my profile.

Temporarily Suspended.

@drng passed on a copy of "The Wonk's Dictionary" by @james_jeffrey and @jonkudelka which had,  unbeknownst to me, been obtained by @aptronym in Sydney at the launch and  she'd had signed by the authors.

I'd met @james_jeffrey but once, at the funeral of the much loved Doyen of Australian @colvinius a few years past. he was heartbroken as was I.  also @drng who came up from Melbourne to pay his respects to a bloke we'd eaten and laughed with and learned from and loved.

These are Tweeps. Good, Principled and Flawed people (like me) who like a laugh and share joy, fallibility and mischief, lend a hand and share skills and interests.

Except for @jonkudelka who is the epitome of mischief and is infallible.

### Doing My Time in HM Slade
Something Must Be Done.

My usual instinct to pile-on which I mostly have under control these days, although there's one occasion from a few years ago where I did cause several people who certainly did not need it at the time genuine distress, apologised, but I could of course not undo what I had done.

It Still Haunts me and I won't recapitulate it here.

I have learned to **Logoff** when similarly seized.

I had seen **Shawshank Redemption** on TV a few days ago, but had no posters of Marilyn or Racquel, so I made my own.
https://imgur.com/gallery/MrT5xdS

### #FreeJuliusFlywheel
In the Spirit of "Free Norm" badge that I acquired long ago from a Dame Edna concert, I went to imgflip and made a lark of my incarceration and posted them on Facebook tagging the tweeps there who knew me.

### Appeal to the assizes for mercy
I realised that I'd screwed up.

I put tickets in to @TwitterSupport

In an urge to tidy up, as I had been recently with Inbox Zero, I went looking a few days earlier to tidy up my "Following".

I found a service called untweeps.com, 
selected roughly 30 accounts that had been inactive for more than 30 days after providing my approval to use my account.

Bad Idea. 

### An Old Lag's advice..
@GordyPls chimed in on the facebook post I'd made to let people who were asking RUOK that I was OK.

A Zero Following on the profile was normal for twitter Jail and would be restored on my emancipation.

Nice Guy @Gordypls.
He can cook up a storm and posts about it often. Talented and thoughtful guy.

He'd done his time often and was helping me do mine.

Never met him.

But that's tweeps for you,  holding out the hand.

### Waiting
I left it alone sent my au revoirs ro @drng  and returned to Chez Flywheel to pen this magnum opus.

I tried logging in again, thinking "Temporary" was now passed.

> Something went wrong.
> 
> You have exceeded the number of allowed attempts to verify your phone.
> Please try again later.

The Time Passes Slowly.

@TwitterSupport Please Forgive me?

http://bit.ly/FreeJuliusFlywheel