I have purchased lots of software in my time. Most of the time the software I buy is good software, at first. But not even a month goes by where I feel like I was ripped off.

There is a major, show stopping, flaw in every software that I've ever purchased, save a few.

What software do I enjoy using and feel 100% about. Well, first there is Mac OS X. The Apple operating system. It's perfect. It runs, it doesn't crash, it comes with lots of tools and applications, and did I say it doesn't crash. Yes, Mac OS X is one of the best.

NetNewsWire is another example of very good software. I purchased a license for it over a year ago and it has not let me down. It just works, and works well. It does one thing really good. That might be why I like it so much.

That's basically it for software that hasn't let me down. But what about software that I feel like I should get my money back? That's easy.

OmniWeb. I purchased a license for OmniWeb a few years ago. It was still in beta version, but the beta was impressive. I wanted to help support the Mac business sector so I bought a license. Shortly after, the software started showing it's true colors. Crashing all the time, not compatible with many web sites, and so on. Since then there has been many different versions, and the latest beta are looking good. But still, I feel like I was taken.

Impression, the backup software. I searched for a backup application for years. I tried out all the top names, but nothing felt good. None had the support that I was looking for. Basically, I just wanted to make backup CDs of my work. Most of the Mac backup application will create a backup file on the hard drive, or network drive. That's just stupid. Tape, CDs, or DVDs are the only way to go. Anyway, back to Impression. It was a good application, but had a few problems. It was being updated just about every time I used it, so I figured the problems would get solved soon. It was very active. Well, the problems never were addressed, and now the company has ditched the application. It still works OK, but I guess I'll have to find a new backup app.

TextMate. It's a programming text editor. When I first started using it, it was awesome. It was fast and easy to use. So I purchased a license. I use it all the time, so I needed to pay for it. Well, recently they have been changing a lot of things. Now the stinking thing basically locks up whenever I return focus to the app. It's driving me up a wall. I've had to switch back to VIM to get my work done. Why in the world they can't fix the dam problem is beyond me. All they need to do is have a switch to turn the dam file sync off. Simple, but they haven't done it, and it's been like over six months.

Now, there is software that is free that I really love. First on the list is svnX. It's a Subversion client for the Mac. It works great! VIM works good, but it's not really a Mac app, so it's missing a lot of Mac stuff. There is a few more good apps, but really, this is getting a bit long...

Back to work...

Well, next week is the move.

I'm going to be moving all my servers out into their new home. We build a special storage room on the side of our garage. That room will be storage for Jane's paintings and stuff. It will also be setup for my server rack and server.

I've got the hole in the wall for the air conditioner already setup. I've got the DC cables all ready for the batteries to be moved into position. All I need to do is let everyone know that the servers will be offline next Sunday.

So, hey everyone, the servers will be offline next Sunday. No web sites, no email for most of the day. Weee fun!

So I added a cool "feature" for MSIE users last night. A big, huge, obnoxious message about using FireFox instead of MSIE.

I was surfing the net last night and came across a site talking about Google paying people a buck if they get other's to switch to FireFox. So I signed up and put the biggest message I could on all my sites.

OrangeRoomSoftware.com, Phill.Kenoyer.com, my dev site, and soon other sites.

I wonder if I'll get any thing? Probably not, because it's really hard to get Windows users to switch. Really hard.

Ahh, it was so nice today. More through out the weekend.

I can't wait for the weekend. I'm going to be outside, away from my computer, working in my new garage on my buggy. It's going to be so nice.

Well, all except for weeding. Yes, it's that time of year again. The weeds are getting bigger and it's time to start doing something about them.

It's been a long time. Here is a bit of history.

Back a few years ago I started testing OmniWeb 4.something. It was really good. It had a lot of features that I really liked. So I purchased it, hoping that the bugs would soon be fixed.

OmniWeb 5 was released and it was awesome! But there were still bugs and it was very, very slow. During the development of version 5, OmniGroup said they were going to dump their own render engine and go with another. They chose the Apple/KHTML render engine. I'm still not so sure that was a good decision. The Mozilla render engine was a lot better, but harder to integrate.

Anyway, OmniWeb with WebCore was release and it was really good. But still, it would crash on many sites and it had many bugs. Still hoping that I was going to get the browser I paid for, I kept using it.

About six months ago I quit using OmniWeb because it was just too unstable and had way too many bugs. So I switched to Safari, then FireFox. Safari became my primary browser.

Today. I just found out that OmniWeb has a sneak peek of their new OmniWeb 5.5 that uses WebKit instead of WebCore. This is good because whenever Apple updates WebKit, OmniWeb automatically gets the bug fixes.

