[ music | Depeche Mode – Policy of truth ]

I’m a little tired of ignoring a rather large elephant in my room here, so this is me acknowledging an elephant you in all likelihood didn’t see. However, I do, and I want rid of it. So I’m going to partake in the typical self-indulgent blog post. I don’t want pity, I just don’t want to pretend there’s nothing wrong anymore.

At the age of 28, I officially became the caretaker of a parent with dementia. If that seems a little young, it is, because the parent is definitely on the young side of the bell curve of dementia patients. And as often the case, I’d been a caretaker for several years before the disease was actually diagnosed. It’s amazing how effective we can be at lying to ourselves and avoiding conclusions we want to avoid. I was so good at it I made a complete ass of myself to several people for about six months at the end of 2005 and the start of 2006.

At the start of May 2006, things devolved to an untenable state, and an ultimatum was issued. Either my mother checked herself into the hospital to determine what’s going on, or I would. In a wonderful turn of real life melodrama, my statement was, “I’d rather have you hate me and be well than love me and be sick. One way or another, this is going to happen, today.” She checked herself in, and within a week, we had the diagnosis.

Dementia is a spectrum of diseases rather than a single specific one, with the most commonly known type being Alzheimer’s disease. Dementia tends to describe the condition of the patient and symptoms rather than the cause. She doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, nor does there seem to be any easily recognizable gross organic defect like what you see in Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, or Dementia with Lewy Bodies.

She was started on several medications immediately, two of which I cannot speak highly enough. Aricept and Namenda. Her reaction to these was rapid and incredibly positive, far more than one would expect reading the literature. Within a few weeks she was significantly more lucid and coherent, and far more capable than she had been in quite a while. She wasn’t perfect, but in these situations, you’ll take 80% of normal when you can get it. For roughly a year things went so much better. For that year I an unable to express my gratitude.

However, about two months ago, things started to decline again, with alarming rapidity. Last week we went back to the doctor after only having a check-up three months ago. We tried some adjustments to the meds, and things looked to improve a little. Until Thursday. Without unnecessarily delving into detail, I was forced to hospitalize her again to see if we could see what was going wrong now. It’s somewhat of a crisis, and things have never been this bad before. Things were actually quite fine Wednesday, we enjoyed the local fireworks display. I don’t know what changed, and I don’t know where things will go from here. We’ll see shortly I assume. There’s a meeting tentatively scheduled Monday with the doctors at the hospital.

I’m saying this because I need to unload, and to stop acting like this stressor doesn’t exist. I’m also saying this to remind people of the old saying, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” It’s rather prophetic that John Lennon said that the year he died. Three dear friends lost parents of their own recently. One’s father died of heart disease, another’s mother to ovarian cancer, and one just a month ago lost both to a car crash. My situation is by no means unique or unusual.

I never had a good relationship with my father, but I love my mother dearly. If you got along with one or both parents, pick up the phone, talk to them, tell them you love them, whatever. But cherish whatever time you have with them, your siblings, your kids, your friends. Life is far too short, and goes by far too fast. It’s like falling from a cliff at night: it’s exhilarating, it’s scary, and you never see the end coming. Enjoy it while you can. Every day can be the most wonderful gift in the universe.

Just don’t get caught making plans.

[ music | Breeders – Do You Love Me Now ]

[ music | DJ Format – We Know Something You Don’t Know ]

Now on windows? But Firefox has always been on Windows. Oh, you mean your browser. How cute!

Update: Ok, I’m using Safari right now. Actually, it’s nice. The biggest thing I can say is we have to find out what they’re doing for font smoothing and steal it. It’s magnificent.
Firefox text demo 1
Firefox text demo 2
Safari text demo 1
Safari text demo 2

[ music | OMC – How Bizarre ]

Well I guess I can talk about it now. The papers are signed and the plane tickets are bought. I’ve been hired by Mozilla Corp! Since everyone knows that MoCo has been in freefall since the release of FF2, with a precipitous drop in revenue, I’ve been brought in to revitalize the company. The first step is to bring direction back to development. To further that goal, we’re dropping Gecko and moving to WebKit. WebKit is obviously more stable and well developed, and has much more room for growth than Gecko. Gecko is stagnant and has reached the limit of its expandability. This has been a well kept secret, and everyone’s been denying it for several years. WebKit is lighter and faster, and Gecko is just getting too bogged down with too much code only bz understands.

Second on the agenda will be to move WebKit development onto Vista. Vista is obviously the future, with people upgrading by the dozens every week. This will also allow us to leverage Vista’s enhanced Digital Rights Management features for the third prong of my new Mozilla Corp plan, SecureWeb.

