Chat with Grandma Bear

Here is a little video of a recent visit I had with my 102 year old Grandma.  She turns 103 in about 20 days.  Pretty amazing lady.  Sweetest little Grandma I could ever have hoped for, and she has the softest skin on her arms I have ever felt (softer than a baby's bum!):

Tall guy

Earlier today, the boys were looking at a spider in the corner of the hallway.  They were all huddled up together and then Johnny got the idea to sit on Jimmy's head.  That then morphed into the idea that they could combine forces and produce someone twice their height.  Later on, as I am cooking dinner, I hear them giggling in the living room.  It was the cutest little sight I grabbed the camera and told them to do it again:

The secret cupboard

I love going home to Oregon (as you may have noticed from my earlier post).  My most favorite part of Oregon is getting to see my parents, stay in their lovely home, and see my children build memories of things they love to do while at Tutu and Gumpa's house.

My side of the family (the Ramptons) had a family reunion planned this summer since last year.  We decided to plan the reunion around DaVinci Days, a really cool weekend festival that takes place in Corvallis, Oregon.  Well, a few months ago, my baby brother Bobby got engaged to a beautiful, wonderful girl named Jessica, and the Family Reunion we had planned for morphed into an Oregon Reception for their June wedding.  It really was perfect as every single one of my siblings and their spouses and all their kids were able to come and we had a blast!  Our kids are getting to such a fun age where they really enjoy being with their cousins and make some long-lasting memories.

The night before we flew to Oregon, I asked the kids at dinner what they most were looking forward to in Oregon.  Jimmy said "I can't wait to play in the secret room and sleep in the bunkbeds".  It really is a fun little playroom my parents have upstairs and it has really turned into the funnest thing for the grandkids to look forward to.  This video shows a little glimpse of it:


 

Updated Code for Google +1 Buttons

As reported last month, the code for Google +1 buttons could be improved so that the buttons load faster and stop blocking other resources. Google updated the code and recommends publishers to generate a new code.

"We're introducing a new asynchronous snippet, allowing you to make the +1 experience even faster. The async snippet allows your web page to continue loading while your browser downloads the +1 JavaScript. By loading these elements in parallel, we're ensuring the HTTP request to get the +1 button JavaScript doesn't lead to an increase in your page load time," explains Google.


Google also optimized the existing code so that the button renders up to 3 times faster. Even if you don't update the code, you'll still benefit from these changes.

The code generator is easy to use and I've noticed that a lot of sites added a +1 button next to Facebook's "Like" button. It's unfortunate that Google didn't optimize the code when it was released.

Dear Oregon,

I loved seeing you again! 

 I love your mild temperatures, your bright and deep greens that you flaunt all around.  The lush, mossy fairy-like tree branches that crawl across the canvas of your sky.  I love your little refreshing breeze that constantly blows across my neck.  Bless your little heart Oregon, you let us keep our windows open all vacation long!  And with those windows open- I felt so connected to the outdoors, as I heard the birds whistling each morn, the crickets chirping at night.  A small rainstorm I would hear come and go with a slight pitter patter on the copper eaves, or the laughter of my children playing and frolicking outside.  I was tickled by the fact that I didn't have to tell my kids "quick! close the door!  you are letting the ac out!" when they'd open the door to the outside.  And no big bugs!  How did you get to be so perfect Oregon?
 
I love the lush, green garden that grows in your rich and fertile valley.  What a treat to have fresh picked salad and berries and beans to eat for dinner each night. I loved waking each morning to your beautiful display of bright green black walnut leaves shimmering in the breeze against the beautiful blue azure sky.

 What a little piece of heaven you are Oregon.  Especially in the middle of the summer for some out of townees from Arkansas (it's 100 degrees here today in Arkansas, with 33% humidity so it feels like 103.  In other words we are dripping with sweat, and all I hear outside my closed windows is my a/c unit running all day long).  I miss you Or.

Love, sweaty Miss Anna in Ar.

Design Refresh for Google Web History

Google Web History is a service enabled by default when you create a Google account. It saves all your searches and the search results you click so you can quickly find them later and to help Google personalize results. It's called "Web History" instead of "Search History" because Google Toolbar has a feature that lets you send Google your browsing history.

Google updated the Web History interface to make it more consistent and easier to use. The new interface seems to be optimized for removing searches, not for browsing your history. There's a huge checkbox button at the top of the page and a button for removing "all Web History". While it's nice to see that Google doesn't hide the button for deleting search/browsing history, using a button for such a rare and destructive action feels wrong. It's like placing a button labeled "Delete all your messages" in Gmail's toolbar.

The previous interface included a special mode for removing items. When you clicked "remove items", Google added checkboxes next to the items and a "remove" button. The standard interface included star icons so you can quickly bookmark pages. Now the stars are a lot smaller and more difficult to see. It's likely that most people who visit Google Web History want to remove items or clear the entire history, not to search Web History or to bookmark pages.


{ Thanks, Louis. }

Customer Service in the Early Days of Google

Many people complain that Google doesn't offer customer support for most of its services and it's really difficult to receive an email from Google that actually answers your questions. Here's a story from the book "I'm Feeling Lucky", written by the former Google employee Douglas Edwards. Back in 2000, Max Erdstein was Google's sole customer service rep and he could only use a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Outlook.

Max never envisioned customer service becoming an omnivorous blob consuming all his time, but soon he found himself responding robotically to more than a thousand emails a day from users around the world. Crushed under the load, he could do little than succinctly reply, "Thanks! Keep on Googling!" Non-English emails presented the biggest problem. We had no idea if people wanted to praise us or harangue us. We tried using off-the-web translation software, but it left us more confused than when we began.

Meanwhile, there were rumblings from sales VP Omid that supporting advertisers and search-services customers should be a higher priority. Could Max help with that, too? After all, unlike users, these people were actually paying us. Max was emptying an ocean with a teaspoon. As the backlog of unanswered emails began to swell, Sergey offered a useful perspective. "Why do you need to answer user email anyway?" he wanted to know.

To Sergey's thinking, responding to user questions was inefficient. If they wrote us about problems with Google, that was useful information to have. We should note the problems and fix them. That would make the users happier than if we wasted time explaining to them that we were working on the bugs. If users sent us compliments, we didn't need to write back because they already liked us. So really, wouldn't it be better not to respond at all? Or at best, maybe write some code to generate random replies that would be fine in most cases?