I got an email from Google today informing me that I’ve been invited to join the closed beta of Google Voice. After the shock of being asked to be first on something, I quickly realized that this is pretty much what people have been promising us the internet would do for us for years – one phone number for life. Much like I now use GMail to act as a front end for my dezendorf.com account (and will regardless who is hosting the domain), I now have a service that will act as a similar front end for all the phones in my life.

Right now, I’ve got the Vonage line hooked into Google Voice, along with my iPhone. When someone calls the GV, all the phones associated with the number ring. Even better, it gives me the flexibility to select which phone rings based on what time it is. At the moment, the Vonage line will only ring between 5:00 PM and 8:00 AM on weekdays, and ²⁴⁄₇ on the weekends. That’s likely to change once I use this a little more regularly. Tomorrow, when I get to work, the first thing I’m going to do is hook the system up to my office line – and set it to ring from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM, Monday-Friday.

All of this, and I’m just brushing the surface. Apparently you can set custom greetings for caller groups – so your friends get the funny message, your coworkers get the business like message, and anyone you don’t know gets the no-information “leave a message” message. You also get to pick the number you are going to use – out of the range Google has purchased in your area code – and I seem to be early, so I got an easy number.

No, I’m not going to post it here. I’ll start sending it out soon as my default number, once I’m a little more comfortable with how it all works.

The recent US holiday always makes me think about this. The First Amendment, generally held to protect freedom of speech and expression, does something else, much more profound. For those of you who don’t have a reference handy:

Amendment I.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

It pains me how much people miss the first 5 words of the opening of the Amendment. Congress shall make no law. It does not say that Congress shall make no law about faith based healing initiatives or Congress shall make no law banning prayer in schools, it says no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. None. This is for laws promoting religious beliefs and laws preventing them. It goes both ways. This is the basis of a fundamental premise that sets the US apart from many other countries: the government is not involved in religion, in any way. In effect, we say to every person “come to our country and be free of the chains of state-sponsored religion.” The government is not to be involved in the religious lives of it’s citizens. They are free to practice and believe (or not) as they see fit. That does not mean the government should turn a blind eye to spousal or child abuse – the rights of all citizens means the rights of all citizens. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once said: “The right to swing my fist ends where the other man’s nose begins.”

There are people in the US who think the protections provided by the First Amendment should apply to the Federal government only, and that the States themselves (or the counties, or the cities, …) should be able to regulate these matters. Mostly, they are referring to things like prayer in school, or the banning of abortion clinics on moral grounds. The sarcastic side of me is certain that they also believe the other amendments are similarly voidable or selectively enforceable by the State – including due process, the right to bear arms, and the right to a freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.

I am also of the opinion that the government should not be involved in marriage, in any way. A marriage is a religious ceremony held between people who love each other. No one should have to register marital status in the public record, nor should we want the requirement to be there. It is not the purview of the government who is married, or how – as long as the civil liberties of all parties aren’t trampled on. What the government should be involved with, however, are civil unions – where any two (or more) people legally join to create a larger legal entity. The purpose and nature of the civil union is where the health benefits, the tax breaks, etc should be targeted. Massachusetts gets this – although they are arguing that it’s their right to decide.

And remember – the First Amendment is only the first express grant of rights and freedoms that the Framers made, after limiting the power of the government. There are other grants made, and the most telling was the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

When it comes to the Constitution I default to a literal interpretation – as much as I believe the freedom of religion is a cornerstone of our nation, I also believe that the right to bear arms and refuse soldiers quarter are rights that cannot be abridged, amended or rescinded, other than by following the process of amendment.

I’m published again! http://www.shufflegazine.com/2009/07/08/cool-technology-dropbox/ Very happy about this. Of course, this means I need to write more for them, so them posting my work stops being novel, and people just get used to it.

That is all.

The corollary to rule that you should Write A Little, Every Night is that if it’s not done, it’s not done. Even if you’re working on the 10th revision, don’t publish something until it’s ready for consumption. This is true for three posts I’m writing for this blog currently. I had planned to have made more progress on them, but it’s slow going, and I’m not about to publish them before I finish polishing them.

This “don’t post till it’s done” mentality applies equally to any creative work, including photography. One should never be in the position to release work before they are satisfied with the end result. I’ll be the first to admit that sometimes I publish pictures that I’m not totally happy with, just to have something to put up for the day’s picture of the day. And yes, I’m working on changing that. You may have noticed recent gaps in my photo posts – mostly because I’ve not had a lot of time to take more pictures, and I feel the archives are running thin.

