Joshua Kronengold

The floor-standing AC which sat in our bedroom started working Too Well recently (managing to pull a quart of water out of the air every two to three hours, and then not working until the tank was emptied--thus waking us up several times a night). So we needed to replace it. Our library AC had also gone south (ok, it got cracked when the firemen ripped it out of the wall during the fire last summer, and then it was damaged enough when I removed it so it wouldn't be a hole for the Hurricane to get in with that we threw it out right after), so I picked up a pair of them, actually, but that's not important, plus I haven't bothered to put the library AC in yet.

When I bought the ACs, they mentioned that I'd need a brace, as the city now requires it for all buildings larger than 6 stories. Our building is only 3 stories, so I pointed out that I actually didn't need one legally -- but as I'm not fond of ACs falling out of my window, I'd be happy to try the City Approved solution. Once I settled on an AC model, the salesman mentioned that as it was fairly narrow, I wouldn't need the big huge brace, but only the smaller one.

Now, the ACs, due to vacation and mild weather, sat for a week or so before I tried to put them in. But when I did, I was a bit frustrated. First, the braces had a lot of instructions -- not a huge deal, but annoying to follow, with lots of tiny adjustments that needed to be made.

Then, as I found that when I'd used a combination of instructions and know-how to put the brace together enough to figure out how I'd have to adjust it, it turned out that while the AC might be narrow enough to not need the extra large braces, our apartment walls are -far- too wide to accomodate such a tiny brace -- there was no way the tongue would be able to stay inside the apartment (as it's supposed to) while the outside bit was braced against the wall. Just no way.

I could, of course, have gone back to the store, and returned my too-small braces for larger ones. But I was impatient with the process, fairly confident of my skills (I -have- put in a lot of ACs over the years, with nary anything close to an accident) and anyway, as our apartment building is very small, I'm not -actually- required to use the City Approved Brace. (although having an AC fall out of my window would not be ideal)

So, having exhamined the AC and determined that it doesn't have an internal brace of any sort, I went looking for something that would serve as a spacer so the AC could rest flat (well, inclined in the usual "I want it to drain" way) and be very likely to not fall out of the window at any time -- not when I put it in, not when it was in there or during a storm, and not when I took it out during the fall. It was a bit of trouble, actually, to find something appropriate -- I did bring a bunch of wooden blooks I had as a kid when we moved in, but they've all found good homes, so there are none free to hold up an AC any more. And I tried a box, having used one to hold up my monitor at work for the last year or so, but the one I tried was just way too wide. Finally, my eye settled on the so unsuited for its sold purpose brace -- made of metal, durable, rectangular, and apparently about the right size to lie flat as a metal brick between the AC and the stonework of the window.

It fit perfectly.

Making a LEGO Turing machine: Kinda cool, kinda dorky.

Making this ad for a LEGO Turing machine?




Oh, my. Do watch the video; it's -funny-.

This isn't actually a G1 bug report, but one on k9, an alternative IMAP client forked off the G1's IMAP client (which is itself basically the same as the Gmail client, but slightly worse). That said, most of the issues are actually present in the stock G1 email applications as well.

I include it here because, well, it's funny.

[b]Bug: Sending accidentally far too easy, unrecoverable. When disconnected, even worse.[/b]

This is actually a multi-issue bug, and I'll submit the individual bits of Fail later, but I figured it was worth having an issue for the initial issue with the whole story.

While I was working on some non-fiction this morning (one of the things I use a mobile device for is writing fairly long things, and emailing them to myself for later work), I accidentally sent it. Three times.

The problem is, 10% of the screen when working on a draft is devoted to what I'm going to call "accidentally send the draft I'm working on" button. Why do I call it that? Because if I want to send a draft, I don't need to tap the "send" button; I can hit menu, then send (though the menu send should be the leftmost control; CC/BCC just isn't that important), or just hist menu-s. So any time I'm a bit casual about how I touch the screen, or put the damned thing down, I risk accidentally sending my message. Really, those three controls don't serve any purpose at all; they're duplicated with menu options and they take up valuable screen real estate, and really, they don't get used enough to be displayed.

So, what's worse than accidentally sending the mail you're working on? Well, not that much if you're sending it to yourself, right? Well...

First, you can't "resend" a sent message. This is a key feature; it lets you fix little problems like this, not to mention resend things that bounced, not to mention using sent messages as templates for future messages. But with a lot of work, you can reply to a sent message, then save the draft, then restore the draft see , then delete all the > jaggies (see bug #30), and you have your message back.

In fact, that's what I did the first two times I accidentally sent.

Of course, nothing could make it worse, right? Except...the third time I accidentally sent my mail, I was in a subway, underground. So what happened?

Well, I ended up with my nice draft sitting, not in the sent folder where I could go through the "reply to it" dance, but in the "Outbox" folder. Could I cancel sending and go back to my draft from the outbox? No. Could I treat my outbox message like a sent message and reply-to-dance with it? No, I couldn't. Was it going to move from my outbox while I was underground? Indeed, it was not going to do that, not until I had a good solid connection, as one is unlikely to have when undeground. Was I well and truly screwed? Yup. Did I get any more work done? No, I pulled out a book and read for the rest of my trip.

So our bugs, as documented above, are:

• Accidental sends too easy. There's no reason to have Send/Save as Draft/Discard appearing in the edit screen at all, given that you can easily hotkey them and they're easy menu key buttons. Save as draft happens more or less automatically, whereas the others should never happen automaticlaly. (this issue)
  
• Sent messages cannot be resent.
  
• Outbox messages cannot be canceled and turned back into drafts again, even when disconnected.
  
• Outbox messages cannot be replied to/resent, either. Or even viewed. This is a mobile device.
  
  While I'm at it, might as well throw in:
  
• Drafts cannot be cancelled, reverting to the current state. This is a key feature, particularly since the G1 doesn't have undo yet.