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Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Code Complete!

The developers at Mozilla have handed off the final code for the upcoming Firefox RC1 to "Build" this morning:

Thanks to all the hard work of the Mozilla community as of 9:15 AM PDT today (Saturday, May 10th) we are code complete for Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 (RC1). New nightly builds are available - if you are a nightly tester/Minefield user you can help test these builds by selecting “Check for Updates” from your help menu.

Mozilla Developer News » Blog Archive » Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Code Complete!

For those of you that are wondering how the stability of RC1 compares to the Beta 5 release of April 2nd; the difference is like night and day based on my use of the nightly builds. Beta 5 was buggy and crash prone, they knew it and announced it as well. The reason for releasing beta versions of new software to the public is to get their feedback and user feedback, especially in the case of open source software, is one of the primary driving forces behind the development of said software. And it’s become obvious that these users are taking this informal or "field" testing seriously considering that there are currently over 1.2 million Firefox 3 beta 5 users out there waiting to get their hands on RC1.

I do have to admit I probably missed the mark about my prediction that we’d see the RC1 released by the end of the week though:

Assuming no new issues are found today the build team will start official prep work for Release Candidate 1 (RC1) tomorrow. QA will start their extensive RC1 test pass on Monday. If all goes well we should have the Release Candidate publicly available in late May.

Mozilla Developer News » Blog Archive » Firefox 3 Release Candidate 1 Code Complete!

Well you can’t say that they’re hurrying this out the door now can you? The reason is simple–QA. And QA is everything without a doubt. How many times has a large, well established, proprietary OS/software manufacturer (any guesses who that might be?) pushed a "Final" product out the door before it was ready only to cause the user all sorts of grief and frustration? Be glad of the extra testing and know for a fact that Firefox 3.0 RC1 will not be released until it passes the QA gauntlet.

Don’t worry, it will be ready and that’s a good thing.

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Posted 12 May 2008 † Kirk M § Firefox/Thunderbird ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: ,

It’s the Lottery’s Fault?

I read an article today in one of the local newspapers about the 30th anniversary of the Vermont lottery and the possibility of expanding the lottery in various yet unsaid ways. What caught my attention about this article was that among the interviews of local folks about how they felt about this possible expansion of said lottery, one of the respondents declared that Vermont needs to take more responsibility for the people that play who have gambling addictions. Another actually stated that he was thinking of suing the State Lottery Commission because he had spent all his [family's?] money on lottery tickets was now broke, debt ridden and wifeless to boot.

Excuse me? Let’s wait one minute here. Broke, debt ridden and his wife left him? Now whose fault is that I ask you? The only one to blame for this individual being in financial and marital strife is the individual himself, not the State of Vermont.

Sorry buddy but you’ll get no sympathy from me. Shall I sue the Bicycle Playing Cards Company because I was too pigheaded to stop playing poker when I was ahead of the game and ended up losing my butt? It was obviously their fault that I lost my money. And which credit card company should I sue for providing my first wife the means to get way over her head in debt? It’s surely Visa and MasterCard’s responsibility to make sure she used her plastic responsibly, yes? It’s their fault that I ended up having to commit bankruptcy because I was too young and naïve to stop her, right?

Which bar do I take to court for letting me drink past my capacity to drive safely and then purposely ignored the fact I was actually going to ride my Harley Davidson home after closing time? Which of the many bars that I frequented during my younger days can I sue the daylights out of for letting me ride off, completely inebriated, on my 800 lb American made motorcycle to not only endanger my own life but other lives as well?

How much money can I suck out of an “establishment” because of my own stupidity and lack of responsibility?

I smoked for 28 years before I quit and it’s not the tobacco company’s fault or responsibility if one day I’m diagnosed with lung cancer and/or heart disease–It’s entirely my own for smoking cigarettes in the first place.

No Lottery Commission of any State in the Union is responsible for human stupidity and lack of personal responsibility. Have a problem with gambling? Then don’t play, it’s that simple. Yet invariably somebody out there is guaranteed to cry “gambling addiction is real! It’s a sickness! Oh, the poor gambler.” Well you go ahead and believe that if you want; to me it falls under the category of Ultimate Stupid People Tricks.

To the man whining about how the lottery commission is to blame for his current situation, here’s a wake up call. It’s your own fault, buddy! You cocked up your own life; no lottery commission did it for you so stop your whining and get your act together. It’s never too late.

