Top ten signs you might be addicted to Bugzilla

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Letterman wouldn’t get it, so I’ll do it.

You might have a Bugzilla problem if…

  1. You have multiple Bugzilla email accounts, and you read them all even though you say you don’t.
  2. You check your bugmail on the way to the _________ and end up sitting there for 2 hours.
  3. You watch more than 5 people or components even though you don’t actively write code for them.
  4. You dream of Buggie magically fixing all your bugs.
  5. You can’t sleep when you have reviews in your request queue.
  6. You would cancel a hot date or pass on sex to fix a blocker.
  7. You stay up late at night verifying bugs that are already RESOLVED.
  8. You have more than 30 saved searches.
  9. You have famous bugs bookmarked so you can quickly link to them when people talk about funny bugs.
  10. You correct OS and platform information on random bugs 24 hours a day.

All I want for Christmas is Ken Kovash

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This year as the holidays roll around I find myself asking tough questions. Things like, “how many people use Firefox?” or “are these the right statistics?” or “should I fold my hand or go for the inside straight draw?”. The answer to all of my questions: Ken Kovash

You might not know Ken, but he’s the brain behind Mozilla metrics, and he’s growing — seriously, yesterday he was 5′ something now he’s 6’2″. He’s helped me with many things, illustrated by this graph:

Check out the metrics blog if you’d like some science dropped on you. And Ken, thanks for being you.

Ouch

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Outer swelling

First sprain in 2 years since I started wearing an Active Ankle brace. If not for the brace it probably would have been a dislocation or break.

Selecting into a CSV file in MySQL

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Often times you’ll get requests for a CSV dump of something in your database. From the CLI, I often just run a SELECT statement by hand to see what it is that I want then I get stuck thinking, “now how do I get this to CSV again?”.

Selecting into a CSV outfile isn’t hard, and I’ve done it many times, but everytime I do it I have to look it up so I’ll just blog it here for next time.

SELECT a,b,a+b INTO OUTFILE '/tmp/result.txt'
  FIELDS TERMINATED BY ',' OPTIONALLY ENCLOSED BY '"'
  LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
  FROM test_table;

When in doubt, blog it out.

Kobe doesn’t make his teammates better

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It’s not unusual to see Kobe go for 50 on any given night. Unfortunately it’s not unusual to see him go for 50 points and also lose.

Kobe doesn’t make his teammates better, and in the end of games, he is a one-man-show who pretty much insults Naismith and his original idea of basketball as a team sport.

Kobe is a gifted athlete and an excellent offensive player. He should use that to his advantage, for sure, but it doesn’t mean he should miss 12 consecutive shots to close out a game and say, “oh well, they weren’t falling and when I can’t score we lose”. That’s bullshit, man.

I think the mark of a great player is a guy who realizes when his shot is off and makes adjustments to either get himself going (better shots) or just focus on passing. It’s not like Kobe can’t pass — he just doesn’t.

People who are constantly double-teamed in the NBA have no reason to say, “we can’t win when I can’t score”. Because you know what? Most of the time when Kobe shoots fade-away three pointers there is a dude who is wide open watching him do it.

So I am more than amused that after all the hype and the MVP chants in LA no-doubt led in part by Jack and Denzel, Kobe and his Lakers are on the brink of playoff elimination.

Kobe is better than Jordan? Really?

Jordan learned from the greatest coach in NBA history and won championships with the teams he had. He had Pippen and who else? Kobe has Lamar Odom! Lamar is a 7 ft. version of Scottie with better post moves!

In the scheme of things, it’s not a big deal. I could really care less about Kobe and what happens with the Lakers. But it’s good to see that when basketball is turned into an individual game, the superstar typically loses — especially in a 7-game series.

So keep up the scoring rampage, Kobe. Until you learn how to make your teammates better you’ll just be a 40-win team.

Kobe Bryant is the best player in NBA history… in his own mind.

Update: Kobe scored 50 and his team won a spot in the playoffs. He was 18-25 which was a lot better than his 7-26 on Friday. Best of luck in the playoffs, loser.

Craigslist hearts Firefox

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Maybe I missed the bus on this and it’s old news, but I haven’t used Craigslist a whole lot. Recently I posted a couple of listings because I wanted to sell some stuff locally and saw a “download firefox” link on Craigslist. Pretty cool.

Craigslist rocks!

MySpace is a huge piece of crap

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Dear MySpace,

You suck. A lot. Why? Well…

  • There’s no way that many hot chicks want to be anybody’s friend.
  • There’s no way that many hot chicks want to be anybody’s friend the second they happen to log on or edit anything in their profile.
  • To customize your profile you shouldn’t have to reverse engineer your crappy default templates.
  • You are owned by Fox.

Love,
Michael

I don’t even know Tom, but he’s my “friend”. Kind of strange, isn’t it?

Opening searches in a new tab

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search box

When I search I have an inefficient habit: Ctrl-T + google.com + enter + type query + enter.

When I thought about it, I realized my habit exists because when you search using the search box Firefox provides, it opens the results in the current tab, which causes you to lose your place. So, since I had to open a new tab every time anyway, I would do it manually and skip the search box.

There is a pref browser.search.openintab that, when set to true, forces search results from the search box to open in a new window. Dolske pointed this out to me today in IRC because I didn’t feel like Googling it and he was nice enough to help me. Thanks, Dolske.

This helps me because:

  • I typically don’t ever want to leave the page I’m looking at when i’m looking up a definition or term on Google or Wikipedia.
  • To avoid losing my place, I would always Ctrl-T then search.
  • I hardly ever used to use the search bar because it was arbitrary to Ctrl-T + google.com + enter + type query + enter, which I can do in less than ~1.5 seconds.

I will use Google before asking dumb questions. I will use Google before asking dumb questions.