A First

I've been "butt-dialed" many times. Today was the first time I got cat-dialed ...by my own cat.

I use a Google Voice number as the primary number I hand out to people. I've got it configured to dial me at my desk, my cell and my house (dependent on time of day and day of week). I also have it configured to act as the voicemail system for my various "real" phone numbers.

Frequently, when I get home from work, I pull my cell phone out and set it on the couch next to me (only other place it goes is on the charger across the room). I find that it keeps it nice and handy should I need it.

Unfortunately, when he can't lay on me, Grumbles's favorite place to lay is right next to me. Tonight, "next to me" also happened to be where my phone was sitting. Apparently, while shifting around to become more comfortable while laying on the phone, he managed to unlock my phone, select my GV number and dial it. I suppose this is the downside of software-based keyboards on a cell phone.

He also happened to do this during the time window where my GV number only rings my cell phone (in use) and my work's desk phone (I'd left it 45 minutes previous) and not my home phoneline. And, because he was laying on the phone, it muffled any of the sounds of the transaction. My notice of this activity was when I received an email from GV indicating "could not transcribe this session." I looked at the message and saw that it came from my cell phone. I listened to the recording of the message, and it was (basically) silent.

My "WTF" thoughts were quickly followed up by the, "dammit, I know what," line of thought. I noticed where Grumbles was laying and remembered that I'd previously laid my phone there. I dislodged the cat and found my (now very warm) phone under him.

Oh well, at least he hadn't managed to make an overseas call.

My Kingdom for an "Empty Trash" Button

Ok. I get it: storage is dirt-cheap. No one, except old-timers, bothers to empty their trash or otherwise permanently delete things. That is, they don't until/unless they get an "over quota" hate-mail from their administrator. But, given the oodles of space Google and the like make available, you're unlikely to ever see an "over quota" type of notification.

Some of us, however, are in the habit of cleaning up after ourselves. Some of us do like to empty our trash cans. And, in the end, permanent deletion should be a one-, maybe tow-click process - whether there's one or a million items to do away with.

I'm guessing that Google doesn't really have a "human factors" team involved in their design process. If they did, the travesty that is their method for emptying trash wouldn't exist. To finish the delete process, you have to:

1. Open the trash folder
2. Click on the "checkmark actions" button
3. Select the "Select All" menu (or, individually check each message on the page)
4. Click on the "Delete Forever" button
5. Click on the "OK" button to confirm that you actually want to make it all go bye-bye
6. Repeat 1-5 for each page worth of presented messages

Nowhere is there simply an "empty" trash button that allows me to say "nuke it all in one, swell foop". Hell, it wouldn't even be quite so horrible if I had the option to increase the number of items displayed per page (I mean, most sites let you choose the number of objects to display - frequently in an increment dropdown of like "10, 25, 50..." - sometimes they'll even offer an "all" display-option). That way, I could nuke my 300 messages in less than the thirty iterations of steps 1-5 (above) that the current scheme seems to require.

C'mon, guys: you're engineers. Most engineers I know like to minimize their effort. As it currently stands, if I want to nuke out my 300 messages, I have to take like 150 discreet actions. Does that make any kind of sense? Fuck: if you were to offer a "GV Premium" who's only feature was an "empty trash" button or a "change number of items displayed per page" dropdown, I'd sign up for that "premium" service.