Current Projects


What's the Big News?
I sent a bug report to the Mozilla folks about Firefox.  This is the second one I've ever sent them.  The first time, it took them 5 months, but then I received a nice and short note thanking me for my report and telling me they had fixed the bug (which they had).

If you are viewing this very page through Firefox, open any other browser, and the bug will be apparent.  There are internal links at the top the page that work in other browsers (Opera, IE, Konqueror) and don't work in Firefox.  I've written the links a few different ways and none of them work.  I've validated the page with HTML validators.  AND the links DID work in Firefox before I switched from tables to divs (if you aren't a coder, just ignore this last sentence).


What's new or updated on Alwanza?
Not much.  This page is new.  I might be posting a few more recipes soon; and I'm thinking again about posting some more "How To Linux" stuff because I've been doing new things and documenting plenty.


What hi-tech projects am I working on?
At work I'm finally excited about a challenging project.  I'm installing apache 1.3.37 from source with mod_perl and mod_ssl both also from source (php is already installed and I'm just linking it into apache).  The first time I got everything working except for perl, and I backed it out to the original.  Now I'm reading every drop of documentation and I'll be installing it again (and hopefully getting it all to work) this week.

At work, the rule is "avoid installing from anything except rpm as much as possible, and go to great lengths to do that".  Why?  Because the people who held my job before me didn't document.  They didn't put documenting comments in code and they didn't document in READMEs or any other way when they installed from source; and the work they did became a "nightmare to maintain" (per RB).

Actually there was SOME documentation but it was fragmented and incomplete and coding and installing documentation was written in long story form hidden between other pieces of general information that didn't pertain to the installs/builds.

This is also part of the reason that my work is moving away from Linux and Open Source implementations of everything interesting and purchasing Microsoft products for all the important jobs that Linux does better.  There is just too much for a small staff to maintain.  Of course they never had a truly good Sys Admin like me before (cough, cough).  Well, at least I document thoroughly in a step-by-step manner and even automate installs so they can be done again quickly (after adapting the scripts for new versions).  I've arrived there too late to turn around decisions that have already been made.  The best I can do is make sure that if the Linux stuff dwindles down to almost nothing, whoever replaces me (because I'll go where the Linux is) will have an easy time of maintaining whatever remains.  Fortunately, that day is not in the near future.


What else is going on in my life?
I'm still bicycle-commuting, but the distance is much shorter.  Even bicycling 5 times per week does not equal the milage I used to cover in 3 days at my old job.  I need to be doing more exercise because I've started to gain back some of the weight I dropped.


Any nature observances of interest?
At the backyard feeder, the pinesiskins showed up early.  I think this is going to be a high-population pinesiskin year, same with goldfinch.  The wrens are also more visible (and audible).  The varied thrush has been extremely rare this winter. 

Last weekend I did some weeding and pruning in my tee shirt.  We had a day that was as hot and sunny as a Seattle day in June.  Now the rain has returned.  I have grown to enjoy the rain in winter, as long as it is punctuated by occasional sun-breaks.