fligtar's blog » personal

I hate snow.

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:33:52 +0000

Having lived in Louisiana my whole life, I never got a chance to see real snow until this summer at the Firefox Summit in Canada. That’s why it was so unexpected for my routine 6-7 hour trip from Baton Rouge to San Jose to turn into a 20 hour ordeal because of snow delays in Houston.

I can’t bear to type out all of the details, but I was supposed to arrive in San Jose at 8:12pm on Wednesday and instead arrived in San Francisco at 6:30am on Thursday, after which I immediately had to attend Add-on-Con without sleeping.

A breakdown of the trip:

Hours waiting in airport: 6.5
Hours waiting in airplane on ground: 6.5
Hours actually flying: 4.75
Hours of sleep on the plane: 2

And to top it off, the same snow that made my trip miserable on Wednesday brought fun and joy to everyone back home in Baton Rouge.

Add-on-tastic

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:08:54 +0000

I’ll be in Mountain View next week to attend Add-on-Con, a conference all about add-ons with Mozilla, Microsoft, Google, and of course add-on developers. It will be a great chance to talk with developers firsthand and take in some interesting sessions.

From Mozilla, Mark Finkle will be giving a presentation on leveraging third party APIs to create mashups with add-ons. Having Mark in attendance is great for both myself and add-on developers: I get to send all technical questions to Mark, and add-on developers don’t get incorrect technical answers from me! It’s a win-win.

Mike Shaver will be taking part in a panel on the future of the web browser, along with representatives from Microsoft and Google to wrap up the sessions. As former Director of Ecosystem Development (loosely translated: “add-ons”), Mike has a long history of working with add-on developers and improving extension support in Firefox. Plus, he’s kinda funny.

On the business track, Brian King will be exploring the state of the Mozilla Add-ons universe. You can read more details in Rey Bango’s post on the Add-ons blog.

Additionally, Mozilla will be hosting an add-ons open house the night before, so if you’re interested, you can find the details on the wiki. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the open house as my flight gets in later.

I’m also very happy to announce that I’ve accepted a full-time position with Mozilla after graduation in a few weeks, and will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area very soon. It’s been a great 2-3 years being immersed in add-ons at Mozilla and I’m very excited for what’s coming in 2009.

Gustav

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:08:09 +0000

As you may (not) know, I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, home to swamps, pet alligators, Mardi Gras, cannibalization, Britney Spears, oil companies, and the rest of the world’s evil. And last week, the temporary home of a horrible guest, Hurricane Gustav. The media pretty much stopped reporting on it as soon as it hit (admittedly, there are more important things, like Sarah Palin), but half of Louisiana had no power for days. Baton Rouge was devastated and other areas of the state won’t get power for 4-6 weeks.

If you’ve ever been to Louisiana during the summer (or anytime, really), you know that it is extremely hot and humid and that when the power and air conditioning goes out, older people and others have a lot of trouble breathing. Fortunately I’m not one of them, and I got my power back 2 days ago, 8 days after the storm. Most traffic lights in town are still out and traffic is a nightmare, although the parish curfew ended this morning.

After a few days of being without power and getting very behind in work projects, I headed to Mountain View for a few days to be productive. Things are slowly getting back to normal. Classes started again on Monday because we can’t miss anymore — we’re already having to go on a few Saturdays to make up last week.

I gave a presentation on Web Analytics this morning. When I told the class that I’d be talking about Web Analytics, before I even mentioned Mozilla, someone immediately raised their hand and asked if I know the “analytics pioneer” Ken Kovash. I lied and said no, because frankly I’m tired of everyone asking me to get his autograph, strands of hair, chewing gum, etc. for them. You’ll have to wait in line like everyone else.

Changing Roles

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:27:19 +0000

Ever since I started working with AMO in 2006, in addition to primarily working on the development of the site and Developer Tools, I’ve been interested and involved in the direction and administration of AMO and Firefox Add-ons in general. As of today, I’ve switched roles to follow my interests, and will be working with Basil on Add-ons Product Management instead of being a part of Mozilla Web Development. I’ll be working on a number of new projects and continuing to help AMO from a different perspective. I’ll also be helping out with community management until the AMO Community Manager position is filled.

I’ll be finishing up development of the AMO 3.5 Developer Tools Revamp milestone before I make myself forget CakePHP, but I’ve already started working on a couple of exciting new projects that I hope to share with everyone soon.

I’m looking forward to working with everyone in the coming months in my new role.

