November 2006

Gmail slow this morning

November 20, 2006

Gmail is running slow this morning. No messages have been delivered to my Gmail accounts for 90 minutes, including a few dozen that have been accepted for delivery by various SMTP hosts at Google but haven't appeared in the inbox yet.

For the last couple of years I've been using Gmail and it is a great service. Presently I have all my mail accounts setup to run through Gmail and back out to my mail servers. This arrangement provides great flexibility in archiving messages, remote access for those times when I just need to grab something quick. The setup is great until delays like today's happen. I've had it before on my personal account but today it's hitting my personal account and my work account. Not a good deal when one is expecting email.

There is a post that indicates Google is aware of the problem. How much simpler if there was one place to go for this information.

Solve Firefox 2.0 freezes

November 19, 2006

A couple of days ago I wrote about the problems I've had with Firefox 2.0 being terribly unstable. The fifteen restarts a day it needed to keep it going were enough to drive one batty. In my case the problem has largely been solved by uninstalling the Google Toolbar seems to have solved the problem most of the time. I still hold my breath when the spinning wheel of colored death appears from time to time but it usually goes away quickly. With the Google Toolbar it went away never.

Five tips for getting new employees started

November 16, 2006

The anticipation's been building. You've been through the first and second round interviews and the phone rings. As the first day of the new job starts you are excited and ready to go to work.

As much as employees need to take advantage of this situation employers have a lot to gain or lose as well. Several places I've started it's been clear that they just plain weren't ready for me. If the job involves more than flipping hamburgers it's worth spending some time planning out the first days and weeks of a new hire's work with some care.

1. Make the tools available - Nothing is more unsettling than going in to a new company and not having the basics. At the minimum a phone, email and office or cubicle need to be ready to go on day one. Make sure the employee has keys or whatever things are necessary to get in so they can come in early or stay late (which they will often want to do).

Problems with Firefox 2.0

November 15, 2006

Problems with Firefox 2 are cropping up for other folks as well. Firefox brings spell checking but takes away stability. Not a good trade-off and I'm tired of restarting Firefox a dozen times a day. Almost tired enough to start using Safari again.

On the road once more

November 12, 2006

It says something that I most often find time to blog of late when I'm sitting in the boarding area of an airport. It's been a whirlwind couple of weeks. I did bump into a fellow American Legion Boys' State person at the airport this morning. Thankfully he reported that his party had made an appropriate contribution to our state economy.

I'm afraid, however, that I threw off the statistical process. I was given a yellow card to time how long it takes to go through security. Though I went through about twice as fast as anyone around me.

Ed Bradley (1941-2006)

November 9, 2006

Sad news today of the passing of veteran journalist Ed Bradley. I was fortunate enough to hear Bradley speak at UNLV in the early 90's. Though I had not yet chosen to study journalism he was an absolutely inspirational person. "When it gets to the point where it's not fun anymore, I've always hoped that I would have the courage to say goodbye and walk away from it," Bradley said. Sadly leukemia caught up with Bradley and we are left with memories of this great journalist.

Bradley said of himself "I had had no training as a journalist and I used to listen to the CBS News hourly reports. That was my classroom." A great reminder to all the citizen journalists of the world that it doesn't take a degree and a lot of experience to get into the field. Instead it takes hard work and persistence.

Three tab night

November 7, 2006

Tonight is a three tab night. Three tabs kept open in Firefox keep me up to date on the election returns. The three are:

So far so good. Things don't look good in Nevada's govenor's race but hopefully the early voting shows a different result than the final result.

The race to Drupal 5

November 3, 2006

So I've been working with Drupal 5 which recently came out in beta. There are still a number of key modules to be converted and a world of testing but I can say oh my this is going to be a fantastic release.

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