I’ve always loved Firefox however in recent months I’ve cast this cute little animal into the refuge pile in /Applications and given its space in the warmth of my dock to Apple’s Safari 4 browser.  Firefox had developed a very naughty habit of eating all of my poor laptops free memory and CPU so when Apple came out with Safari 4 I decided to give it shot.

Safari is remarkably faster than the prior versions of Firefox and had a much lower memory and CPU footprint on my laptop.  The browser offered many other nifty features that I loved the glitz of when switching but over the past few months have all but forgotten as I never use them.  Such toys as “Top Sites” and “Graphical History” while being very interesting features don’t serve one well when they never use the “Top Sites” and barely ever check their browser history.

Today a friend mentioned how much he was enjoying Firefox 3.5 and I decided it was worth a shot to install on my work issued Windows laptop.  I replaced Firefox 3.0 with 3.5 and found it remarkably faster, sharper looking and much better with sharing the small amount of memory my work laptop has.  Since I was so impressed with it on the work computer I decided to give it a shot on my personal computer.

I installed the browser and after just about twenty minutes of usage noticed how much faster it was than prior versions.  It was as fast or faster than Safari 4.  The rendering is quicker than it used to be and Firefox’s use of large fonts has always been the most superior out there.  The results are in

Firefox has found it's rightful home

So now I am back on Firefox and quite happy with the performance thus far.

PID COMMAND      %CPU   TIME   #TH #PRTS #MREGS RPRVT  RSHRD  RSIZE  VSIZE
983 firefox-bi  12.1% 13:59.60  24   249   1148  120M    52M   169M   577M

So now a question for all of you out there who actually read enough of this post to make it here.  Do you have any must have extensions I should look into?

Wow, what a crazy few weeks it has been.  Kate and I have been very seriously considering moving onto the next steps of our lives for quite some time.  We both know the things we want to do and the goals we have for ourselves require us to be in a house and no longer in our condo.  While this place has been very good for us and we’ve turned it into an amazingly charming home we want a backyard that is our own, a kitchen that more suits are love for food, and more space for guests and our belongings.

Kate spent a lot of time doing some amazing research to determine the better towns for us to live in.  We wanted to stay within a good commute to the local area we are now as this is where most of the industry and jobs are should either Kate or I in the future be on the job market.  We further were interested in a town with a good community, lower crime rate, and a good school system.  We began viewing homes and figuring out what we liked, what we wanted, and what we absolutely had to have in our future home.

While doing this we also needed to prepare our condo for sale.  This required a lot of staging removing photos, personal items that others may not appreciate and removing all the clutter.  We had to rent a storage unit to put a lot of things that were taking up space and made our condo look smaller than it is.  Our place is now fully staged, we’ve had an open house and a couple appointments for people to walk through.  Still no offers but we have gotten positive feedback about the overall presentation

Buying a house is proving to be very stressful and time consuming.  We found a great home that we really wanted and put in an offer.  We then received a counter-offer to which we gave our own counter-offer.  We were then told that there were 3 total bidders being considered and we should give our last and final offer, which we did and won.  However only a few days later the sellers received another bid and again requested last and final offer.  This time we didn’t win and have lost the house.

It was heartbreaking and very depressing to both of us and we’re still angry every time we think about it; but we’re determined to find the right hosue for us.  We’ve since losing that house been through a few more houses with four more to see this week and hopefully one of them will become our home.

Keep your fingers crossed and send us good thoughts and wishes as we could really use the luck.

This is an overdue post …

Kate’s 30th birthday gift to me was a vacation.  While I knew we were going away from March 19th through the 23rd I had no idea where we were going.  The only thing I knew well ahead of time was that I should pack for warm weather and that was all I needed.  I am not usually the kind of person who likes surprises however this was one I could sink my teeth into as I knew it wouldn’t end up with me wearing a funny hat in a public place … then again, I did end up doing that …

Kate and John F. managed to pull of a miracle.  Both myself and Rachel (John’s wife) turned 30 within six weeks of each other.  Kate and John worked together and got us both on a “surprise” vacation together.  Rachel and I knew the other one was going on a surprise vacation but we didn’t know we’d be going on vacation together.