Sound cold and heartless, do I? I don’t think so and no one who knows me would ever accuse me of being heartless. However, I have to admit that I have absolutely no patience or tolerance for this kind of moronic human behavior.

Even in myself.

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Posted 10 May 2008 † Kirk M § IMHO § It figures § Rants ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , ,

A Pitstop in the Elections

I was perusing the Elections section in Google News this morning when half way down the page I found this:

The truck's a dog

Vacaville, CA (KCRA) - A California man popped the hood of his truck and saw a pair of eyes looking back at him.

“When I opened it up there were a pair of eyes staring at me and this growl, it blew me away, I didn’t know what to do,” says Witthoeft.

Source: http://www.wltx.com/FYI/story.aspx?storyid=61790

Now what this had to do with the current election I have no idea but I must admit that I enjoyed reading it more than actually reading about the election. I even enjoyed it more when I found out that the pit bull, after getting herself good and stuck, kept herself occupied by eating all the engine parts within her reach resulting in over a $1000.00 worth of damage. I sure would have loved being there when he had to explain this to his insurance company…

“Really! There was a pit bull in under my hood this morning and it ate my engine…really!”

I’ve known some pretty moronic dogs in my time but only a pit bull would be stupid enough to get itself stuck in a truck engine.

Of course he’ll never hear the end of it from his friends and family I’m sure. There will be endless jokes about varmints in his truck’s engine and I’ll bet he’s going to get sick and tired about hearing how is truck is a real dog.

Okay, enough about this…back to the elections. So what do you think–Obama wins the nomination and hauls Hillary on as his running mate?

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Posted 08 May 2008 † Kirk M § Interesting Stuff ‡ Comments (0) ° Tagged: , ,

Firefox 3 RC1 Next Week?

For those of you who are anxiously awaiting the first release candidate of Firefox 3 (like me) it looks like the wait will soon be over. Checking the latest RC1 blockers (bugs that are currently blocking the release candidate) shows only 4 remaining bugs to squash before RC1 can get itself out of the trunk. And on the forum today, as some of you who followed my previous post may have already read, it was stated on the last nightly build topic that all blockers should be cleared up by tonight.

This means that RC1 can now come out of the oven and head to “build” and all the required QA testing from there. If all goes right I’m predicting we should see RC1 released sometime late next week (which is an educated guess on my part of course).

I’d still bet a nickle that I’m right though.

Of course this will mean I’ll have to find and install all my extensions again but what the heck, it isn’t the first time I’ve had to do that. In fact it’s not even the 18th time I’ve had to do that while testing the nightly builds. However, it should be the last time I have to do this right through the final release date..or at least that’s the grand scheme anyway. :P

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Posted 07 May 2008 † Kirk M § Firefox/Thunderbird ‡ Comments (4) ° Tagged: ,

The Mower the Merrier

There’s nothing like an obsession that’s been satisfied. Yesterday was sunny and bright after two days of dark and dreary and lo and behold, the grass was actually tall enough for the first mowing.

Ain’t life just grand though?

And so it was that I happily tossed the gas can into the back of my old Jeep Cherokee and down to the local gas station I went where I was met with the first minor shock of the day. Gas was now $3.60 a gallon for regular. Oh well, it’s not like I haven’t been reading about it on the news.

Second minor shock of the day–it cost me an even $9.00 to fill up a 2.5 gallon gas can. Well hell, why not? With oil reaching $121.00 a barrel as of yesterday morning I was lucky to get it that cheap I figure so I can’t complain too much especially when it won’t do any good anyway.

So off home I go, filled up the tank on our old self propelled push mower (wish my cane was as easy to use as this thing) and around our lawns I go, happy as a raven at the site of fresh road kill. The mower even started on the first pull no less.

So 45 minutes later, with a screaming back but a blissful smile on my face I rolled the mower back into the garage glancing joyfully at the almost* beautiful, nicely trimmed carpet of green grass (*there was still some areas where the rough winter had taken it’s toll and there were rather large patches of brown here and there). Since I was still mobile enough and against all common sense I then decided to haul out our ancient wheel barrel and commence to emptying all the bags of last fall’s leaves that we had thrown up against the side of the foundation on the windy side of the house and dumped over the bank in the same place I dump the grass clippings-something of a Vermont tradition you might say. The fact that it actually provides a good insulation factor is another point in it’s favor.

Another thirty minutes and I had finished this chore as well which was a good thing indeed since by then my busted back was not only screaming but filing for divorce as well. Since this morning, my back and I have reached an accord and it’s withdrawn it’s divorce filing from the local court so all’s well there.

