Yay for Holidays...

...when I have way too much time on my hands. Here's some of the stuff I've been doing.

1. Installed Firefox 3.6 beta 4. I can't begin to describe the joy my nerdy little heart felt when I discovered the Zelda persona. Now my browser is complete with the Triforce, Sages' Medallions, and some Rupees thrown in for good measure. (Personas are skins for Firefox. Chrome supports something similar, but none of their themes appeal to me.) The beta has also changed the behavior for opening links in new tabs: instead of opening all the way to the right, like in Firefox 3.5, they open right next to the parent tab. I still cannot stress enough how much I dislike the Awful Bar, but other than that, I can't complain about anything. Firebug and the Web Developer Toolbar still work, so I'm happy.
2. Downloaded the source code for Chrome OS. I successfully followed the instructions to build a working version of the OS, but neither my bootable flash drive nor the .vmdk image would work in VirtualBox. For some reason, the OS refuses to log in with my Gmail account, my other Google account, or the default chronos login. Sigh.
3. Tinkered with some Java. A (non-programming) friend of mine was trying to write a Java program that would display information in some arrays and perform some basic calculations, but didn't know how to get the program to pull individual values out of the array. I helped her figure out how to do that and write a while loop that would perform the calculations on all five sets of values. Yes, perhaps there are greater things to get excited about, but I love the smell of success on a Saturday morning, no matter what form it comes in.
4. Stayed up way too late on Thursday night/Friday morning to snag all those amazing Black Friday deals. </sarcasm> The best deal came today, when I got Firefly: The Complete Series for $10.99.
5. Did some video editing. Nothing like a little editing to tell you that your awesome system that scores 5.2 and above on all aspects of the Windows Experience Index is really just an underpowered piece of junk. But I'm happy with the output...quite happy, in fact.

And in the spirit of Thanksgiving, here are some programs I'm thankful for:

1. Foxit Reader. It does everything Adobe Reader does, only faster and without all the bloat. In addition, Foxit has paid programs for editing and creating PDFs, like Adobe, but their programs are cheaper.
2. Parallels. I've got a WinXP and a Ubuntu Linux VM with this. The sad thing is that some of my older Windows games function better on the VM with a fourth of the memory that's on my Win7 computer. Some things I just don't understand.
3. GoldWave. This is the best audio editing software ever. True, it isn't open-source like Audacity, but it just feels more intuitive to me. Plus, it has a very generous trial period -- you'll have plenty of opportunities to decide whether you like it. The Noise Reduction feature is the best thing since cotton candy.
4. TextWrangler. This far outstrips Notepad. It has (limited) code highlighting, and it preserves indents when you hit Enter.
5. Tap Tap Revenge 2. I can't afford Guitar Hero, so this is the next best thing. I only wish it had more songs that I like.

Well, I mentioned Firefly, so I have to have another quote from there today!

Quote of the Day:

Take my love, take my land,

Take me where I cannot stand;

I don't care, I'm still free,

You can't take the sky from me.

--Firefly theme song