Kate and I got our luggage and made our way towards the airport shuttle bus.  Kate told me we had to make our way to another terminal to connect with our transportation.  As I was walking off the bus there Rachel and John were standing at the terminal stop.  Rachel and I were completely surprised and absolutely goofy to each see the other couple standing there.

So here we are, giddy as a bunch of school girls and hugging each other making a huge teary eyed scene at the Fort Lauderdale airport still with no idea where we’re going or what we’re doing.  We’re then informed that we’re going on a cruise together to Cozumel Mexico.  As there is no place in the world I’d rather be then on a cruise ship I was so overly stoked that I became as hyper active as a 5 year old on 18 snickers bars.

We had a phenomenal time on the cruise together.  Every day and every night was another adventure.  It was so very enjoyable and stress relieving.  I was very sad that we couldn’t stay in that world of happiness for longer but knew we had to get back to reality.

Kate and I rarely have time to watch television in the evenings.  We both work full time jobs and after work between the gym, Kate’s MBA classes, my poker nights and us still having to find time to do household chores we get about an hour a night to watch TV.

Optimizing our time is important and ever since we purchased our first DVR in 2003 we’ve enjoyed being able to save time by fast forwarding commercials.  However now that we’ve gone to HD television we’ve run into a problem.  The DVR provided by Comcast just doesn’t have enough space!  We’re constantly at over 90% filled and cheer when we make it into the low 70s.  However it will never stay in that range long.

We’ve lost numerous episodes of television shows because the DVR fills and has to either delete something or not record something.  It’s really getting tiresome and I’ve started to seek alternatives to recording everything on my DVR.

First I decided to try the 100% legitimate way of watching TV and I decided to make use of the Hulu (http://www.hulu.com) website.  Hulu offers a wonderful service offering television shows by participating networks in your web browser.  It offers a SD resolution of 360p and some programs you can rock out on HD at 480p.  The 480p seems pretty good to me within the window however I notice that in a full screen display they’ll tend to be sluggish.  This could be a result of my over three year old laptop but I have no other way to test it as Kate and I have exactly matching laptops.

Thanks to Hulu I no longer need to record my animated shows like “Family Guy” and “King of the Hill” and the crappy TV series I enjoy because I truly am my sons father such as “Knight Rider”.  However when I went to add other shows to my subscription list I ran into an issue.  Shows such as “Scrubs” and “How I Met Your Mother” are not directly hosted on the Hulu site and instead it links you back to the networks own site with their own modified flash video player.  The problem with that being for some reason I am not getting the content.  Nor am I sure that my Hulu subscription will properly notify me when these sites update their content.

As of this moment no matter what I try I can not get the episodes directly linked form the Hulu site to play on my machine.  Yes, I know that most people are too nearsighted to realize that not everybody runs Windows and Internet Explorer so us poor Mac users suffer.  I just don’t think that should be a valid excuse for not being able to play video from a NATIONAL network broadcasting service.  Poor showing.

Hopefully I can figure this out and Hulu can work for my needs letting me only record the things we both watch on the DVR which currently has four things scheduled for the next two days with 14% free.  Those four items are NOT going to fit thus forcing us to loose episodes we can’t possibly watch as Kate wont even be home until tomorrow evening.

So today I was diving into my /Applications folder (For you Windows users that’s c:\Program Files\) looking for programs installed I no longer need, use, or particularly want.  Quite a few found their way to the trash can as I’ve really been trying to trim down my program usage to the bare minimum and consolidating a lot into single applications as much as possible.  

I’ve come to the conclusion that my “Must Haves” list has gotten very small.  I am down to the following as required for me:

• iTerm
• Safari (switched from Firefox recently)
• NetNewsWire
• iPhoto
• iTunes
• Twhirl

I can get everything I need to get done with just those applications.  I hold onto Microsoft Office for the rare times I need to open an office document on my personal computer; however for the most part Google Documents allows me access to those files as well.  

I was able to remove tons of “Helper” applications in favor of small plugins to the above programs that accomplish the same goal.  For example, I don’t need a Flickr upload application when I can just use their site and or a plugin to iPhoto.  I don’t need Thunderbird, gmail works just fine.  I don’t need VNC as I use LogMeIn for all my remote connections now.  

