Recently in Technology Category

It is as though the Shuttle saga is taking on a life of its own. It was bad enough that I had somehow snuck in a brand new computer but this hole I am digging just seems to be getting deeper and deeper. I keep thinking that if I can shovel dirt from one side of the hole to the other than I can get closer to the top and finally get out of this mess but that doesn't seem to be working. It started when I decided to bring it on vacation. I probably could have gotten away with that but I forgot the monitor and had to buy a new one. Trying to explain why I needed a new 22" LCD monitor while we were on vacation took a serious amount of creative thinking and tap dancing. Unfortunately, that was not quite the end to my needs.

We have now lived in Arizona over 14 years. A lot of our family still lives in Idaho and Utah. As a result we find ourselves making the trek from Arizona to Idaho quite often (more often than I would like that's for sure). We have gotten to where we have a fairly well mapped out path from point A to point B and back. This path is the result of trying just about every different roadway that goes between these three states. And what I have learned from all of this is that there really is no good way to get from Arizona to Idaho without subjecting yourself to a lot of small highways or back roads. I don't so much mind driving the back country but it does have its drawbacks. For example there are large stretches of road that have absolutely nothing on them. Driving from Flagstaff Arizona northward for example takes you across Indian Reservations that barely have phone service let alone rest stops or places to get something to eat or drink. Even cellular service is spotty. Digital phone service is impossible and analog roaming is even questionable. This situation remains in effect through part of southern Utah as well at least until you can get near the Interstate when there are at least some cellular towers to give you adequate phone service.

I should never be allowed into an electronics store or a computer store unsupervised. There are just too many gadgets and I have too many ideas to be trusted to not come out of one of these stores without spending too much or bringing home something new and unusual. As I documented yesterday I was going to need some new parts in order to make the necessary repairs around the house. I am usually ok going to Home Depot or Lowe's by myself. Well ok that might be debatable especially after the whole rewiring the house and adding home automation fiasco of 1999. By the way, the switch explosion was not among those that I had previously messed with so this one was not my fault. That's my story and I am sticking with it.

I have been a big fan of Mozilla for as long as they have been in existence. Before that I was part of the Netscape crowd and worked with them on browser development even before Netscape Navigator 4. Early on I did some work on the Thunderbird project and Sunbird. During my time at Motorola I was a member of the Netscape Customer Council and worked closely with their server development teams integrating the Motorola PageWriter two-way pager into the Netscape environment. In fact I hold a patent for that work last I heard. So as Mozilla worked on the open source code that would become Firefox I was right there rolling up my sleeves. Firefox 2 has been my default browser since it was released. And while it has had its share of issues over time my loyalty has not wavered. That is not to say I wasn't looking forward to its replacement. I was waiting rather impatiently to put it to the curbside and use something that was a little more memory friendly.