Tis the evening 2…

Posted on March 29, 2006 by Kirk M

And not much really going on up here at the top of Vermont besides a week of temps in the 50′s which will be just what we’ve needed after a couple weeks of raw 30′s. I hear White River Junction down in Central Vermont might actually hit 70 on Friday. January thaw in March? Ya’ never know up here. Weather tends to get crazy.

Another thing that this part of the season always brings is losing people through the ice like they had any business being out there this time of year anyway. I suppose I should feel bad about this but I don’t. Every year it’s the same thing; so and so lost through the ice at so and so pond or lake while riding an ATV or just walking out. It’s not like these people don’t read, listen or watch the news, it’s not like they don’t know about the danger of WALKING ON THIN ICE but they insist on doing it every time anyway. Believe me, they only insist on it once! No second chances allowed!

Nature has no mercy when it comes to plain stupidity.

Bah…GM’s firing everyone in sight, Microsoft couldn’t make a deadline to save it’s own soul, President Bush’s own staff are either being indicted or resigning like rats jumping off a sinking ship, gas prices are up, Dow Jones is down…sheeeesh!

I think I’ll take a shower and go to bed.

It was nice and sunny today! That’s got to count for something!

good night all…

Veritable egganox

Posted on March 23, 2006 by Kirk M

Yes folks, it’s that time of year again. The time we’ve all been waiting for up here in Stovepipe City at the top of the Northeast Kingdom The Vernal Equinox when sunrise’s are directly in the east, sunset’s are directly in the west and the sun dances on the equator on it’s return trip to the northern hemisphere.

It’s also the time for the traditional Standing of the Eggs on the kitchen counter. I mean raw eggs standing on their little pointy bottoms on a smoooth(!) surface which, by the way, can only be done on the day of the vernal and autumnal (for us that is) equinox’s. No, you really can’t do it any other day and if you manage it you’re egg is sitting on a tiny crumb or it’s bottom is bumpy in all the right places.

Some of you may not know what I’m talking about and others may not believe it at all but we do this twice every year and every time it works! Those others who also join in on this little known tradition however, know eggsactly what I’m talking about.

We only did two eggs this year, one for her and one for me. Seemed like enough this time and yes, we took pictures like we always do and I saved the best for you:

Have an eggstanding spring everyone!

San Francisco 100 years ago (almost)

Posted on March 20, 2006 by Kirk M

The financial district after the quake

Just a short post here…

I got an e-mail from my lady with a link to The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco which led me to a fascinating excerpt by Gladys Hansen who is currently the curator of the Museum of the City of San Francisco. The excerpt is a written time line of the events as they happened after the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 had occurred. A good read I definitely recommend.

More bang to the big bang

Posted on March 17, 2006 by Kirk M

Just a quick post this morning before I head to work. I was reading Google news and clued in on an article pertaining to an update to the Big Bang theory which apparently solidifies said theory by quite a bit. What really caught my eye was the graphical representation of the data received by the WMAP space probe that supposedly found the “first light” exhibited by the infant universe shortly (cosmically speaking that is) after the initial expansion.

I suggest you read the article at NASA at http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_mm.html first and then hit the link to “The Time line of the Universe” and think about what your seeing. Never mind that we may actually be looking at the graphical representation of the actual beginning of the universe but the first thing that occurred to me was that the image closely resembles a Cathode ray tube that was first designed for prototype television receivers. Not exactly but close enough to make me think about it I mean…

What if it was something like that? What if our universe is just Somebody Else’s experiment in – well who knows? Creation of a tiny universe complete with life, stars, quasars, love, hate and income taxes?

What if that’s all we actually are? An experiment of some type?

And what if they turn off the power?

Have a nice d—

Firefox 2 (Bon Echo) beta 1 released??

Posted on March 4, 2006 by Kirk M

Posted in my old “BackWoods Tech” blog now defunct.
Well… not quite, but almost. Read the quote below from the Mozilla Developer news site:

Code freeze

Due to the number of outstanding blocking bugs targeted at beta 1, and the delay in getting a L10N functional NSIS installer working, the Beta 1 milestone will be slipping a little bit:

Code Freeze: Wednesday, July 5th, 11:59 PDT

Beta Ship : Tuesday, July 11th

This slip is necessary for us to release a product that can get wide testing from users in both first and second tier locales. It does, however, put us up against the wall in our overall schedule, so we’ll have to get very cautious in terms of the risk we’re willing to accept on patches, and focus our effort on items that are on the critical path for release.

Please focus your effort on bugs marked as blockers with a target milestone of Firefox2 beta1 or mozilla1.8.1b1, landing on trunk with appropriate reviews and requesting approval1.8.1? after some bake time.

Of course, we recognize that there are holidays between now and July 5th, and aren’t asking you to alter any vacation plans you might have. In fact, the earlier patches get on the trunk and the longer they bake, the better!

Now, if you’re like me and have set up a separate profile using the “firefox.exe -profilemanager” run command (Windows XP in my case) and have set up a separate profile for testing the nightly “Bon Echo” builds of the upcoming Firefox 2 then you most likely already have the Bon Echo Beta 1 tucked nicely away in your rapidly maturing “gonna-be” browser. If your experiences with the Alpha builds of the new Firefox browser has paralleled mine at all (especially with the nightly builds of Alpha 3 and now Beta 1) it’s quite obvious that we have a real nice update coming up.

The only things that worry me now is that only 9 out of my usual 22 extensions ~~(see my previous post)~~ have been compatible so far and July 11th is the official public release date for the “re-branded” (from Bon Echo to Firefox) Firefox 2 beta 1 release and although I can live without most of them my beloved pinch hit blog editor; Performancing aka PFF, is still missing in action. Oh well…The final release is still at least a month or so away so there is still time and I’m probably fretting about it way too early like I usually do.

So far though, even with the Alpha 3 builds, the new version has been extremely robust and stable which is very unusual when a new version of a program is still in the Alpha stages. Improvements in everything from memory handling and launching speed to rendering and functionality, point to a much more polished, streamlined browser than the previous 1.5.0.x versions which is something all current and wannabe Firefox users will definitely appreciate.

Technorati : Bon Echo beta 1, Firefox, Firefox 2 beta 1