Windmill: http://windmill.osafoundation.org (if you didn't know) got a promotion today as OSAF is making it an official project. Windmill has grown by leaps and bounds since our debut at OSCON, and now with 5 very active committers we have solved many of the plaguing issues, re-architected all of our bad decisions and tacked on features at an astounding rate.

Our 0.2 release will be happening in the next week or so and now with the addition of Ubuntu Firefox launching and Safari browser launching we now support the full spectrum. We will be baking binaries for each of the platforms, completing the Windmill Book - which aims to be a comprehensive and organized walk through of how to use Windmill so you can easily see what it can do for you or your company.

This week alone we removed any iframes for the testing window making sure there were no issues being created by an impure environment, improved the proxy handling of threads, added functionality allowing for iframe and multiple window testing, solved Safari and Ubuntu linux browser launching, replaced the Windmill Shell, and finished a working implementation of native Javascript Unit testing functionality. Additionally functionality was added to all of the listener code allowing you to explore and record tests on your 1995 web page full of iframes embedded inside iframes.

The more people get involved, the more edge cases we find and fix so please come check it out next week and grab the release. As there will be a bit more in the ways of time allocation and resources involved in the Windmill
Project, Mikeal and I will be taking on this new goal and responsibility of "Open Source Project Promotion Specialists" with the skilled guidance of Open Source veteran Ted Leung (http://www.sauria.com/blog) to see if we can get the ball rolling here and establish a community.

If you have been frustrated with the other Web Automation solutions out there, or simply want to try something new and specially geared around testing the Ajaxyest of Ajaxy web applications come join us in #windmill on freenode or just try your hand with our new recording IDE.

At the moment I am working on putting together a little trip down south to Oaxaca Mexico to drink some delicious Mescal for a few weeks. The destination is: http://casaraab.com/dev/ but it's a dev site yet to be launched.. so shhh don't tell. The responses I have received make it clear that people want to be in the grand old US of A for the first of the year, but the next week we are planning on heading out for a few days in the warmth.

If anyone is interested in attending please let me know, in the next couple weeks I will be putting together a plane ticket itinerary and a rate for the duration at Casa Raab.

I spent a few weeks at this place when I was 15 and really enjoyed it. I have some pretty amazing memories of hanging out the "resort", drinking shots of the good stuff and trekking around http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Alb%C3%A1n. There are already 6 of us going so please come join the party.

Tonight I am at Cato's Ale House in Oakland Piedmont area to catch up on some blogging. My new house is fantastic, however the internet situation is less than ideal. Currently I am disconnected from the grid and it is a terrible experience. Nothing could possibly have made me so aware of my life integration into this electronic world I became so used to. I spent the entire weekend without even a 10 minute stint online checking up on all of my ventures, social networks, emails and the like. Let me explain, AT&T. I don't think I have ever been so frustrated in my life.

I called my ISP, Speakeasy to get a connection setup at the new place on September 11th, they scheduled my installation date for September 13th. In Speakeasy's defense, I have had them as my ISP in two different locations before this and both times my connection was up and blazing the day they scheduled my install. This time however I have ran into a rats nest of pain. The 13th I was informed that my connection was setup and ready to go, no connection so I called and was told that there must be some internal wiring that needed to be done so I should wait for Covad to come do the inside installation on the 18th. The 18th came, and Covad claimed that there was no connection to setup, the loop wasn't actually delivered. I did another round of calling and was told that AT&T had actually installed my loop on the wrong house. This whole process I spent about 30 minutes a day on the phone trying to get some kind of useful data out of these people as it makes it hard to work at home with no internet connection.

For the next five days I was told that it was a small problem and should be connected the next day. Friday the 21'st AT&T's tech was out at my house and I had to ask "What could possibly be so difficult about getting a connection up?" He explained, first the loop was installed correctly, then then the second loop had bad wire so they had to use a different pair, then when testing my new line the person at the Central Office left a tone on my line to keep data from flowing across it. After all this he also said.. "It can happen when you work with incompetent people that don't do their job." Pretty strong words, but what a great recommendation for the same phone company handing our records off to the Bush Administration.

Here it is the 24th, and again today I was told by Speakeasy that my ticket had been CLOSED so no one was asked to go out to the central office to fix anything. HOWEVER, they were now after 13 days escalating my ticket to higher priority to be taken care of tomorrow.

I find myself in a relatively conflicted, the owner of my internet infrastructure is a self proclaimed incompetent and they also control my cell phone... great. I have half a mind to get a Cable connection, and hack my iPhone and move back over to T-Mobile, unfortunately switching cell phone carriers is extremely painful, expensive and in the end my money still ends up in the pocket of some evil corporation. The cable company is also an evil empire, but if I still have no connection tomorrow will become my new ISP even if I have to wait another two weeks.

I have never had to deal with anything quite so ridiculous, and frankly I am pretty amazed that corporations can operate with such lack luster half assed mentality.

Somewhere in-between all the moving and certifying of releases and massive overhauls of Windmill I did get some time to sit down and smoke a couple stogies. My new bedroom has a small deck off it where I can go for a midnight smoked and a glass of water to wind down from the crazy events that have been happening.

This week I had the pleasure of trying two cigars that have been sitting in my humidor since Junes cigarBQ and I finally had a chance to give them a try.

