Chimera too?

Ok, now there's rumors Chimera is shutting down too, not just Opera. I think we're getting a little crazy here if that happens. Chimera still has a loyal following and it's a little soon to judge Safari and how people will take to it. More choices == good. Less choices == Microsoftesque. But it really doesn't have to be this way. Safari is not a pro-strength browser, like Chimera and Mozilla. The point of Safari was making something trimmed down and tailored for ease of use. Perhaps enough of us pro users are satisfied with it's feature set and don't need the extras of Chimera or another gecko based browser?

Busy, Busy

I've added content to

NCIS

, some opinions mostly on the rise of RSS news feeds that are starting to replace my daily onslaught of news websites and blogs.

Still trudging away at monster.com, still no responses. It seems to be a bad time for tech workers. I just read that earthlink is laying off about 1300 call center employees... not a good sign.... In the mean time, rent is due in a couple days, so if I pay for another month, I'll be here another month... eating ramen, but here ;-)

I've got a really good idea for a new site, but I'm unsure as to whether I want to throw it's functionality into NCIS or develop a new site altogether.... Until it goes public I have to keep the wraps on it, but it's cool....

Phoenix and more

As if we didn't have enough choice in the area of web browsers on the mac platform (especially ones that are using the gecko engine), sure enough, here comes a Mac OS X version of

Phoenix!

. Looks very promising, and with the speed it's known for on the Windows and Linux platforms. I've grown quite comfortable with Safari, but I still miss my tabs....

NCIS is back from open-heart surgery and will go back online within a couple hours. Unfortunately, it's got none of the DB from our last revision. However switching from pMachine to PHP-Nuke may have been an extremely positive event. PHP-Nuke has become an extremely polished portal package, and with minimal customization, I had a usable site up and running in a VERY short time. The hard part has simply been creating a NCIS theme and loading in our content.

I saw Master of Disguise last night. Not as bad as I had heard, I actually thought it was pretty funny, but then I've always like more juvenile humor. But anyway, I recommend it for good clean fun.

Another day's work.... only hours later....

Well, NCIS would be online again right now if joker.com was cooperating, but my records keep reverting to their current state when I change them... must be a glitch on their server. At any rate, we'll have to wait for tomorrow to know....

One thing I really want to add to the service is a music channel, especially to do a little promoting for Christian indie bands that want their music to get out, more that want to get bux and power... I'm starting to have a lot of respect for independents, especially since all the crackdowns from RIAA and others. I wonder what the price of a CD could be without the middle man and still pay the actual artists more?

Well, off to work early tomorrow...

And so it continues

Still working on the new graphics for this page and a couple other small projects. Turns out even though I tested in every browser available on the mac, the tables are off under Internet Explorer on XP. Oh well, hopefully I can find a common ground so the tables look ok under both platforms... really strange that the pixel widths would be any different on a pc....

Safari is the all time best browser ever for those of you who haven't used it yet. It's still in beta and I really hope some of the more useful recent browser features get added to it, like tabs and password saving. Other than that, Safari is even faster than my Chimera nightly builds, quicker page loads than Netscape/Mozilla and we won't even talk about comparing it to IE... At first I was a little puzzled by the use of KHTML vs using gecko which seems to be the standard for all new browsers, but KHTML definately holds it's own and gives us another choice on this platform.

I'm debating which computer to bring NCIS back up on. I have a couple sparcs here that could do the job, I could stick it on my main webserver, since it's hardly taxed at the moment.... But oh what I wouldn't give for an

xServe

.

Random Updates

I signed up for a Compuserve 2k account today just to see how things have progressed over the last couple years since I've had a cs account.... and I can say for sure... they haven't. Just like AOL, you're surrounded with all sorts of things I'm not remotely interested in like who's dating who on MTV, all sorts of extra-marital sex rumors of stars and my favorite, the "Married and Flurting" chat room, listed on the front page when I signed in.... Even if I'm the only one alive that still likes the concepts of an OSP, I do. I use AOL with a BYOA (Bring your own access) plan because I don't need another ISP, but I like having the unified content, though I find myself using less of it every day.... But I liked it more in the early days of CS where things were much more professional, less entertainment and more business and community in a mostly clean manner. It's still a dream of mine to run an OSP like that, but heck, I'd like to just be a member of an OSP like that.

As of today I'm roommate-less and still looking for a better job or a new place to live or both. Still no responses to all my work with monster.com. I'd really like to get into network ops. I wish small ISPs still existed. I'll settle for almost anything now, just get me out of retail. NCIS is still down, not too worried about bringing it up yet... esp since my mailserver is still up and kicking.

I'm going to try to start blogging more regularly, maybe make it a late new years resolution...

Snow dayz...

Last night we got probably a foot of snow or more where I live. Of course, around here if the word "snow" is even mentioned as a possibility, people start acting really weird and forget how to drive. And, new to me, I've found that people swarm to the video stores in the most inclimate of driving conditions.... Since they called out from work because it's too dangerous to drive, naturally, they have to drive to pick up some movies....

I'm working on new graphics for the livejournal page, in case you haven't noticed... which would really say how long it's been since you've visited this site.... I'm sure I'll change it up a bit more, but for now, I've got something that looks decent and proves I can do some HTML for any future employers that might stumble across my humble blog.

BTW, for those wondering, plans are as of now to stay put for another month, and work like mad to get back into my field.

Time is Ticking Away

Down to a matter of days, and still no definite place to go... I've ceased most of my projects and tech support while I prepare for the worst. I don't recommend monster.com to anyone anymore... I've yet to meet someone who has successfully secured a good job from them, instead, like me, they work on applications for months on end, but jobs go by and few respond.

NCIS's content server went offline a couple weeks ago... hard drive failure. Not really a big deal since I've got plenty of spare components and servers sitting around gathering dust, but since nobody really uses NCIS but me and a handful of others who like the news aggregation, it's not worth the time at the moment to fix it. As soon as my job/living space situations are resolved, I'll move it over to the quad penitum pro machine, and maybe move some of our other content sites to it too. As for the people... what we need is something new, something innovative. I want to create a real portal, but since there are so many out there now, it would have to be really something to get people's attention.

He Lives!

Well, the server that NCIS was running on is down for the moment, but no worries.... We'll be back up and running soon... although it looks like another hard drive failure, which could be un-good, since I don't know if I have a backup of the databases for the backend. If I don't, I guess it's just one more re-design waiting to happen.

There's been a lot of changes in basic technology lately. Apple has it's own web browser now, based on KHTML instead of gecko (Moz/Netscape). We all thought for sure apple would just absorb a version of Chimera or something, but no.... Actually this may very well be good news. Since Apple's browser (Safari) is not extremely feature-rich and doesn't have all the great innovations we've learned to love and can't live without in most gecko-based browsers (read: tabs) it leaves almost a forced user choice to upgrade to something else at some point in time. Not being the end-all answer for every solution, or even trying to be (like IE or Netscape) is good for a system vender. Then we won't end up with another MS-esque antitrust suite....

I'm excited about the new integrated iApps, iLife, it's great that Apple is going to tightly integrate everything it's been working on. Also, Final Cut Express is going to be awesome here.

On another note, I'm up for a job change again.... I don't know where yet, but since Cris is leaving here, it makes no sense to hold the apartment on my own, at least for long. I do have some local possibilities though, if they turn out good, I'll hang around, else, the first recruiter that says my name....