My Next Chapter

Those of you who have been following my twitter feed recently will have noticed the last few weeks of have been life changing for me.

Once I received official notification of my graduation from Seneca College’s Bachelor of Software Development degree, with honours, I decided it was time for something new. I saw this event as the end of one chapter in my life and as the catalyst to begin a new chapter of my life.

Move to Vancouver My decision to move to Vancouver was not a hard decision. I’ve visited Vancouver many times in the past and absolutely loved every minute of it. I saw Toronto as being a huge centerpiece to the chapter I was trying to close; it was the place I called home for many years. For me to cleanly and completely close that chapter of my life and begin anew, I would need new surroundings.

Following Christmas, I promptly began to sell off all my furniture. Around mid-January, my fire-sale was complete and I was completely free. I took a few days to visit family and old friends before departing on my journey to BC.

The journey itself was a very therapeutic experience. Some may call me crazy when I say this, but I decided to drive from Toronto to Vancouver. Fully knowing this would take about 48 hours of driving, I opted to drive through the US. I strongly encourage the US route vs the Canadian route, especially when time is of the essence. I was able to knock about a day’s worth of driving just by virtue of going through the US. I also saved about 50% on hotels and 60% on gas.

~ My Next Chapter Photo 1

It takes a brave soul to embark on a cross continent road trip in the dead of winter. Thankfully, Ra smiled upon me and blessed me with sunshine and no real precipitation to speak of for the entire trip. Considering the drive was some 4500km, I was amazed that I ran into relatively no weather whatsoever. Stops along the way included Chicago, Fargo, Billings, and Spokane.

Having arrived in Vancouver (technically Burnaby), I could not be happier. Not to brag, but the view from my home is absolutely stunning.

Back at Mozilla #

Once I arrived in Vancouver, I was greeted with a wonderful email: a contract offer from Mozilla. I’m super excited to be back at Mozilla in an official capacity. It validates all my hard work for the last few years.

So what will I be doing at Mozilla? I will mostly be continuing the work I did last summer and have been continuing through the school year at a diminished capacity. For those of you who do not know, this work breaks down into several different areas. If you want to hear more about what I’m doing, feel free to contact me on IRC (:ashughes) and I’ll be happy to entertain any questions.

The following is a list of what I will be working to achieve, albeit at a very high level, in order of focal priority:

1. Mozmill - This quarter, I want to complete 25 test scripts for the automated framework. These test cases would finish off Downloading, Security, and Session Store BFTs.
2. Firefox 3.next - This quarter, I want to take charge of 3 feature areas of Firefox 3.next. This would involve drafting test plans, creating test cases, driving the QA effort for the feature, etc. I’ve elected to take on two areas so far: Doorhanger Notifications and Tab Matches Awesomebar. A third area will be determined in the near future.
3. Community - This quarter, I want to run at least 3 community events (test days) and contribute at least 2 documents to the community.
4. BFT Cleanup - This quarter, I plan to continue my work vetting litmus results and bugs for Security and Session Store BFTs. This will receive far less focus than in my internship but I have a hard time dropping this task altogether. I see the BFT cleanup project going hand-in-hand with the Mozmill project. I cannot let the quality of my Mozmill tests suffer due to inaccurate BFTs and unchecked bugs.
5. Personal - This quarter I’m setting a personal goal for myself: blog more! I have found in the last two quarters that I do not blog enough, resulting in a long winded blog post which seems to ramble on about various topics (ironic?!). Looking back on what went wrong previously, I realized that I have never had a defined goal for blogging. I also realized that I typically fail when it comes to ill-defined tasks. To overcome this obstacle, I’ve set a goal of 10 blog posts this quarter. Essentially, this will force myself to blog once a week posting about my thoughts on that week (even if I don’t have anything meaty to talk about).

Thanks Where Due #

I’ve always been a champion for thanking where thanks is due. That being said, I’d really like to thank those involved with securing my position at Mozilla. Either my work speaks for itself or I have some truly great champions at Mozilla. At any rate, thank you to everyone at Mozilla for this prestigious opportunity. It’s going to be interesting to look back on this quarter in three months; this, my first contract at Mozilla.