There are three things that have really been bugging me lately:

1. Safari takes about two minutes from the time I click its icon in the dock to the time my my.yahoo.com page is completely loaded. Yes, two minutes. About thirty seconds are taken by the main window just sitting there blankly. Another thirty seconds or so while "connecting to my.yahoo.com" is displayed (i.e., it's looking up the server), and then another minute to actually load the page. Additional websites also require an unusually long "connecting to..." period. Trashing the app and redownloading from Apple hasn't helped. Trashing preferences and icon folders and reseting Safari hasn't helped.

UPDATE 2/25/05: Aaaaand, this one seems to have been fixed by the 10.3.8 system update. I noticed the slowdown had also begun to affect iTunes as well (both in accessing the CDDB and the Store), but after updating, both Safari and iTunes are much more responsive when going out into the network. Damn... Two down, one to go.

2. Firefox takes about 30 seconds to open. It started sometime after I downloaded the 1.0 release. Then, a few days ago, I was installing some extensions (the reason I like Firefox) and had to restart the browser for the extensions to take effect. Unfortunately, Firefox simply stopped working after that. It wouldn't launch at all. Several complete erases and reinstalls later and the problem hasn't really cleared up. Firefox will launch now (after the 30 second delay) but only if it feels like it. In other words, sometimes it doesn't launch and just sits there with "Firefox" in the menu bar and nothing else. The dock icon says "Application not responding," and sometimes relaunching after force quitting will work, but sometimes not. Again, really strange and really annoying. And I can't think of any preference-type file to trash. I love Firefox though. You should too. Do us all a favor and take responsibility for your computer while on the Internet: download Firefox.

UPDATE 2/23/05: Bored briefly yesterday, I downloaded FireFix, the nightly build manager/downloader for Firefox (based on CaminoKnight, the excellent nightly build manager for Camino). Wouldn'tcha know it? The launch delay seems to have been fixed since 1.0 and Firefox now opens in a jiffy. Yeah nightly builds! (Until I discover a devastating, system destroying bug, that is).

3. Something's mucking up my QuickTime player: navigating to movies in the Open and Save dialogs is excruciatingly slow. Things are fine while I'm going through the directories leading up to any movie files, but once I get to the files' directory things slow to a crawl and many sightings of the spinning beach ball are encountered. Again, redownloaded the app, but no fix. And it's just QT player with the problem. Baaah.

Any good news to report on the computer front? Um... Hmm... Nothing leaps to mind, which means all else is good I suppose. 

So, we're in the tough month of January. Winter all around, though we're too low for snow. It is certainly colder than I'm used to, and the last three weeks have been especially telling in that regard. As a SoCal son I'm used to "cold" being 60 degrees, not 45 during the middle of the day. What's made it worse has been the constant overcast: three weeks of grey skies with nary a breeze to blow things out. It was as if the weather in the delta area simply stopped and we got stuck with the overcast. Imagine that, weather systems just stalling for three weeks. This past Saturday I took matters into my own hands and drove up into the foothills, to Jackson, and you wouldn't believe the difference. Right at 2000 feet the fog and clouds thinned out and I was greeted with brilliant, perfectly clear blue skies. After a little more driving I stopped at a local park that happened to have a short walking trail with an overlook back to the west. The view was fascinating and the valley's cloud cover was like a broad white blanket. I dreaded going back down the hill into that, so I procrastinated by walking all around Jackson's main antique/shopping district. Aside from the many antique stores there's a huge used book store (two storeys) with a great California section. I resisted buying anything this time, but look forward to coming back.

Anyway, the point of this entry is to note that today, like a college student who's drunk waaaay too much and would feel a whole lot better after a good vomit, the clouds let loose with a good rainfall for most of the afternoon and then began to clear. Lo! Finally! Sunshine! Sunshine in the living room! And tonight, as I waited for R3's choral concert to begin, I saw the moon. And the stars. What a feeling. 

A few weeks ago I saw a notice on the homepage of the Hotel Stockton renovation looking for someone to manage the web site once the renovation is complete (R3 and I have been thinking about holding the rehearsal dinner there). Seeing an opportunity for a good civic deed as well as a chance to help a badly built (though enthusiastically built!) website, I Site Sucked the site onto my machine and redesigned the front page. I then contacted the owner and offered my services. I and my design were accepted and I've been working on overhauling the whole thing. It's a pretty cool project since it deals with local history and a downtown revitalization project and I'm happy to do what needs to be done (it's another pro bono thing, but oh well). I've also been asked to contribute a permanent lobby display about the renovation for the grand re-opening ceremony in late February (because I have "LOTS of graphic and design skills" heh, yeah, sure, thanks though!). Yikes. Better start channelling Gordon... :-)

Current Hotel Stockton site (warning: lots of little java applets running around)
In-progress redesign site