What are your “must have” applications?  This is more aimed at the Mac users as my Windows computer I do not have any control over the programs on it.

I’ve been wanting to participate in an athletic event that would challenge me and get me back into running.  I’ve struggled the last few months to have the energy and positive attitude to work out and keep up with the regimen I used to find so easy.  I’ve decided to take the plunge and just registered for my first Sprint Triathlon.

I am really excited to train and struggle and push myself.  I’ll be racing with my friend and colleague Katy from work and her sister.  It’s going to be a lot of hard work and a lot of fun. 

For all of you who remembered I do have a birthday, I truly thank you and am grateful to have such good friends.  For those of you who didn’t know my birthday was coming up please don’t sweat it.  I can never remember birthdays and if it wasn’t for multiple entries on my calendar, mostly done by Kate, I’d probably miss all of my family and friends birthdays.

In under one week I turn 30.  A milestone some tell me but I feel no excitement about hitting “the big” 30.  It’s just another year older but this time with so much social stigma put on it by others.  People seem to think that 30 means I should act and feel a certain way, yet I don’t feel any different than I did two years ago.  I guess being on my third decade is something to celebrate; especially as reckless as I was with the first one and a half.

Some kind folks have asked me what I’d like for my 30th birthday and I’ve found myself without any answers.  It’s not that I am trying to be difficult but I honestly want very little lately.  I am becoming realistic and realizing just how much waste there is in the craving for many things and I no longer want things I’ll rarely use.  In contrast to years past just having the latest gadget no longer makes me happy.

I am also so happy for the changes in my life over the past two years with driving and my health that I feel full and satisfied.  I am still living on what I can only classify as some kind of emotional high that has left me no longer craving small material items.  That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t appreciate a gift, it just means that I can’t spout off a list of things I want like a child can the weeks before Christmas when writing a letter to Santa.

The World Wide Web started out as a purely text based medium for the exchange of knowledge by mainly government entities and Academia.  I don’t think anybody saw the WWW at it’s inception as being the living and breathing pulse of the internet that it has become.  I couldn’t imagine the framers of the first revision of HTML having imagined the likes  of Facebook, YouTube, eBay and to a lesser extent the web being used to solve the use of another set of protocols; email.

Yet there is no denying it, the WWW has grown well passed it’s pure text roots.  It is, in my opinion, the most rapidly increasing and advancing internet technology.  Much of our online time is now spent on social networking sites, online games, watching videos and corresponding in email.  But what connects us to all of these multitudes of sites?  Our web browsers.

While the web browsing software we use to interact with the web has surely advanced over time to support the new features of the WWW, grow with the operating systems they run on and even to add more robust features they all have some tragic flaws which I have discovered and grown to despise.  The issues I am sharing are my own, and I know my computer usage differs from that of other peoples.  The issues I have may not be shared by many, or for that matter, any of you.  

First and foremost I am a Macintosh user who is forced to use Windows during the day.  I do not believe Internet Explorer should even be discussed as a web browser as it is notoriously the least safe, most trouble prone and least compatible of all the browsers.  Furthermore as my work computer is locked down tighter than a bank vault and I am unable to browse personal web sites with it nor can I upgrade to the latest version I’ll skip it all together.  

When it comes to browsers on the Macintosh you’re left with two major competitors and a few minors.  Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox.  For the past few years I have been a Firefox user however that has changed, at least for the moment, as of today.  I’ve had numerous frustrations with Firefox and have wanted to explore other browsers but have been tied in to Firefox as there have always been plugins which allowed me to synchronize my bookmarks with multiple personal computers and even a Firefox install on my work computer.  Today however Foxmarks, the plugin I’ve been using for the past year or so has released a version that is compatible with Apple’s Safari and I now have the freedom to break away from Firefox on the Mac.

