Disappointment with FF 1.5

If you are thinking about downloading the latest version of FireFox you might want to wait. I downloaded it at work and home and so far I am not impressed. At home (WinXP Home) when I look at a slashdot story like the one that I linked to there is no scroll bar. I don't know if this is on purpose or what, but I don't like it. If I try and change the settings by going Tools -> Options I get an invisable dialog box with floating buttons and (some) text over text. There is no way that I could change anything in that section.

*sigh*

I just hope that they release a fixed version soon. I would have thought that something like this would not have made it past the RC's but I guess that I'm not really doing anything to help. ;-P (ahhggg! I lost my spell checker too! Please forgive me)

Party Trick

This is something that we can do at someone else's house... someone with high ceilings and an easy to clean floor. ;-)

There is no second place to White Box Testing

One thing that I find about testing: QA can never test the application as deeply and easily if they do not have access to the code. Black box testing only gets you "so far", but for efficient testing White Box is the way to go.

Let's take an example: for most java projects have property files for the message resources so you can easily swap out the different languages you are using for your app. I think that it's impossible (or nearly so) if you do not have access to the files themselves to test for things like: duplicate keys; keys existing for all the languages you are supporting; or (this was new to me) if you have a space after the line continuation char (\) and the java property file reader doesn't pick up the next line.

I just don't know how any developers can rely on a QA department that is doing manual black box testing. Ultimately it's a developer's responsibility to ensure that things are working correctly, so why would you not have them do the testing?

I just don't get it

I've been watching the amazing race 8 this season and one family always amazes me: the Weaver family. I just don't how they see themselves in the world.

They say things like "we're the only nice people left in this race" while they taunt strangers, insult other people's cultures, disparage where other people live, etc. They don't seem to be able to make a positive comment about anything other than themselves. Horrible.

And it's just not my impression. There are lots of stories about them.

It's funny how first impressions can be very wrong. At first I thought the Weavers were "nice" people and the Paolo were bad, bad people. The Paolo's fight a lot, but they were still okay people in that they just where not mean to everyone they met.

Unlike the Weavers, I really hope that I have an accurate picture of myself: as others see me.

Review of the latest products

Some of you know that my favourite business is Tim Hortons (or, affectionately known as TH). A couple of weeks ago I had one of their Hot Smoothees and it was less than stellar to say the least. It tasted like a shot of flavour in hot water. Ewww... I tried Butter Caramel because I heard that Raspberry wasn't very good. I think that I figured out why it's not good: "non-caffeinated". I see that you can add "flavour shots" to your coffee... I have yet to try this but that sounds better than the smoothee.

Today I had Southwest Chicken Sandwich. Very tasty! The girl who made it said that they were addictive and now I believe her. I would get it again in a heartbeat. I hope that they keep it around. On a related note, I think that I am one of the few people that loves the commercial for that sandwich... so funny.

Java quiz

What do you think will be the outcome for this code? This is something that I ran into today and wasted an hour (or 30 minutes, don't remember) on.

Date now = new Date();
// gets a calendar instance of the current time
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

// let's change the cal time to last year.
cal.add(Calendar.YEAR, -1);

System.out.println("Is " + cal.getTime() + " before " + now + " ???");
System.out.println(cal.before(now));

Usable again

I finally took the time and cleaned off my desk at home so I can work on it again. It's probably been 6 months since I've sat here. On a related note I have turned on my linux box again and have that running. I'm going to use it as a media box again, sans Apache / JBoss. Why am I even bothering to use it as a media box? Well, simply put my laptop doesn't have enough hd space for all the stuff that I want to keep on it. I only have a 20 Gb drive and I have like 3 Gb of digital photos. I have much, much more music than that... The only pain is that I would have to go turn it on when I actually want to use it, but I can live with that.

Open format vs closed

Well, I don't really think that an open document format is bad, at least not for users. Bernard Golden has an interesting write up about it. The only people that I can see not benefiting from moving towards an open standard are the people who currently have the market share using a closed format. It's not really rocket science.

All the power to Massachusetts' decision to go with OpenDocument since being the first to make the bold move has to be hard. As soon as that move goes well, hoo hoo, it's going to be a huge slide for MS as everyone saves 500$ a workstation.

WotD

And the word of the day is: priapism.

No reason, just that I learned it today... don't ask.

Developers are the keepers of quality

Just me ranting here...

It bothers me when talking to other developers and they say things like "I didn't check [the feature]. That's why we have a QA department!". No, that's wrong. It's the developers responsibility to test and ensure that every way they can think of using the software is working well. QA is just a fresh set of eyes to go through the app in a way that the developer hadn't thought of before.

That's why developers have unit tests: so they can regression test the whole app quickly. If it's the developers responsibility to completely regression test the app every day or so, of course they are going to use unit tests. It's impossible to do so otherwise.

If you have a bug opened against you once: no worries, everyone misses something. If it's opened twice: you either didn't write the tests, run them, or the tests are wrong. And if the bug is opened more than that, well, there is no excuse for that.

If you cannot be responsible for the quality of your work, you should move to a role that doesn't require such standards.

Perfect timing

Went for a run. It was great (37.25 minutes). A bit windy, but nice. Got back, jumped into the shower and about 30 seconds later the fire alarm goes off. *sigh* Not every day is perfect.

Missed it

I tried to buy the new Star Wars today from BestBuy. Got there and they were all sold out. The guy said that they were all gone at 5 pm. Apparently all BestBuy and FutureShop's didn't have any. He said that he heard that Walmart still had some... but I wasn't going that far tonight. Damn. It will be mine, oh yes, it will be mine...