Gumption

This has been a gumption killing week for me…

Sunday

The network ports on my old Direct Way 4020 Satellite modem died leaving me entirely without a net connection.

Net withdrawal began.

Monday

Told numerous depressing options for replacing dead modem before managing to get the “upgrade” option without resetting my contract period but with a potential 2 business week delay on receiving the new modem.

Tuesday

Over to sister’s to take advantage of the Hughesnet system I got her last year…

Updated her system, downloaded virus|spyware scanners etc, scanned her machine to make sure no spyware, rootkits, bots on the local network.

Hit the new HughesNet Fair Access Policy (FAP) limit on her “consumer” grade account. FAP throttled my connection to about 2KB/s with no recharge for 24 hours.

Wednesday

Scheduled delivery and installation of new HughesNet 7000S Satellite modem for Thursday!

FAP still in effect at sister’s.

Thursday

Satellite modem installed and net withdrawal symptoms receed.

Back to work!

Friday

Desk collapses onto the floor while rearranging office to discourage Miss Kitty from using my desk and possibly causing additional hardware failures. Fortunately only monitors were involved and were not damaged.

Found sturdy tables at Office Depot to use for work surfaces. (Staple’s tables were crap and staff were no help, but Office Depot’s tables were pretty sturdy and the staff ere very helpful. Thanks!).

Finish rearranging office

Backed up laptop across all other machines.

Saturday

Back to work.

Discovered that my mozilla local mail folder had been wiped sometime on Wednesday…

Realized had wiped all good copies of the mozilla local mail folder.

I hope next week is better.

HughesNot

I live in the United States of America. Supposedly the only remaining Superpower on the planet.

I also live in rural Virginia in an area that did not have phone service until 10 years ago. The quality of my telephone signal is atrocious, DSL and Cable will never be an option, Broadband over Powerlines is promised but not forthcoming any time soon and I have to use Satellites to connect to the Internet.

Unfortunately the quality of my Satellite-based service has deteriorated appreciably recently and I find myself looking at

more often that I should.

I am certainly relieved to know that someone got rich by not providing broadband to the United States while South Korean and Chinese Farmers have better connectivity than I do.

;

Firefox 1.5.0.5 released!

Firefox 1.5.0.5 was released today and every Firefox user should update today.

I have updated the ua sidebar to include the new user agent strings for those of you who are still doing user agent string browser detection.

I have also blocked access to this site and the archive for users of out of date versions of Firefox (who have JavaScript enabled). If you notice that an up to date Gecko-based browser is incorrectly blocked, please contact me and let me know the details including the user agent string.

/bc

Yahoo! and the evils of Vendor/Version Browser Detection

Vendor/Version browser detection strikes again!

When attempting to view the new Yahoo! home page in the development version of of Firefox 2 (also known as Bon Echo), I was presented with the following lovely page:

New Yahoo! Homepage in Bon Echo

If Yahoo! had made the requirement to be any Gecko-based browser based on branch 1.8 or later (which includes Firefox 1.5), then I would have been able to see their new design without having to fudge my user agent.

If you must restrict access to specific Gecko versions, use something like getGeckoRv() which can be used to detect the version of a Gecko-based browser independently of its branding or vendor/version.

/bc

Test Automation for Firefox and Thunderbird

I have started a thread in mozilla.dev.quality (nntp|Google Groups) on an automated testing project for Firefox and Thunderbird. Topics include:

  • Execution Environment
  • Directory Paths | CVS Locations
  • Nightly Build Installation
  • Building
  • Profile Creation and Initialization
  • Test Invocation
  • Result Reporting

If you have experience with automated testing frameworks and are interested in helping out, please join the discussion.