I have numerous gripes with Firefox, but two that are the most prevalent and disturbing to me.  Firefox has what I can only describe as rendering issues if you modify the font sizes in its preferences.  This is something I do for any program loaded on my computer.  I increase the font size to be larger, in some cases like web browsers dramatically so.  Going from a default font face of 9 or 10 to 15 or 16 and setting the minimum allowed font for 14 or 15, depending on the font families used.  As I’ve pointed out in other posts, Firefox just doesn’t display a lot of sites right.  ESPN, New York Times and multiple others are nearly unusable with my choice of configuration.  Even Facebook has features I couldn’t use such as IM due to the text overlapping other text on the screen.  

Add to this Firefox’s insane memory and CPU usage and it was always an ugly picture.  I’ve spotted Firefox taking up more memory than even iPhoto which was importing photos from my camera at the time.  It often would freeze almost entirely or randomly crash for what seemed like no reason.  I’ve grown tired of being in the middle of a few articles, email drafts and the like and poof my web browser vanishes.  Even with session recovery some things just don’t come back.

Enter Foxmarks for Safari and my first day using Safari.  While I vastly enjoy it’s ability to handle my large fonts much better than Firefox, albeit not perfectly, I am left with an empty feeling in my computer heart for the numerous plugins and assistance tools I have left behind.  There seems to be very few add-ons for Safari and of them most seem useless or have so many horrible reviews I don’t even want to mess with them.  

I’ve left behind my plugins to control my tabs to my liking (making sure gmail is never closed etc), my excellent ad blocking and my tie ins to social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.  I’ve also lost “control” as I feel Safari’s lack of settings in the preferences is a bit shocking coming from Firefox which seems to have much more user control.

Safari still sucks up way more RAM than I think it should but at least my computer seems to run faster.  The browser renders web sites a lot slower than Firefox but they all seem to look cleaner and function a bit better.  The OS X styled buttons and widgets of course help.  But I am still left with the one simple question?

Why are programs that are so often used, and used by so damned many, still full of such obvious flaws as memory consumption issues and usability issues?

Well the first month of 2009 has blown right by me without a single post.  I know I don’t need to apologize to the audience I don’t have, but I feel guilty as this blog is one of the few ways I have to express myself and my creativity.  I started this blog many years ago as a way to release the stress and anxiety I internalize and I feel it has become one of the few creative outlets I have.  I am not an artistic person, nor am I musically inclined.  I used to really enjoy writing and always had something to say but lately life has been so busy with the mundane routine of ordinary work that I’ve neglect to put myself out there with blogging.  Furthermore I’ve been neglecting my photography and I hope to make a change on that front as well.

So here we are into February of 2009.  My thirtieth birthday is just around the corner and I’m going to take this moment to stop and reflect on myself.  Over the past thirty years I’ve learned a lot about myself but I think the past three years have taught me the most.  I’ve had to deal with a lot of amazingly difficult personal issues and have come out on top of each and every one of them.  I am proud of myself and feel stronger than I ever thought I could be.  I think, for the first time in my life, I have come to terms with who I am and my limits.  I am aware they exist, I respect them and I am comfortable telling those around me what they are.  Finally I am not fighting myself.

I’ve a few topics I’d like to delve into in more detail and will begin posts on each of them to be published later.  Right now I want to spend time in my bed with my cats while I wait for my wife to return from a day in the city.

On Wednesday evening at 11:59 I won’t be sad to see 2008 become part of history.  To say the least, it was a tough year for me.  I spent my first entire calendar year as a graduate student while working a full time job.  It wasn’t easy but it was a learning experience (no pun intended).  I started a new job in June and worked long hours in the office all summer.  As the year went on I learned that I was really struggling to stay sane and happy.  So, in 2009 I am making a promise to put myself first more often.

I pledge to not beat myself up if I only make it to the gym twice in a week.  I pledge to sleep in on Sundays when I have no where to be. And, I pledge to bake once a month, for someone or some reason.  I think that’s a good list to start.  To kick off my year about me, I’m going to an excellent scrapbooking retreat that is held annually in CT, about 45 minutes from my parents.  It is 48 hours of creativity, fun, and a whole lot of estrogen.  I went two years ago and had a wonderful time, so I’m using my Chanukah money to go again this year.  I will FINALLY be able to start my wedding album.  Woohoo!