Another big update to the Ormsby House gallery today. This project just keeps plodding along, month after month. 22 pictures this month, bringing the grand total to 350 photos spread throughout 23 updates. I’ve been doing this nearly two years now, and there’s at least one more left before it’s all done.

This update covers the month of September in three pages. One — Two — Three. We’ve got some fireproofing going on, some more wallboard, and some paint at the very tippy top of the tower. We also have twisted piles of steel and wanton destruction of shrubbery. Fun for the whole family!

Thanks to Chu Yeow, I found out of that one of the reasons I stopped using Firefox 0.9 has now been fixed. And, for the record, I did start using Firefox 1.0 when the preview release came out, even though most of the stuff hadn’t been fixed yet. So anyway, in the newest nightly build of Firefox there is an option to open external links (like links in e-mail) in an existing window. Which is how it used to work in Firefox 0.8. But now you have the choice – either open it in the currently active tab, a new tab, or an all-new window. It’s about time they fixed this.

So that’s one gripe gone from my list. The second one is still there, that when you right-click and choose “Save Link As” a dialog box pops up instead of directly sending the file to the Download Manager. But that one doesn’t bother me, because somewhere along the way I learned that you can Alt-Click on the link to send it to the Download Manager. So I can get around that one.

My other two problems are pretty much fixed. The Winstripe theme has gotten better over the last few months, even though it’s still not as nice as Qute. But that was never a deal breaker anyway. And the fact that the PNH Toolbar didn’t work in 0.9 just forced me to try out the Web Developer Toolbar, which is a lot better anyway. So it looks like there will be a happy ending between me and Firefox after all, and I’m back to installing nightly builds again.

Things are progressing along the road the Firefox 1.0. There is now an official list of bugs that are left to be fixed. When everything on that list is checked off, 1.0 will be released. But of course most of those bugs are ones that practically nobody will run into, so by grabbing the nightly builds you can have something that’s really close to the final version.

Of course, there’s one big problem I’ve been having with Firefox all year, on multiple computers, but I can’t find anybody else who’s having it. Let’s say I’m using Firefox, and then I minimize it and go on to something else, like e-mail or a game or file management. Half an hour later I want to use Firefox again, so I bring it back up from the taskbar. But Firefox is frozen, and has to “wake up” before I can use it. Sometimes it will take thirty or even sixty seconds to wake up. During that time I can’t switch tabs, I can’t open bookmarks, I can’t scroll down a page, I can’t click on links. I just have to sit there and wait while it’s frozen. Slowly it will wake up, and parts of it will become unfrozen, and I can open a new tab but I can’t type in an address yet. And then, it can be as much as ninety seconds later, Firefox is finally unfrozen and working fast. What causes that? That pisses me off so much! Especially when we’re watching TV, and I want to look something up during a commercial. By the time Firefox has woken up and I can go to the site I want, the show is back on. Has this happened to anybody else, or is it just me and my two computers?

If they could fix that bug, I’d be forever grateful.

I got the message from Denny Warnick, general manager of the Douglas County In-N-Out Burger, that opening date is set for October 14th. That’s six days! Starting Thursday, traffic is going to be horrible around the Carson Valley Plaza. That, I guess, is the bad part of the news, since I have to drive by there every day. I have to go to the Wal*Mart right across the street. And the parking lot there doesn’t have quite the overflow capacity as the one in Reno. In Reno the drive-thru can be routed along behind the supermarket next door, out of everyone’s hair. Here in Carson, the drive-thru lane will basically end up blocking one of the main driveways out to the highway. So it should be interesting to see how they handle the traffic control around there for the next couple of weeks.