Kidnapped!

As promised yesterday, I am here to blog about my "adventure" on Sunday. It was one of the more interesting days I have spent in California for sure.

The day started with me being kidnapped around 1030am. It wasn't your run of the mill, blind folded, shoved into the back of a van, kidnapping. It was more of a get ready, you are coming with us, kidnapping. I was finally let in on the "secret" purpose of this kidnapping after a brief stop at Starbucks before we hit the freeway.

So, loaded up on caffeine, we proceeded along the freeway, through an extremely foggy San Francisco, across an even foggier Golden Gate Bridge, and along the north side of the bay to Napa. This was to be a day of winery hopping.

Our first stop was the Domaine Carneros Winery just south of Napa. We were able to snap a few pictures and enjoy some wine at this, rather swanky, winery.

Carneros Winery

After a brief stop at the Boon Fly, a restaurant just down the road, and a $16 lamb burger (it was worth every penny), we headed off to the next winery.

After about a 20 minute drive, we arrived at the Hagafen Cellars Winery in the heart of Napa. This was quite a bit smaller than the other wineries we visited that day. In fact, it was family owned and operated. Apparently, only manned by a few people. This is the kind of winery I have grown accustomed to living in Ontario. We paid $5 to taste 5 different wines. I was sold at that price. I ended up buying my first bottle of wine for the day from Hagafen.

So after tasting and buying some wine, we headed up the road to the Robert Mondavi Winery. I have been a bit of a fan of Robert Mondavi wines for a couple years now, so I was excited to visit this winery. This was quite a large operation compared to the previous two wineries. They have 550 acres of grapes that they harvest every year. It was quite amazing to see the entire operation. It cost us $25 for a 75 minute tour. This tour was very educational, interesting, and we were able to taste three different wines at the end. Like all tours, this one ended up in the store. I ended up purchasing my second bottle of wine here and the tour guide found out that it was my birthday, so he bought me a bottle of wine.

Robert Mondavi Winery Cellar

It was getting into the evening at this point, so we proceeded to head back south and stopped in at a restaurant called Mustards Grill for supper. The food was expensive, but it was well worth it. I had the rabbit, which was so mouth watering and delicious. It was definitely the perfect end to an awesome day.

But wait, there's more...

As an added surprise, we took the freeway along the east side of the bay on the way home. This involved a stop at Treasure Island just outside San Francisco. We were treated to a beautiful skyline. It was so dark and ominous, yet so pretty at the same time.

San Francisco Skyline

It was the perfect way to spend a birthday. Many thanks go to those who planned it. Even though I was reluctant to allow myself to be kidnapped, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

If you ever find yourself in the area, I definitely recommend the Robert Mondavi tour and a stop at Treasure Island at night.

I have uploaded all of the pictures from the trip to my flickr. You can find a link for the slideshow on the top of the blog. I hope you enjoy the pictures almost as much as I enjoyed my trip.

Thank you again to everyone involved.

Until my next post,

Cheers.

Status Update

Well, it has been a while since my last blog post. So here goes with another round of quick updates of what has been going on in the last couple weeks.

First off, we have all been working hard on getting 2.0.0.5 ready. Many of us have been long hours into the night and many weekend hours. It seems that once we had one problem solved and builds ready, another ugly problem would rear it's head. Fortunately, we have persevered and testing continues. Priority right now is getting this release out to the public as soon as it is ready. The sooner we can get it ready and signed off, the sooner we can get this build out the door and patch that IE/Firefox security bug that most of us have heard so much about.

Secondly, I have been working a lot with Jay Patel trying to get a decent pool of ideas from members of the community for how we can both promote and expand community involvement with QA. The main target of this project is focussed but not limited to post-secondary schools. For more information, and to provide feedback, please click here. The following is a quick excerpt from the post:

I think the first priority for us to get more people involved in QA at Mozilla is to get key people on the ground (students and professors) interested in supporting a local community. QA or otherwise. The majority of students are ignorant as to the many avenues available to them in the software industry. I know I was! Getting the word out is key. Also,I think that all the lessons learned by Dave and everything that he has accomplished can be mirrored to many other schools across the globe.

Please do not be shy and do not hesitate to post any comments, feedback or ideas. The larger pool we have to draw from the better.

On the lighter side of life, I have two trips to tell you about.

The first was a trip I took down to the Santa Cruz area a couple weekends ago. The whole idea of going down to Santa Cruz was born out of boredom. Every weekend, the interns sit around wanting to do something (other than the communal pancake feast that inevitably ensues every saturday) but remain largely unmotivated to do anything. Having put up with this behaviour for far too long, I took it upon myself to plan a day trip to Santa Cruz. The message went out, "All those who want to come are welcome. I leave at 11am!" Initially, I received quite a lot of enthusiasm toward the idea. However, as the departure time approached, the level of motivation that I have grown accustomed to started to show itself. In the end, there were just three of us that went. I would like to think that we had a blast. The drive down CA-17 was interesting, especially in the intern van. The route down to Santa Cruz is a narrow, winding road that snakes through the mountains and the van isn't exactly the most nimble of vehicles at the best of times. The day involved some baking in the sun at the beach, a couple dips in the ocean, some more baking in the sun, a walk around the boardwalk, and an adventure to downtown Santa Cruz. For pictures of the entire event, please go here. To give you a taste of how Santa Cruz was, here is a shot of my new best friend:


The second trip I took was just this past Saturday. Preed, Cesar and I took a day long trip down to San Luis Obispo by plane. It was a nice flight down, taking about 90 minutes, through the valley. I enjoyed it a lot. San Luis was a nice town too. With Preed as our guide, we walked around downtown, got some eats (tri-tip beef is mouthwatering protein goodness), saw the Mission, bought some wine and even had a brief tour of Preed's alma mater. The pinnacle of the whole trip didn't appear until the trip back. Watching the sun set from 8500 feet is truly an amazing experience. You can see pictures of my trip to San Luis here. For a taste of the sunset, check this out:


I have one final event to tell you about that happened this Sunday, but I am still waiting on the photos to be ready. Once they are, I will make a post.

Until then,

Cheers.