Ramblings

In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American … There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag … We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language … and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people. […]

Well said Mr. President; well said.

I’ve been a Google Voice user for a while and now you can join the ranks without an invitation.

A little over a year ago, we released an early preview of Google Voice, our web-based platform for managing your communications. We introduced one number to ring all your phones, voicemail that works like email, free calls and text messages to the U.S. and Canada, low-priced international calls and more—the only catch was you had to request and receive an invite to try it out. Today, after lots of testing and tweaking, we’re excited to open up Google Voice to the public, no invitation required. […]

I personally love the service. I have the voicemail from my iPhone forwarded to Google Voice so that all my voicemail is in one place (and I can get them as text messages). The Google Voice number is the only one I give out any more since it is trivial to screen calls, block numbers from ever calling you again, and generally masking where you are (one number can connect to many phones) at any given point.

We need more silly stuff like this slide Volkswagen built in a subway.

Both AT&T and Apple have sent out statements Wednesday acknowledging yesterday’s iPhone 4 preorder meltdown. According to AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom, preorder sales for the iPhone 4 were 10 times higher than the first day of preorders for the iPhone 3GS last summer. Apple has also publicly acknowledged that things did not go smoothly, apologizing to would-be customers who weren’t able to get an order in before the iPhone 4 sold out.

Apple said that it and its cell carriers worldwide took more than 600,000 preorders for the iPhone 4 yesterday. This was the “largest number of preorders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions,” forcing many customers to abandon their attempts to complete an order. […]

600,000 preorders in a single day! I can’t say I would blame AT&T or Apple for system failures under that scenario. They planned for the loads they saw with the last model (and then some I’m sure), but were swept under by unexpectedly large demand to the point where Apple called it quits due to production availability concerns. You can only prepare for so much demand.

SCO was dealt yet another blow in court today when District Judge Ted Stewart rejected the company’s motion requesting a new trial or judgement of law. In a ruling issued today, Judge Stewart sided with a jury that issued a verdict against SCO in April, finding that Novell was the rightful owner of the UNIX SVRX copyrights. According to Judge Stewart, SCO failed to demonstrate that the jury’s verdict contradicted the evidence presented in the case. […]

One more step towards stopping the madness. It’s about time.

No, today isn’t Tuesday, but it was when I got this message on the white board in my office. It was left by my boss’s children on Monday. Just thought I’d take a picture to share before I cleared it off to make room for other stuff.

But the landscape is shifting, perhaps more quickly than we might like. Mobile browsing is expected to outpace desktop-based access within three to five years. Two of the three dominant video game consoles have web browsers (and one of them is quite excellent). We’re designing for mice and keyboards, for T9 keypads, for handheld game controllers, for touch interfaces. In short, we’re faced with a greater number of devices, input modes, and browsers than ever before. […]

This article couldn’t have been timed much better. I was just looking into what it would take to create a basic site theme that could handle the mobile browsers without browser sniffing and server-side nonsense. I strongly believe in progressive enhancement on the Web and approaches like this where the system can adapt on the fly to your device’s capabilities.

I took Spot and Mocha to the vet (Animal Clinic of La Porte) today. Neither were happy to go, of course. It only took five minutes to get Spot in the carrier this time. It has been harder before.

I was a little concerned about Mocha’s behavior at the vet. He has been so much trouble in the past that they have occasionally been forced to partially sedate him. That was not the story today. Other than not wanting to come out of the carrier once we were there, he sat quietly and rather passively while the vet did what needed to be done. Mocha got away without having any shots. Spot was not so lucky.

Spot has some sort of skin irritation that makes him scratch all the time. A lot. No, really, a lot. He’s been treated for it in the past, but it is a temporary solution each time. He’s been scratching enough lately to actually pull some fur off his stomach, and that had me a little worried. So, today he got two shots: one in the back leg and another up near his front shoulders. No whine, no whimper, no growl, hiss, or spat. He was great about it. Getting him back into the cage was much easier this time. All I had to do was open it and he made a hasty retreat into the back corner.

Neither cat wasted much time climbing out once we got home. I figure they’ll forgive me some day. Maybe.

Facebook, MySpace, and other social networking sites have reportedly been passing very granular user data to advertisers without informing users about it, in violation of their own privacy policies.[…]

Color me surprised. Just glad I made the decision to leave. This could still have affected me to some degree, but it cannot any more.