Facebook Basketball Bracket

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 03:05:10 +0000

At the time of this post, my Facebook NCAA basketball bracket standing is:

Globally: #2052
My friends: #1
LSU: #7 (of 43,149 people (I’m actually tied for third place but they count strangely))
Baton Rouge, LA: #1 (of 17,334 people)

I got the Final Four all correct, so hopefully UCLA and Georgetown will make it to the championship and I’ll be even more correct. Pretty good for not knowing anything about basketball.

Information Systems and Decision Sciences

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Fri, 19 Jan 2007 05:19:26 +0000

When I first applied to LSU, my major was Computer Science. I swapped a few times between Computer Science and Computer Engineering before my first semester even started, but as soon as it did start I went with Information Systems and Decision Sciences. I didn’t know much about it, but I liked the idea. I had heard bad things about LSU Computer Science from everyone, and the business part of ISDS appealed to me because I don’t know much about it and am interested in learning, whereas I already know a lot about programming and I don’t intend to be a code monkey my whole life.

Tonight, I became sure of my decision to major ISDS with the first class period of ISDS 3100, which is the first real course relating to the major. It’s a bit of an unorthodox course in that it’s from 6-9pm on Thursdays and there is a corporate IT guest speaker each class. The content of the course is very exciting, as are the real life examples of what we’re talking about that I use every day.

I’m also taking ISDS 3075 this semester, which is an internship class that allows me to get credit for my work with Mozilla. My other classes are various business requirements from 7:30am-10:30am Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, as well as another night class on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6:00-7:30pm.

Ransom notes keep falling out your mouth

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 20:00:29 +0000

I’m still sick

I became sick last Tuesday and missed class Wed-Fri last week. That sucked, but it doesn’t look like it will be too hard to catch up. At least until I miss school this week (see below). My throat problems are mostly cleared up now… nose is still a little messy, and ear infection is in full swing. Since childhood, every time I get sick I get an ear infection.

Firefox Tabling

I’m thinking about setting up a table at Free Speech Alley or inside CEBA or somewhere for a day to encourage Firefox use. Before I talk to Mozilla and Computing Services about it, I wanted to see if any of you would be interested in helping. This won’t be the level of activism at Oregon State University (who hosts the mozilla server farm, helps with firefox weather balloons, sidewalk paintings, and crop circles) or Seneca College (who has an Open Source major and a class devoted to Mozilla), but it’s a start.

What I’m thinking is getting a few laptops from OCS and putting Firefox 2.0RC1 (or RC2 or actual 2.0 depending on when this happens). Hopefully Moz can send some free stuff like stickers and pens and maybe some display thing, and people can test out Firefox (or the new features in Firefox 2). So anyway, let me know if you’d be willing to sit at the table or something.

Surgical Procedures

I will be out of town Wednesday night – Friday or Saturday. I am going to Houston for 2 surgical procedures. My left elbow and right ankle have always had problems, and in 1994 and 1999, I had arthroscopic synovectomies that sucked out the bad stuff in my synovial lining. Those were week-long trips to Atlanta and required a good bit of recovery time and PT. The new method is a radionuclide synovectomy which involves injecting a radioactive isotope (P32) into the joints and letting it eat away the bad stuff. It should be outpatient and require no recovery, assuming it doesn’t spread anywhere it’s not supposed to.

Blog Localization

As if anyone will use this, I was playing with rewrites the other day and you can now get my blog translated into various languages by typing the 2 letter locale code. For example, http://fligtar.com/fr or es or de or it.

First Day Misadventures

Justin Scott (fligtar) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:26:33 +0000

Overall, I really like the new apartment. There are a few annoyances, like it still being under construction, our TV still not working, late night noise, and nearby shootings.

I am faced with 3 equally bad choices for getting to and from my classes. My apartment is at northgate. Almost all of my classes are in CEBA. This morning I decided to see how bad it would be walking. 23 minutes later, covered in sweat, I decided I would not be walking to CEBA again soon. I then tried my second option: CATS. My 3:30 class got out at 4:15. I arrived at my apartment at 5:15.

All 3 times I was on the bus, the same driver was typing on her blackberry thing the whole time. I was comforted in knowing that if we were to get in an accident, we’d win.

It looks like I will be utilizing option 3 way more frequently than I thought: driving. I decided to get a parking permit just in case, and I’m very glad I did. I think medical permit parking is worse than regular parking… you are fighting for very few PARALLEL spots.