preed's blah-blah-blahg

After working on problems with tinderboxen for the past week—some on really important branches, like the 1.0.8 security release, others on more... eclectic stuff (read: Cairo)—I've come to the conclusion that we have too many Tinderboxen!¹

That was reinforced by the fact that we started running out of space for logfiles on branches that matter, when there were gigabytes of logfiles hanging around that I've never even heard of.

In looking at the main Tinderbox page, I wonder: does anyone care about the following Tinderboxen?

• Aviary-1.0
• BlueBird
• Mozilla1.0
• Mozilla1.4
• Mozilla1.5
• Mozilla1.6
• Mozilla1.7
• Phoenix

If so, speak up before the end of next week... otherwise, these tinderboxen (both backend machines and frontend space for logs, etc.) will be on the chopping block.

_________
¹ Technically, that should read "Too many Tinderboxen for us to manage right now."

Posted by preed at 3:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

12:26 <@preed> it hasn't moved to the head of the list (by any stretch), but... this will get it on my radar.

12:26 <@preed> (whereas before, not so much. :-)
12:27 <dmose> preed: i'm happy to do the hands-on work myself if that's appropriate
...
12:27 <@preed> it's funny... Justin and I were talking yesterday, and he blithely said "Yeah, you're drowning right now."
...
12:27 <@preed> and I was like "Aww... I thought I was treading water!"
12:27 * dmose chuckles
12:27 * dmose buys preed a surfboard

Posted by preed at 12:30 PM | Permalink

Coop and I were discussing this morning how it's easy for build-related requests to get lost in #firefox and #developers.

There is a #build on irc.mozilla.org, but it was previously used for build team chatter.

It's been opened now though, so if you:

• Have a build/release engineering request that's not getting seen in other channels...
... or...
• Are interested in working on (or seeing others work on) build/release engineering-related things, like makefiles, autoconf, AUS2, etc.

... then feel free to /join #build!

If you need build-related support ("Firefox won't build on my VIC 20!"), please continue to ask in #developers and #firefox; right now, the build "team" is pretty time-constrained, so we'd like to keep #build high on the signal-to-noise ratio, and use it as a filter for ensuring high priority items are addressed in a timely fashion.

Posted by preed at 9:22 AM | Permalink

I had to ship "something" (a gadget) back to a company today.

This item came to the office in a box, of course. But, it actually shipped in an outer... "shipping" box. This box was lost in a horrible horrible misplaced-box-janitor-cleanup-destruction accident.

Thusly, to ship my item back, I needed to another "shipping" (outer) box.

I asked Karen—our trusty office assistant/shipping queen—"How could I solve this problem?" She directed me to the stash of FedEx boxes downstairs. Downstairs I trek to find said a "shipping" (outer) box!

(Oooh, the suspensful adventure!)

At first, I had some trouble finding them, but then I found an inconspicuous (as opposed to standard colorful white, orange, and blue) box that FedEx that had shipped to us containing—you guessed it—boxes!

So, to recap in case I've lost any of you: I took the box out of the box that FedEx shipped to us to put a box that had been shipped to me in another box in a box so FedEx could ship it back to the company.

This post brought to you by the Cardboard Recylcing Board of America and post-AUS2-update-creation-head-banging-insanity.

Posted by preed at 1:05 AM | Permalink

While putting out the latest fire(s) today, I find myself asking Chase more questions in a single day than I ever have before.

I guess it's all the prospect of him not being just a desk away really sinking in, causing me to panic and just ask him about something, as opposed to take the (extra) time to figure it out for myself.

I joked with him earlier this afternon that I'd be stuck to his leg, crying like a four year old deathly afraid of being left at daycare as he tried to leave the building tonight. It's not a unique sentiment.

His laughter was a mixture of amusement and fear that I wasn't joking, I think.

When Chase first interviewed me, I was slightly nervous and still unsure that I would even seriously consider an offer, much less a job with Mozilla Corporation.

We began talking, and the conversation flowed back and forth freely. At one point, he asked "What do you read to stay on top of developments in the release engineering field?"

"Slashdot, of course," I immediately answered. "Uhh... I like reading JoelOnSoftware." He abruptly stopped me; "What's his last name," he asked?

"His last name?"

"Yes, his last name."

"Spolsky?"

He smiled his unmistakable Chase-smile, and said "Yeah, that's right."

For whatever reason, at that point, the interview changed somehow. The tone became lighter and the nervousness melted away.

As he began asking technical questions—"How do you create a tag in CVS," and the like—it got to the point where he would ask a question, and then immediately say "Oh, you know that," and move on to the next question.

He finished the interview by showing me all the build machines and the server room downstairs, and it was at this point that I realized that these were the type of people I wanted to work with.

Chase: it's been a genuine pleasure working with you. You're a patient, understanding, and expert teacher and made coming to work fun.

I assure you that of everyone's amount-they'll-miss-you per time-they've-known-you ratio, mine is the highest. :-)

Good luck, friend!

Posted by preed at 5:01 PM | Permalink