So I downloaded the browser today, and I've been testing it out. So far it seems good. No crashes yet, but I'm sure it will happen if not today, tomorrow. I'll keep you updated in this thread.

So how does it do rendering my web pages... So far, just how I expect them to be rendered. It also seems about the right speed. Time will tell.

I finally got it working. It took all day to do it. I finally have Dojo working with ScriptSrc Transport. ScriptSrc is a dojo.io.bind transport that allows cross-site scripting.

Normally it would be as easy as doing a dojo.require, but nope, not this time. I tried and tried to get it to work, but it kept saying that it could not find it. So I just used a script tag and sourced it in. That did the trick. I also had to source in the browserIO too.

So now I can just plop a single line of Javascript code on any web server and have my different dynamic modules show up.

I've had the display side working for awhile, but no interaction until now. Now I can plop down forms, instant feedback and all that good stuff.

Welp, now I need to get cracking and finish up the other modules.

Today I spent most of the day out in the garage just cleaning it up. I have just about all my tools finally out there, and now it's time to sort through all of them and get them put away.

Last week we had a garage party to celebrate the completion of the garage. Tim, Randy, and Johnny where all here with me working on my buggy. Grinding, drilling, welding, and more grinding for three days. The garage got just a bit messy.

Today is the first day that I've had a chance to get back out there to do some stuff. I move a few things around and did a lot of sweeping. I hauled out my old axles that I'm not going to use and things look a lot less cluttered now.

I still have a bit more to do. I'll get a photo up tomorrow.

There has to be something that can be done about the intense SPAM problem. It's getting ridicules. Not only is it a major problem in email, it's also getting to be a major problem for comments on blog sites.

I'm capturing about 50,000 spam email a month on my email server. That's for only 80 accounts. That's also not including the ones that get through without detection.

Since I posted the comment about switching back to Wordpress for my blog, I've been getting about two a day on that entry. Now that they have found my site, it will never stop.

Maybe the local news stations should have a SPAM alert segment each night naming off a few companies that are being advertised by spam. Maybe the bad press will get their attention.

I know that I can sue the spammers, but I don't have the time or money to do that. I don't really have the time to mess with all the spam that comes in. Thank goodness for spam filters or I would just give up on email all together.

I've read that AOL, MS, and others are trying to work out a way to fix the problem, but I don't think much will help. It's like taggers. They paint on walls and stuff all over the place, and there is a lot of programs to help fight against it. But still, taggers are painting crap everywhere.

I guess there is nothing much to do about the problem except for complaining about it. My internet connection would probably be a lot faster without my email server... hmm...

I've been using Firefox for about two weeks now. I really like the extensions that it has. The W3 Validator extension is awesome. I like the resize and DOM extensions also. I like that I can see the CSS that I'm applying to the text elements of the page. It seems to work for all the web pages that I've been to.

But...

Safari seems a bit faster. I like Safari's UI a lot better. Like when I open a new page, I can just start typing a URL without having to focus the address bar. The UI is clean and simple. I also get all the Cocoa integration like the dictionary, spell check, and other services built into OS X. I use the dictionary a lot for learning new words.

The only thing I don't like about Safari is that it has a few problems with some AJAX code. It also stops any activity on a page if it's in a background tab. That's really annoying when I'm doing two things at once like testing a server/client web app.

But in the end, I think I'll be using Safari as my primary browser and FireFox for when I need to debug code.

Oh, and I found the WebKit Open Source Project today. I've downloaded a nightly release to play with it. It's an updated version of the Safari's renderer.

Well, the weekend is over. We did get somethings done, but not all the things I wanted to get done. It just takes a lot of time to do things when you don't have the right tools for the job.

I wanted to have axle trusses built, seats mounted, and possible the floor and firewall done. Before we started Tim was confident that we could get a lot of it completed.

We actually only completed building a bender stand so I can bend some tubing. We did get the Corp 10 and D44 axles tore down. The outers are off the Corp 10 and it looks like I'll be using them on my D44. The outers on the D44 were bigger, but way harder to work on if I broke an axle in the field. We actually had to use a torch to heat up the nut to pull the axles. Maybe it was on a bit too tight.

I will need to buy new U-joints, new inner seals for my D44 to get it rolling. I'm also going to weld up the gears, Lincoln Locker :-).

I started on getting the seats mounted in the chassis. We welded in some tubing across the back and bottom of where the seats will go. Maybe if I get some time this week I can get some more floor tubing done.

Anyway, Things are going... Slow, but going. I'm going to have to step it up if I want to get it done by June.