I was working on a long post earlier tonight about subversion and document management, when my computer locked up for the 6th time this week. Usually OSX is so stable that I measure my uptime in weeks if not months. I’ve been known to delay doing system updates because it would wreck my uptime. The sad thing is that I’ve known what my problem was, and how to fix it, and only now got around to doing something about it.

First, a little history. The video card that shipped with the original Mac Pro systems in the Fall of 2006 was an nVidia GeForce 7300 GT with 256MB of video RAM. When I purchased the system, I decided that I’d go ahead and blow some extra cash on the ATi Radeon X1900XT – with more video RAM, and decidedly better performance. I got the system, and it blew the doors off my vintage Dual 2.0 Ghz PowerMac G5. I don’t run many games on the card, but I do use Photoshop and Aperture, and they are taxing on the Core Image subsystems of OSX. Aperture, in particular, was a horrible performer on my G5 – even though it had a supported graphics card. It was only a 128 MB ATI 9800 Pro, and just couldn’t keep up. The new Mac Pro was amazing, and fast for the photo work that I do.

Last spring, I started having some problems with the system. Strange horizontal multicolored lines started appearing when I was working in Photoshop, and they would go away if I resized the window they appeared in. As the summer wore on the lines would appear anywhere – even in Finder windows and on the menu bar clock. I realized that in 10.5, everything in the window manager runs through the graphics card for final composting and rendering to screen. Somewhere in that pipeline, there was a problem. Additionally, the computer was getting louder and louder. When I’d first set everything up, the Shuttle I was using as a test Solaris box was the loudest thing in the apartment. By the end of last summer, it was the Mac Pro, by a healthy margin. Following some advice online, I took the video card out, and run some compressed air through the heatsink. It seemed to help – the fan was a lot quieter then – but I still occasionally had the video problems. Determined to get a glitch free system, I downloaded smcFanControl, and set all my system fans a few hundred RPM higher. This fixed the display problems for awhile, while getting me used to the noise of running the fans cranked up all the time.

By the time this spring rolled around the PCIe fans were set to 1500 rpm at all times. In late April, they got turned up to 2000 rpm. Now, even with it constantly set to 2000 rpm, I still had the occasional line across the screen, and if I didn’t watch it, the whole box will lock up. I think it has something to do with the summer months, and the fact that we don’t run the A/C here 24/7/365 like we did in the last apartment.

So, doing some digging online over the last few weeks, I found that a LOT of other people had problems with the X1900XT. And that Apple has replaced many of the cards. So, today, I finally called Apple up and gave them all my specs. Turns out, yes, I do qualify for a replacement card – even though the box is out of warranty. Which is nice, because the cheapest card I can find for the MacPro that is still in production and has 2 DVI ports is over $200 on sale. They are shipping me a new card this week, and once I have it, I’ll swap them out and send the bad one back to Apple.

From the title of this post, one could easily assume I’m talking about tech stuff. However, this time, I’m talking about our children, and the different ways they react to both of us. To be clear, I’m talking about our son Qais, and our puppy Greta.

Greta is a little easier to understand – mostly because I’ve dealt with dogs before. Charlotte is home more than I am, but I think I may do more of the walking and feeding. That is up to debate, but Greta certainly treats the two of us differently. Not in a bad way, mind you, but different.

Qais on the other hand often calms down more when Charlotte holds him. Recently, though, we had some friends over, and he wouldn’t calm down for anyone but me. I had to circle the block twice before he would really calm down. There are other times that Charlotte has told me that I have a calming touch – usually when I come in from being out, and pick him up. I don’t see that I’m making much of a difference, but Charlotte swears I am.

Tonight, I took Q for our usual after-work dog walk. Due to bad planning, I forgot to bring his pacifier with me. I did the longer loop – which is about a mile and a half – which we often do. I was trying to get a little exercise for myself and Greta, and give Charlotte a bit of a break at the end of a day of caring for my son. Maybe halfway through the walk Qais just lost it. Screaming, crying, the whole nine yards. Once I got him home, and he got out of the carrier, he calmed down, like nothing had happened. I think he was just showing his preference to not be with me. Which is ok – but it was a long walk home.

I’m starting to develop a healthy distrust of the child-clothing industry. The other day, we had Qais in a onsie marked 0-3 months, and was changing him into a different one, marked 12 months. Guess which one was bigger? The 0-3. Right now, Qais wears anything from 0-3 to 12 months – he’s already outgrown some of his 6 month stuff, and he’s not big enough for some of the same.

Apparently in Europe, they size clothing for kids based on ranges in height (in centimeters). So there’s 40-50 cm, 50-60cm, etc. Which makes a lot more sense to me.