Firefox Caching Bug
Kevin Day, August 17th, 2008For a while I thought I had a bug with my Ajax fantasy football mock draft program, but it turns out the bug was in Firefox 3 instead.
The bug is that Firefox 3 doesn’t handle caching properly. If you don’t want it to cache a page you have to specify your headers in a specific order, otherwise it will cache it even if the headers correctly specify not to. More info here and here.
This affected me because I use a periodic Ajax GET request to the same url in a live draft application. I reply with no-cache headers so that the GET request polls the server every time. When Firefox 3 pulled the request from the cache instead, it would miss a lot of updates and made the application appear to freeze up.
To work around the bug, I’m just appending a timestamp to the end of every request. I feel that’s better than using FF3’s specific ordering of header info because I don’t want to have to worry that they may change their magical ordering. It’s not much work to get around the bug, but it was difficult to pinpoint in the first place.
In Business
Kevin Day, August 15th, 2008As of July 2nd, I am no longer employed by General Electric. Also, I am also no longer a mechanical engineer.
What have I been doing with myself?
I have been voraciously developing the best fantasy football software website on the internet.
Fantasy Football Calculator is now hosting 1,500 live mock drafts every day. I’ve also launched three new products within the past two months: the Lineup Calculator, Draft Calculator, and Draft Simulator.
To keep up with the high traffic volume during the NFL pre-season, I’ve had to scale the site from one server to four. That process wasn’t fun, but the site is now running smoothly even during peak hours.
I’ve also started a blog on that site, which is another reason I’ve been neglecting this one. I’m going to start posting here again because I do have non-fantasy football related thoughts now and then.
Colorstrology
Kevin Day, August 15th, 2008I’m working from Phoenix Coffee right now. I hadn’t been a believer in colorstrology before, but I flipped through the book while I was waiting for my dark roast.
The books says my birth color is lavender, which indicates that I possess the qualities:
Visionary, creative, builder
That’s good news. I’ve been doing a lot of those three lately, so I’m glad to have confirmation that I’m actually good at them.
Insightful economic commentary
Kevin Day, June 12th, 2008Lately I’ve been following the blog of the former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich, and it’s a great read. Compared to all of the speculative crap out there that people write about the economy every day, it’s refreshing to read the thoughts of someone who actually knows what they’re talking about.
Check it out: http://robertreich.blogspot.com/
DIY Startup School Cleveland-style
Kevin Day, May 22nd, 2008Although the official Startup School was last month at Stanford, there was enough startup activity in Clevleand last week to constitute it’s own mini startup school.
Thursday was Cleveland Startup Drinks, which was a great chance to talk with other startup founders.
Saturday was the SCORE business workshop that was a half-day of informative talks by an accountant, a lawyer, and a bank president about how to develop a business plan, incorporate a business, and finance a business. This was the first time I had heard of SCORE, and it looks like a valuable resource for new businesses. They are a large group of retired business executives that offer free counseling. What could be better than that?
Lastly, on Sunday morning Craig Newmark spoke at the CWRU commencement ceremony. It wasn’t quite as inspriational as the real startup school talks, but it was a taste of Silicon Valley nonetheless.
Startup stuff
Kevin Day, May 15th, 2008Tonight I’m going to Startup Drinks at the Bier Markt.
Also, Saturday is a SCORE business class at the U.S. Bank building downtown. The first session covers business plans and legal stuff. The second half is business finance. Only $20.
Really looking forward to both events. Should be fun and educational.
What’s on your (Safari) bookshelf?
Kevin Day, May 10th, 2008I’ve been trying out the Safari bookshelf recently and it’s really nice. Despite the recent buzz that programmers don’t read books, I think published books (electronic or dead-tree) are the best way to lean a subject because they’re more complete and have been thoroughly edited.
For Safari, I have the 10-book-per-month plan, which is $23. I plan on needing a lot of reference material in the next few months so it’s a valuable resource to me at the moment. Some of the larger books take up more than one “book” on my 10-slot book shelf though. The books on my shelf right now are:
- JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition (2 slots)
- PHP Hacks (1 slot)
- Programming Amazon Web Services (2 slots)
- Programming Python, 3rd Edition (2 slots)
- JavaScript: The Good Parts (1 slot)
PHP Hacks is kind of a let-down, but the other four books are pretty good. I’m interested to find out if I’ll find any books that are useful enough to buy hard copies of after I’m done using Safari.
Best fortune cookie ever
Kevin Day, April 28th, 2008Do not be timid or squeamish in your actions. All life is an experiment.
I feel so dirty…
Kevin Day, April 24th, 2008I was signing up for a Fox Sports fantasy league and at the end of the registration process I found that I had accidentally signed up for a (ugh) Microsoft Live ID. I thought the whole Passport thing was just a myth, but I guess I was wrong. I’m lucky now though because I can use my one account at ALL of Microsoft’s participating sites.
Yipee!
Rick-rolled by the fiancée
Kevin Day, April 17th, 2008Kristen called me on my cell phone just now, but instead of my regular ring tone, I was greeted to:
Never gonna give you up
Never gonna let you down
Never gonna run around and desert you…
Damn. I didn’t know what I was up against.
Well played, Kristen. Well played.