SecureWeb is an entirely new way of browsing the web, and delivering content in a completely secure manner. SecureWeb puts content owners and developers where they should be, in control of the user. With total control over the browser experience, things like browser incompatibilities are a thing of the past because you can’t browse SecureWeb without Firefox 3 Secure Edition, and that only runs on Vista. And since content developers are in total control, there’s no worry about security breaches because only Licensed Content Providers are allowed to develop for SecureWeb. Content Providers will be approved by the LCP Board, which is comprised of Mozilla, Microsoft (our Fully Qualified Partner), Google (another Fully Qualified Partner, and SecureWeb cofounder), the MPAA, the RIAA, and SCO.

I’d like to take a moment to thank everyone who made this possible, and it’ll be an interesting ride!

[ music | The Clash – Should I Stay or Go Now ]

[ music | Jimi Hendrix – All Along The Watchtower ]

No spoilers here. I just have to say there has never been a better TV show. We’ve just entered Act 3 of a three part epic. The past several episodes have had some serious foreshadowing, but as usual, it never plays out as you expect. There’s little point in trying to figure out where the show is going, because, much like life, it’s not entirely linear. Just because it looked a certain way doesn’t mean that’s the way it is, it just means our assumptions were wrong. Or in the case of this show, our preconceptions are being challenged in a whole new way, a way that TV rarely dares to try. It’s not trickery, it’s not deus ex machina, it’s a genuine method of engaging the audience in a new way. We keep trying to project our experiences on these people because in so many ways they’re so like us, but that’s just a hook to help the writers show us a new point of view.

Keep it up. I can’t wait to see how Act 3 ends. I know it’ll be worth it.

[ music | Badly Drawn Boy – Pissing In The Wind ]

MozillaZine’s forums are nearly worthless these days. I know of moderators that have been complaining about other mods for ages, but now they’ve taken to new lows. Today, Daifne has seen fit to mouth off and scurrilously accuse the wife of a lead developer of trying to scam people out of personal data. Basically, the egos on some of these people would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.

For the sake of this discussion, we’re going to ignore how Lucy was the prime mover on the “Bookmarks missing after installing Firefox 2” problem when FF2 was first released. Why? Well, because Daifne did. Either out of ignorance, or because she was too lazy to check up on a person before accusing them of nefarious activities, she put her foot squarely in her mouth, with her sidekick “malliz” there to keep the foot embedded. When learning identities later, Daifne didn’t bother to do anything like apologize or even acknowledge a mistake, she instead decided to defame and insult Mike Connor.

And yes, after watching the forums at MozillaZine go downhill for years, I had enough. I made a statement. I stand by it. There are too many trollish moderators at MozillaZine. And it’s sad.

At least Lucy was able to still help the user. Not that it mattered to the mods.

P.S. Wow, ok, well, they’re still at it. Daifne? Can you hear me honey? You’re a troll. And I’m not the only one who is saying so. (Please don’t post, just read unless you’re going to be constructive)

P.P.S. Ok, Dartman? You can go to hell too.

P.P.P.S. Wow. Mega kudos to Alex Bishop for this post. He said everything I was thinking in a far more cogent manner than I did off the cuff. Bravo.

[ music | Dave Brubeck – Unsquare Dance ]

Now, first off, I think The Rumbling Edge is a nice blog that does a great job of covering Thunderbird related updates, much like The Burning Edge does for Firefox related changes. However, considering it is being hosted by MozillaZine, I think it’s a little top-heavy about ads. Here’s an illustrated screencap of the first screen, or “above the fold”, what you see before you scroll down. My screen is 800 pixels high, and I’ve cut out most of the chrome in the screenshot. The numbers below deal just with the content pane, also. Red is ads, green is content, blue is “chrome” like the title and RSS feed link, and the grey is whitespace.

Now, roughly 43% of that is whitespace. 46% is ad space or revenue-generating links such as the ones to download Firefox, etc. 6% is actual content, namely links to recent builds, and the download counter. I’m being generous with the term “content” here by defining it as useful updated information. Lastly, 5% is the title and tagline, and the RSS feed link. Even adding that into content, 46% of the above-the-fold area is ads, 11% is content. There is more ad-spade than whitespace. Further down there are two separate Paypal donation buttons. I’m all for making money off your work, but this is a little offensive. I have ads here, but none of it blocks content, and you don’t have to scroll to get to the content. I only hope some of that ad revenue is going back to MozillaZine.

[ music | Nine Inch Nails – Mr. Self Destruct ]

Fatal Journey indeed, it’s killed 6,000 people so far.

The original is here but it may be changed by the time you see it. My copy is not edited

Update:My god, ABC has the same disorder. Maybe it’s TRUE!

Looks like bushes are crashing everywhere.

[ music | Whistle While You Work ]

You know, normally I have a crush on Cinderella for some reason. Then I saw some shots of Rachel Weisz as Snow White. I haven’t been this excited by Snow White since I played a bunny in our school play of it in the first grade…