The first is the Graycliff Crystal. This cigar has a great reputation, goes for 20+ dollars a stick. I found it to be medium to moderate in terms of strength, with a very nice draw and nice thick silky smoke. The after taste was almost non existent which is a big plus in my book, because one of the first things that sours me about a cigar is unpleasant after taste. The taste was very clean and enjoyable. The burn was amazingly even. This cigar took me close an an hour and a half to smoke, and the only thing that I found faulty about it was it's inability to maintain a good burn. If I put the cigar down to go in the house to refill my glass of water, when I returned it was getting close to needing to be re-lit. Which we all know is a big no no, requiring me to take a couple pretty big puffs to get things moving again. The makeup of the full flavors include an Ecuadorian sun grown wrapper and a blend of Nicaraguan, Dominican and Brazilian tobaccos with the addition of a Grecian leaf. This makes for a very unique taste and I would recommend everyone try this cigar if they can afford it, and they have a nice chunk of time to sit down and enjoy it.

You can go get more information at their web site: http://graycliffcigars.com/

Secondly I had a chance to sit down with the Davidoff No. 2 which are highly rated and recommended by anyone who has had an opportunity to give them a try. This is a great cigar on the more mild side. Recently really super strong cigars have been having a bit more of an unpleasant effect on me, but this one was fantastic and left me without a single complaint. I have to concur with most of the other reviews out there by saying that it had a slight coffee flavor, again with very little after taste. The word "silky" again is really the only description that continually crops into my mind. The smoke is absolutely perfect, the way I like it. Nice, thick and solid but able to roll off your tongue and linger a bit, but without overpowering you. These cigars are very high quality and in most circles are identified as celebration cigars as you don't want to go out and spend $17 dollars on a cigar on a regular basis. These cigars are all hand rolled in the dominican republic, and you can taste it.

For more information head over to their web site: http://www.davidoff.com/davidoff/

In a heads up between the two, since recently I have been much more into the lighter side of cigars I would have to say that the Davidoff is my pick. However these are both fantastic high end cigars and neither of them will leave you with a reason to complain.

Usually I try to keep my blog entries very specific to a topic, to ensure that I cover that specific topic thoroughly. However there has been so much this month that I am going to give a bit of a summary of events and then follow up with more specific articles as I have time.

Well, for starters I moved this last week. It was a pretty painful process really and it's not over yet as we still need to move the kitchen and two couches out of the last place. Dishes are always a trick because you have to be careful with them, instead of throwing them all into a bag or box. The couches were simply too big to fit in to anything I could get my hands on, fortunately our land lord is going to let us use his truck to move those suckers. He is an outstanding land lord btw, and we sincerely appreciate all his time and assistance. The situation went down a little bit like this; we felt it was time to leave the neighborhood where we were living. This was for a plethora of reasons, but one very specific reason was that I work from home a lot and I need a very quit and not distracting environment. Our prior hood wasn't terrible except that I found myself really getting into a work flow at about 3-4 in the afternoon and am basically in the tank with work stuff until about 9 or 10 at night. This particular hood started to get pretty active around 4, motorcycles, mowing lawns and basic people noise. Additionally there had been some less than desirable activity occasionally and as my cousin and I regularly wind up getting home later at night we just didn't want to be wandering around in all the activity. After explaining this all to the land lord he said, I understand but before you go find another place to live you should come see the place that I am going to be renting in a couple weeks and see if you are interested.

The next thing I knew we had all our stuff loaded up all the cars and were on our way. There have been some growing pains, one that I didn't foresee was the need to basically cat proof the house. She spent two solid days without stopping sniffing out every nook and cranny of the entire place. Unfortunately this meant all night long going through every bag, box, pile until she felt comfortable with it. A couple days ago we left one of the storage doors open and came home to a search yielding no cat. This usually ensues panic thinking about her running off down the street. Fortunately after a sweet up the entire house I opened one of the other locked storage doors and there she was staring me right in the face. I stopped feeling bad for her when I tried to get her out and she decided she was having too much fun exploring and getting covered with dirt and made her way about as deep underneath the house as she could. Fortunately she later exited on her own accord and is now back to her sleepy ways.

I will be posting pictures of the new place as soon as I get a chance. It has been relatively difficult after getting most of our stuff out of the old place, because I don't yet have an internet connection setup at the new house. According to the ISP the DSL is all setup and ready to go, but after looking through the TNI boxes on the outside of the place and tracing line after line I can't find the line the DSL is on. There are hundreds of pairs coming into the house and are then connected up to a huge switch board, without much in the way of documentation. As I don't have the required equipment for finding it, I will be waiting until Tuesday when Covad makes there way out to get things hooked up. Then you can expect some pictures and more interesting Internet activity by me. While I am at it, we are looking for a roommate, because the place is really big and there is unit lacking a kitchen that we are going to be renting out. Of course the renter will be using the sharing the kitchen, but for all other intents and purposes can maintain their own space. If anyone is interested please contact me!

Moving on, Cosmo 0.7.0 was released as you saw in my last entry. Now Cosmo 0.7.1 is out and early next week we will be certifying 0.7.2. Chandler 0.7.0.1 was released an is being called our "Preview" Chandler release, completing the OSAF Preview. Windmill has been undergoing rapid iteration. The JS Unit test framework is now in place and works everywhere except Safari, which is on the list. There have been some issues identified having to do with cross domain referrers and issues with exploding frames that we have plans to take care of in short order. Additionally, you can all look forward to an assertion explorer tool that will make it easier to inject assertions into your tests by simply clicking. That work is all slated for the Windmill 0.2 release which we would like to have out at the end of next week. This will probably be followed by a talk at Bay Piggies and the posting of some binaries for all of you who don't want to spend the time grabbing our source tree.

Next issue is a perspective trip to Mexico which will be getting it's blog entry by the end of this weekend. For any of you who are interested in spending a couple weeks down in Oaxaca drinking mexcal and touring the ruins hold on to your hats because I think I have a pretty cool plan in the works.

And for those of you who are wondering, I did get my Apple credit for their lowering of the iPhone cost and I bought one of the new wireless keyboards and a mighty mouse.

Same bat time, same bat channel...