Swan Labs

I started work at a new company, Swan Labs, located in San Jose, CA yesterday.

They have a great product called Netcelera that really helps improve the network and networked application performance between remote and central offices, you should check it out.

I won't yet say a lot about what I'm going to be doing there, but the company has a lot of potential and I think these next few months are really going to be exciting!

The Midwest Voter

I was reading an article in the SF Chronicle this morning about understanding the Midwest and the way it voted and something about the article really resonated with me. I've noticed people in the Bay Area making blanket statements about that area of the country and doing just as bad a job stereotyping them as people here fear that the midwesterners stereotype us as a groups of ultra-liberals. I don't like stereotyping, and I don't think that you can really understand people from other places until you've been there and experienced it, and I don't feel that until you've been there that you earn the right to stereotype. It may not be because they are evangelical Christians or uber-conservatives that they voted for Bush, maybe some of them just wanted someone they felt they could trust and that they felt a connection with. Of course, I don't personally think that is a good enough reason to have voted for Bush, but my point isn't about who voted for who but the fact that I don't appreciate the blatant grouping and stereotyping that I notice people in the Bay Area often getting into. Read the SF Chronicle article!

United We Stand, Divided We Fall

I was reading an article at Boing Boing this morning and noticed an interesting picture posted by a reader named Jeff Culver showing a map that provided what I think is a better insight into how the country really voted rather than the extreme blue and red division we've become familiar with. Instead he blended the red and blue colors in the relative proporptions of Kerry/Bush votes in each state. You'll notice a much more purple and mixed country. Whether you support Bush, or are really pissed off right now about the election, we need to move forward and make the best out of what we have for these next 4 years. Turn any anger you have towards Bush into something positive and work towards some real change in our political system and remember, the country isn't just red and blue but many shades of purple!

More Bush

Well, we have 4 more years of the GW to look forward to. I don't feel like posting a lot about it, but here is a great link from Boing Boing with some quotes from various people about what this means to us. Here is an excerpt from it, there is more to read so check it out:

8:15am: Four more years of a nation led by criminals. I was making coffee with one eye on CNN when the news broke, and I called my dad, a man who's spent many years fighting for good things, sometimes at great personal cost.

"Get over it," he said, "The way you feel now is exactly how I felt when Nixon won a second term -- crushed. I just couldn't believe America was that stupid. But remember what happened to Nixon that term."

"Change comes from discontent," he said. "And right now, there's a lot of discontent."

I finish pouring my coffee, and agree when my dad says what we're faced with right now is considerably more frightening than Nixon. BB pal Jim Graham IMs a few minutes later: "Yeah, and Karl Rove makes Lee Atwater look like a choir boy."

Dan Gillmor sums up what the continuation of Bush's presidency means for America.
The Republicans have an even stronger congressional majority. They have shown how gladly ruthless they can be in using their power. Bush and his allies have never believed in compromise. They have even less incentive to govern from the middle now, even though the nation remains bitterly divided.
There's no secret about what's coming. We don't have that excuse this time.

Here comes more fiscal recklessness -- as we widen the chasm between the ultra-wealthy and everyone else, cementing a plutocracy into our national fiber, we'll pay our national bills on the Treasury Bill credit card for the next few years. Many economists expect a Brazil-like financial crisis to hit the U.S. before the end of the decade. If we muddle our way though the near term, we'll still have left our kids with the bill.

Here comes an expansion of the American empire abroad, a fueling of fear and loathing elsewhere on the globe. This is also unsustainable in the end. Empire breeds disrespect.

Our civil liberties will shrink drastically. This president and his top allies in Congress fully support just one amendment in the Bill of Rights, the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. Say goodbye to abortion rights in most states. Roe v. Wade will fall after this president pushes three or four Scalia and Thomas legal clones onto the Supreme Court. Say hello, meanwhile, to a much more intrusive blending of church and state.

The environment? We'll be nostalgic for Ronald Reagan's time in office.

This is not sour grapes. This is reality.

I hope, but doubt, that the Democrats re-discover enough of their collective spine to block the most extreme moves. If they do it'll be a change for a party that stands for so little these days.

People say there are two Americas. I think there are at least three.

One is Bush's America: an amalgam of the extreme Christian "conservatives," corporate interests and the builders of the burgeoning national-security state.

Another is the Democratic "left": wedded to the old, discredited politics in a time that demands creative thinking.

I suspect there's a third America: members of an increasingly radical middle that will become more obvious in the next few years, tolerant of those who are different and aware that the big problems of our times are being ignored -- or made worse -- by those in power today.

That third America needs a candidate. Or, maybe, a new party.

Smartphones and the Audiovox SMT 5600

I just ordered the Audiovox SMT 5600 from AT&T Wireless last night after playing with it in a store in San Mateo for around 30 minutes.

I've been looking at phones for most of the last year in preparation for buying a new phone. I've had the same Nokia TDMA phone for the last 5 years with the same battery (which still works great) but I have been dying for a camera phone with voice recording capabilities. I had been waiting for Nokia because I really liked their older products and wanted to get the 6230 for a while now but after reading more about it I wasn't that impressed with what it offered and decided on a phone with even more.

I had been eyeing some of the new Sony Ericsson phones but they didn't quite have the combination of features I was looking for (The K700i didn't have expandable memory and I didn't really like the S700i flip out, not to mention that neither of them was yet offered by one of my carriers or had the 850Mhz band covered) . I wanted something small and in a candy bar form factor and that's where I ran into the Audiovox SMT 5600. I had read about it as the C500 in Europe offered through Orange, but I didn't realize that it was coming to the states as soon as it did until I ran into it at an AT&T wireless store yesterday.

The form factor and size is great. The 5-way navigation is a little different than other phones and takes a minute to get used to, but sort of acts a bit like a scroll wheel that you can't scroll very far which works out well for a Windows Mobile device.

I thought that the UI was reasonable but had a few usability issues that I hope get better and I hope that they release updated firmware for the device as time goes on as well.

Another thing that I wanted was quick access to the camera and voice recording both of which I plan on using a lot. This phone has a dedicated camera button and if you hold the volume up button down it switches automatically to voice note taking mode which is great.

I just ordered the phone and am expecting it in the mail soon so I may have more to write about once I actually use it for a real amount of time but I'm pretty excited about Pocket Outlook and some simple web browsing capabilities as well. I got the unlimited data plan for a year so that I can see what I think about using the web through the phone without worrying about bytes sent/received which I think could be a real money sink.

Anway, that's about it for now, now back to watching election results!!

Election Day 2004

Well, here it is, November 2nd, election day 2004. I went to the gym this morning and then voted in San Mateo at a new polling place. The voting was painless and took me all of about 5 minutes. I spent around 2 hours last night trying to sift through the propositions and people running in this election. Each time I vote I come to realize how sneaky the proposition writers are sometimes. The proposition often sounds great in the beginning and even some of the details are sound, but there is often a sneaky element or two that gets thrown in and makes me change my mind. I spent time reading the overviews of each proposition and then looking at the pros, cons, and rebuttals for the pros and cons on each. Definitely a tough one and I'm not even sure if I really voted for what I wanted in all cases, but I did my best. It was useful checking out smartvoter.org for some of the measures and candidates.

I've been trying to keep up with the news during the day today and have read endless articles about lawsuits, polling problems, the growing influence of blogs such as Daily Kos in policitics, all very interesting stuff. Anyway, not a ton to say other than I hope everything turns out well in this election. I think that I'll be watching the election results on Comedy Central tonight with John Stewart, someone I trust to give me the news or at least part of the news as straight as possible and with much more entertainment value.