When I’m not working, I read a lot of blogs. While eating lunch today, I read a quote from writer J. Robert Lennon on Wil Wheaton’s blog that instantly put a smile on my face. I can attest that the quote applies equally to programmers. In fact, I catch myself doing this several times a day.

The truth, of course, is that writers programmers are always working. When you ask a writer programmer a direct question, and he smiles and nods and then says “Well!” and turns and walks away without saying goodbye, he is actually working.

If a writer programmer is giving you a ride to the bus station and pulls up in front of the supermarket and turns to you and says, “Enjoy your trip!,” she is actually working.

So if you’re talking to me and something similar to the above happens, I apologize. I’m only working.

It’s possible, but not often necessary, to run multiple instances of the Subversion service on Microsoft Windows. At work, the source code of IT staff and Engineers is kept on two different servers with a third hosting Subversion. Since one of our Engineering departments recently decided to test Subversion as their SCM system, I had to install an additional service to manage their repositories.

I have a horrible time remembering the syntax for creating a Subversion service. That said, I’ve posted my worst case scenario for future reference. The arguments include UNC paths, ports, and lots of slashes. Next time, with the help of Google, I’ll remember. Oh, and if you’re receiving a 1053 error, it may be that you need to run the service under an account with sufficient rights to the UNC path used as the root (-r) Subversion repository.

sc create svnserve_it binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"\\ITFILESERVER\Repositories\" --listen-port 3690" displayname= "Subversion Server (IT)" depend= tcpip start= auto

sc create svnserve_engineering binpath= "\"C:\Program Files\CollabNet Subversion Server\svnserve.exe\" --service -r \"\\ENGFILESERVER\Repositories\" --listen-port 3691" displayname= "Subversion Server (Engineering)" depend= tcpip start= auto

I’ve been a devout Firefox user since Phoenix. That is until this past week. Tiring of its horrible CPU spikes and insatiable hunger for memory, I contemplated switching to Opera. The only thing that kept me from making the transition was Opera’s lack of an Xmarks plug-in. Not being able to use my favorite Bookmarks manager killed any hope of an alternate browser on my computers.

sudo rm -rf ~/lawn/kids*

99% CPU spikes and 350+ MB memory usage are unacceptable, but when using Firefox 3.0 they’re an every day experience. With all hope lost, I installed the latest Firefox beta. Since then, Firefox has yet to exceed 75% CPU utilization or consume more than 225 MB of memory. All this, even while watching the latest high-def SWTOR cinematic trailer (which is awesome btw). JavaScript heavy websites still consume resources, but with much less cost.

Years ago, I wouldn’t have thought twice about installing a beta, but time has eroded my brazen disregard for a stable computer. Firefox Beta 4 may not restore your youth, but it will reallocate your memory. Thank you, Mozilla!