Mark and Deanna looking at St. Donatus
Not the best picture, but this is where we’re getting married. It’s a nice view, and it will be even nicer by July!
Together ...
So my AT&T contract is up this month and I’m considering all my options for my next PDA. My BlackBerry has been slowly dying on me, and I’ve not been happy with it.
Android
It’s probably no surprise that I’m a big fan of Android—it is produced by Google — so ideally I’d get an Android device next.
However, I’m not terribly inclined to switch to T-Mobile; their network is smaller and not as robust in all locations. And the G1 leaves a lot to be desired, so I’d rather wait for the next iteration. But how long will that be? Hard to say, though they may have a new, awesome device soon, so it may be worth waiting.
I had also mentioned that AT&T would likely be producing Android devices, but that dynamic seems to have changed somewhat: I suppose because of their ties with Apple and the iPhone, they’re not keen to produce any competing devices currently. And I can understand that, though it’s unfortunate.
It does seem like I’d be joining an active community though. 
iPhone
An iPhone would be a solid choice, and I certainly think the devices deserves (most of) the acclaim it’s been getting, but I’m not switching from one proprietary mobile device to another. Even if it is Apple. I’m also not impressed with the inability to run background applications, and while jailbreaking the phone would open up a lot of extra functionality, I’m not inclined to do that. I don’t want to support Apple by buying their device if I don’t actually support how they design their software.
Other?
So my two choices feel like this: Get an iPhone (and possibly jailbreak it) or switch to T-Mobile if/when they release a second (slicker-than-G1) device.
Are there other choices? Which do you think I should do?
Mexico’s drug war — The Big Picture — Boston.com
In December of 2006, Mexico’s new President Felipe Calderón declared war on the drug cartels, reversing earlier government passiveness. Since then, the government has made some gains, but at a heavy price — gun battles, assassinations, kidnappings, fights between rival cartels, and reprisals have resulted in over 9,500 deaths since December 2006 — over 5,300 killed last year alone. President Barack Obama recently announced extra agents were being deployed to the border and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton heads to Mexico today to pursue a broad diplomatic agenda — overshadowed now by spiraling drug violence and fears of greater cross-border spillover. Officials on both sides of the border are committed to stopping the violence, and stemming the flow of drugs heading north and guns and cash heading south.
2 Baja California state police stand guard at a captured marijuana greenhouse in the basement of a ranch in Tecate, Mexico. (REUTERS/Jorge Duenes)
I know it may sound naïve, but I have to wonder if a lot of the residual violence would be quelled if marijuana were made legal. I know drugs aren’t the only reason for border control, but I also wonder if the border situation would be different too. I believe enough in the power of the free market that it could regulate the — shall we say — more colorful characters in the industry.
Or maybe I’ve just been watching too much Weeds. Seriously, that show is funny, but I’m left after watching season 4 with a vague uneasiness. I think it got to me, that there are actually people out there whose lives become wholly consumed by the drug profession.
Facebook’s Users Don’t Like Change — ReadWriteWeb
Users don’t like change, and as a product becomes more popular, users will grow ever more resistant to change.
The entire article (about Facebook’s contentious changes to their News Feed) distills to that one sentence. It’s not a Facebook thing, it’s a people thing.
Really, I grow tired of all this resistance to change. While I’ve been there too — it’s easy to get habituated — it’s annoying to hear. Microsoft Office 2007, Firefox 3, Safari 4, BlackBerry, iPhone, etc. etc.
It would seem that if people had their way, interfaces would become static (at some unspecified point) and remain there. Rather than fixing quirks, users would simply habituate to them. And there would be little room for innovation.
I understand that designers/engineers don’t always get things right, but especially with computers, there is a lot of change from year to year, and that’s a good thing. An inclination to embrace change would go a long way to enjoying the dynamic world of technology.
Verizon Customers — Just Say No! — ReadWriteWeb
David Weinberger, co-author of The Cluetrain Manifesto and the more recent Everything is Miscellaneous received a letter today from Verizon. A “legalistic pamphlet” that informed him he has 45 days to opt out of ‘agreeing’ to let Verizon share his personal information.
Weinberger, unlike the majority of us who rarely read the associated paraphernalia that arrives with bills and the like, noticed that Verizon’s modus operandi was to share Customer Proprietary Network Information — the data created as a result of your relationship with Verizon Wireless — unless you ask them to stop.
Yet another egregious misstep on Verizon’s part. This is the kind of thing that will keep me from willingly using them.
Davis closes with what I’ve said to people all along:
For a company that prides itself on operating the nation’s most reliable and largest wireless voice and data network […] it clearly still has a way to go.
…Deanna and I are moving to Atlanta.
Why?
Graco, Deanna’s company, is relocating there. Newell Rubbermaid, the parent corporation, is consolidating some of their companies in one corporate center.
When?
Mid-June.
But you’re getting married in July! / Are you crazy?
Yes. / You could say that.
Have you found a place? / Have you found a job?
Not yet, but we’re working on it. / Not yet, but I’m working on it.
And before you ask: no, we’re not buying a house. Despite it being arguably a good time for buyers, we can’t afford a house yet, and we’re happy to have one fewer stress on the move.
Are you excited?
Oh, most definitely! 
We’ve been down there twice now to make our decision, and we think it will be really good for us.
So Dinosaur Comics is probably definitely my favorite webcomic. And recently @TheBestCupcake has been rocking some hilarity on Twitter.
This is a recipe for some reasonably delicious success (if I do say so myself):
In an age of vast computer memory (well, relatively speaking), it’s pretty arbitrary at this point that our computers have a clipboard that only “holds” one item at a time.
Anyone else been burned by accidentally copying over something you were “saving” in the clipboard? Or how many times have you opened a text editor just to paste some text therein while you were copying multiple things?
Enter the clipboard manager, which basically keeps a history of things you’ve copied to pick at a later date. Think of it, well, like a real clipboard: what you “clip” later is simply put on top of your previous clippings and you can easily get back to all of them.
Here are some I recommend; pick according to your operating system:
- Parcellite (Linux)
- ClipX (Windows, XP anyway)
- Clipper (OS X)
- Jumpcut (OS X)
Enjoy!
Cooper Journal: One free interaction
I noticed two friends who use their mouse to repeatedly select and deselect text in web browsers as they read pages online. This is absolutely crazymaking for onlookers, but really satisfying for them.
De-Re-Selecting from Chris No on Vimeo.
I do this all the time (my favorite way is to triple-click the paragraph) and, yes, it drives people looking at my screen crazy.
Probably the other big one I do is to draw selection rectangles on my desktop or in a file manager window.
It’s inexplicable to me, but Chris mentions some possible reasons:
When I talk to each person about these behaviors, there’s not a lot of conscious decision-making going on here. The web-page-highlighters aren’t intending anything when they do this, it’s just something they enjoy doing. But even though these behaviors don’t help move any tasks or goals along, they’re satisfying. And because they provide a release for nervous energy and/or let us be expressive, they become an extension of ourselves to which we have some small emotional connection.
Ultimately, I don’t really care why, but it’s an interesting thing of note.
