Today was a darned good day! Check-ins were mostly positive for everyone except for Kronda. She was having a bit of a bad day but it’s nice to know so we could give her some space. She still managed to help me through a frustrating Git issue even though she wasn’t in the best mood. Our morning seemed packed with much discussion. Lukas had us debrief about the Monday All Hands meeting and there were many questions which led to a lot of discussion back and forth.
After the debrief the three students who sat in on the SUMO meeting the previous day gave a presentation about what they had learned. It was an interesting talk and they seemed really excited about it. I was a bit distracted thinking about my Git problem and how I might solve it. I ended up having to do some conflict resolution and some file merges but still had other issues.
We took a very fast break before our 11am meeting with Dino, Debbie and Hope but I stayed and bugged Kronda for her help. She got me on the right track and that was a relief! Dino went over some of the wonderful benefits we get to participate in simply due to the fact that we are Mozillians. I really had no idea such things would be offered to anyone who wasn’t a paid employee. We are able to have one year of access to Safari Books and Rosetta Stone. There is an employee assistance program available for those who have various personal issues or need health, legal, financial advice, counseling etc. We will have coaches available for improving confidence, body language and interviewing skills. We will be able to have one-on-one help polishing our resumes. It boggles my mind that they are willing to do all of this for us. I am definitely going to take advantage of several of these things.
11:45 rolled around and it was time for lunch. Lukas gave us each a $30 prepaid Visa card so that we could leave the office and go buy our own lunch a few times. Food carts were the plan for those that didn’t mind walking just a bit. I was SO looking forward to having my favorite Kargi Go Go but they are closed this entire week! I ducked into the bathroom before we were heading out but when I came out everyone was gone so I just went off by myself and ended up at Petunias Pies and Pastries. I had the most delicious vegetable pot pie at a little table outside on the sidewalk. I headed back to the office and a few others had already returned. We chatted for a while before it was time to get back to work.
Lukas showed us about:about and went over several of the categories. She was showing us about:nope but it’s part of the Whimsy add-on and none of us had that so we spent a few minutes getting that going just because it’s funny. She also did a presentation on the release process for the four versions of Firefox and that was really interesting.
We moved on to Moztrap where we were able to perform some tasks and either pass their test or mark it as an issue and file a bug report. Most of us really enjoyed this because we basically got to do all of the crap we normally do as a user like Facebook, Twitter, games, etc. All of my tests seemed to work fine in Aurora but this did not help get me closer to filing a bug report which is great for Firefox (no bugs found) but crappy for me (no bugs found).
I was done with my testing and the day was winding down but I remembered how cool the new Developer Tools were after seeing a demo of them at OSCON and wanted to mess with them a bit. As luck would have it, this led me to my first bug report in the nightly version. The Dev Tools console doesn’t stay active when loading a website from a new tab.
Yenni headed home with me so she could join us for dinner night. Alice was already at my house working with Wayne to prepare the huge bounty of spaghetti squash we had in the back yard. She had been saving the seeds from the squash but wasn’t sure if they could be roasted. Yenni said they absolutely could and that she would be happy to make them. They turned out to be amazing. As people showed up for dinner night they would try some and then couldn’t stop eating them. We were making a gluten free meal and I was tasked with making a piccata sauce but wasn’t sure how to thicken it without flour. Yenni to the rescue again. She took over the sauce which she had never made before and it was wonderful as well. I don’t like cooking so it was really nice that she likes working in other people’s kitchens!
We had a pretty good turnout for dinner night. Glenn from across the street had eaten but came to socialize, Taylor and Delaney, Alice, Jason, and Ladybug, Miri, Dale, and Pennyloafer, Spencer and John, Yenni, Sarah from around the corner and then the five of us.
Today I learned that a tattoo pen can be made with parts from a train set, the motor from an e-z bake mixer and a guitar string.