It’s supposed to rain for the next couple of days which ought to make the grass grow nicely once mower…I mean more.

Man! I just can’t stand the wait!

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Posted 07 May 2008 † Kirk M § Just Foolin § Life at home ‡ Comments (1) ° Tagged: , , , , ,

Dark and Dreary, A New Moon and Related Matter.

Gah! It’s been gray and rainy for the last two days now and it’s enough to drive a semi-sane man into a hot shower on a permanent basis or at least for several hours. Either that or a nap until the sun comes out. Guess I was spoiled by an exceptionally warm April.

On top of the wonderful weather we’ve been having there’s a new moon coming up on Monday which means of course that the cats are acting like they’ve been possessed by some sort of demon from hell, keeping themselves busy by beating the crap out of each other then rushing over to meow piteously at me. If their eyes get any wider I’m afraid they might fall right out of their heads and roll around on the floor. It’s such a bother cleaning all the specks of dust and the occasional cat hair off of these “gone astray” eyeballs before popping them back in the cat’s head. You have to be real careful not to get eyeballs mixed up between cats also otherwise you’ll have one cat seeing what the other one is looking at and there’s no end to the caterwauling until you get it straightened out.

The sun’s supposed come out tomorrow and warm up to around 65 degrees which means if the grass, which has been growing steadily now due to the rain, dries off enough I just might be able to do the first mowing and thus satisfy this horrible urge I’ve had to rumble the blasted mower around the lawn. I’ve never been able to figure out this ungodly obsession I’ve always had in getting the lawn mowed. It’s not like I’m one of those anal retentive types that absolutely have to have a perfectly manicured, weed free, trimmed and edged lawn that looks like someone could knock a golf ball into it at any given moment. I could care less about weeds, their green aren’t they? And I only edge a lawn when it grows more than halfway across the sidewalk. At that point I’ll knock it back a bit.

Ah well, I think I’ll put on my ball cap and wander outside for a look around the place just to say I did. Can’t sit around here all day with three crazy felines now can I?

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Posted 04 May 2008 † Kirk M § Life at home ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: , ,

So you say you want a MacBook Air?

Just a bit of fun on a Friday night courtesy of the folks at Lenovo.

No…this is not a promotion. I just thought it was funny.

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Posted 02 May 2008 † Kirk M § Just Foolin ‡ Comments (2) ° Tagged: ,

WordPress 2.5 Plugin Keeps the Version out of Source.

For anyone who has upgraded to WordPress 2.5 and above and likes to keep the WordPress version number out of the source code of your site when the source is viewed in a browser you could be in for a surprise. It might be back even though you eliminated the line of code in your theme’s “header.php” that generated the version number in the first place.

I know I was surprised to find “2.5.1″ happily displayed when I viewed the source code for my main page in Firefox last night and for the life of me I couldn’t find anything in my theme’s “header.php” I might have missed. At first I thought I had forgotten to comment the line out when I upgraded the theme to the latest version but apparently not.

I finally decided to contact the author of my theme, Scott Wallick of PlainText.org (home of the famous “Sandbox” theme) about this. I have to admit that I was more than a bit surprised when he sent me the explanation especially when I had followed the development of 2.5 so closely:

If you’re using WordPress 2.5, then you’re in for a treat. Because as of this version, WordPress hooks the function wp_head() to insert (automatically) the generator meta link.

You can’t really remove wp_head() as plugins require it to work correctly (inserting JavaScript, etc.), so you have to disable the function that produces the generator link from within WordPress.

See the following announcement:

http://blog.ftwr.co.uk/archives/2007/10/06/improving-the-wordpress-generator/

And to top this all off, Scott worked up a tiny plugin that disabled that very function, attached it to his message and it worked like a charm. I can’t say enough about this guy. I use another of his themes called Blog.txt and through 3 updates to the theme since I first installed it he’s answered all my questions, taken care of submitted bugs and even incorporated one of my suggestions about Gravatar resizing using the theme’s “Options” page in the Admin.

So I decided to host his plugin for those of you who wish to use it. Installation is simple. Extract, upload, activate and you’re done. Your version of WordPress shown in the source of your blog should now be gone unless your “header.php” has the hard coded “generator” still coded into it.

Note: This plugin is only for use with WordPress 2.5 and higher.

Download: rgl.zip

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Posted 29 April 2008 † Kirk M § Wordpress ‡ Comments (5) ° Tagged: ,