It took us just less than two weeks of looking to find a new house. Deanna and I have been packing all week and we just got the keys so we'll start moving stuff today. The goal is to be out of the old place by Monday. The good news is that this new house is larger, in a better neighborhood and costs less. The even better news is that it's only about a mile away.
February 2003 Archives
Pierre (pch, the Phoenix bookmarks owner) has definitely stepped up this last week to lift Phoenix up off the floor. In addition to implementing context menus for the bookmarks menu (facilitating editing bookmarks directly in the menu) and giving Phoenix a nice startup performance boost, he's fixed several places where the Mozilla trunk broke us. Thanks Pierre.
On a related note, it looks like we may be close to having "profile chrome" if the patch at bug 162960 is any good. For those of you who don't know what this means, right now Mozilla and Phoenix XUL extensions must be installed to the Mozilla or Phoenix install directory and that means that every time you upgrade to a new build you have to reinstall any extensions. Being able to install extensions into the .phoenix or .mozilla directory will be a real win for all of us nightly build testers and should also make life easier on folks who share an install by using different profiles. Dad may not want lil' sister's Justin Timberlake tracking toolbar and lil' sis might not want dad's Nascar quicklookup context menu.
The last couple of months have been slow going and Phoenix has been the victim of several Mozilla checkins causing nightly build users much grief. The worst problem has been the toolbar bustage and thanks to Boris, Ben, Dave and Pierre (for the testing and checkin), it seems to be finally fixed. Also, the problems with XPInstalls seems fixed and the new Options window is working really well. I haven't seen any problems installing themes and extensions and while it's not quite milestone quality, today's Phoenix build is definitely worth moving to if you're on anything other than 0.5.
Oh, and Mozilla branched for 1.3 today (which means the trunk is open for 1.4alpha development).
We spent a wonderful weekend, bracketed by Valentines day on Friday and Deanna's birthday today, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains at Shaver Lake, CA. Our stay at the Elliot House Bed & Breakfast was cozy and fun with with the warmest of hosts.
We drover across the Central Valley and up to Shaver Lake on Friday. Saturday we enjoyed a blue-sky drive up to Yosemite National Park (our 5th visit in the three years) and a delightful picknick at the foot of Half Dome. Sunday we romped in the fresh blanket of snow that came down Saturday night to envelope the mountain tops between Shaver and Huntington Lakes. This morning, after a third wonderful breakfast, we packed up and headed back to Redwood City.
Nearing the Peninsula, Deanna's cell rang and we received the great news that our application to lease a nice house just up the road a ways had been processed and approved. Our hunt for new lodging is concluded (less than two weeks!) and we'll be moving into a larger place in a nicer neighborhood for less money :-)
We took lots of pictures and as soon as I can crop some of them down (don't want to eat any further into mozillaZine's limited bandwidth) I'll post them with this entry. If you'd like to see more photos (or larger high-resolution photos) of our mini-vacations then head over to the mozillaZine front page and donate money to keep our wonderful hosts afloat.
After thousands of years of scholarly debate, a few short centuries of scientific investigation and a decade or so of "getting close", we finally have a precise measurement of the age of the Universe. To be living in a time when such fundamental questions can finally be answered fills me with joy.
13.7 billion years ago, the universe was born.
It's a bouncing baby beta. Mozilla 1.3b is finally done and did you see that Sam's Club is shipping Mozilla on a $299 PC? Cool week.
With the slow going (but it is going) Mozilla 1.3beta release, the almost started again Phoenix project and lots of Chimera silliness, I just thought it was a rough week. Yesterday I learned that Deanna and I will have to move out of our lovely house in Redwood City. Our very nice landlords are going to sell the great little 3bdrm house we've lived in for the last 13 months and we have to find something new. The good news is that there are a lot of places available so maybe we'll get lucky and find something as good as what we're leaving. If anyone on the peninsula knows of a 3bdrm/2bath with hardwood floors, a fireplace, a large and private yard. garage, washer and dryer, and pet friendly house for rent please email me :)
Something's changed. The "computer experts" from the mainstream news outlets have started reporting that all these worms and virii and assorted other security problems are Microsoft security problems. That's a very interesting shift from the coverage of the last few years where thoes "experts" consistently referred to all these issues as either a "computer virus" or an "internet worm" or whatever, but never a "Microsoft Outlook virus" or anything that would point a finger directly at Microsoft.
You've probably seen or read the news of the Colombia loss already and I don't have anything to add to the story around this sad event except to say that I hope the television news outlets will have a little more sensitivity than they did in reporting the Challenger loss and I hope that this isn't the end of the STS program that began with the launch of this very Colombia vehicle almost 22 years ago. 
"The beginning of the Space Shuttle Program - Colombia STS-1. Launch on April 12, 1981, at 12:00 GMT"
