Firefox taking a long time to start after upgrading to 3.5

Firefox 3.5 (code name Shirekoto) is out, get it while is hot!

After updating it and running it for the first time, I got this little window

It took me a while to even realize that that little guy was somewhere on my screen, I thought Firefox was just taking a long time to start after the update, then I clicked on the taskbar icon and that's when I saw the little window, I tried to re-size it but it didn't allow me to, all I could do was close the little (attempt of) window, then Firefox ran normal

thought I would blog about it in case this happens to more people

symptom: Firefox takes a long time to start after updating to 3.5
solution: click on the taskbar firefox icon and find the little window on your screen, close it, then Firefox will run normal

Pure Mac intuitiveness

I think I've had the worst luck with Macs in general; what you see here is a picture of Firefox on my iMac. Every single time I open Firefox, that's what I get and I have to grab that little window somewhere between the red and green little icons, drag it over to the left of my monitor, then make the window bigger. I think this started happening after I removed a monitor from the iMac.

Maybe it's just me, but I just don't see how that's intuitive.

By the way, I wanted to edit the image to add some more context but I didn't find an obvious way to edit the picture, neither from the context menu, or once on the preview, there's gotta be a way (you know, like in Windows, just right click, edit), is just doesn't seem to be all that intuitive.

Apple products keep dissappointing me

My iphone is broken, I cannot charge it, plugging it to any computer does nothing, completely fried. I turned on the blue tooth on the Mac to connect to it, all I could do was connect to it, absolutely nothing else, shortly after I got the equivalent of a Blue Screen of Death on the Mac; the Mac has been freezing on my, Fusion has been getting slower...

I had to email every picture from the iphone to my self, everything else will be lost when the battery runs out, I will get a new iPhone tomorrow (went to the store and they confirmed it was fried)

I bought the latest and greatest equipment to avoid exactly these types of problems, I don't think I want any more Apple stuff now, not worth it so far

SVN playing jokes on me

I've had issues with SVN before, but this time it went a bit too far

icons started disappearing...

but then it got too far

you don't know how much icons do for you, 'til you don't have them =o(

invisible CAPTCHA

I was checking the status of my iPhone order (yes!) on the AT&T site, and I came to this CAPTCHAI thought it would be easy, as I didn't see any characters, I just hit ENTER, but...



sigh... =o(

This application has failed to start because js3250.dll was not found.

This has been a long known issue with Firefox, and so far it doesn't seem like there is an answer, the error messages are:

"This application has failed to start because js3250.dll was not found. Re-installing the application may fix the problem."
"The Procedure entry point in JS_HasInstance could not be located in the dynamic link library js3250.dll"

some suggest uninstalling/reinstalling Firefox, creating a new profile, removing FF completely before reinstalling, downloading a new js3250.dll file, deleting a trojan file ipv6monl.dll, etc; some solutions work for some people, some work for others, here's what worked for me

In my case the problem only happened under a restricted (non-admin) user, I looked in the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox folder and the js3250.dll file was there, so I ran the firefox.exe directly from there and it ran ok, then I replaced the shortcut I had to point to that location and it's working so far

hopefully this will help some other soul

how to: fix google reader when it reports new items that we cannot see

every once in a while (happened to me twice today) google reader (for different reasons) reports that we have new (unread) items, but we cannot see them (because they don't really exist), to fix this problem simply
- click "all items"
- click "mark all as read"

This is what happens when you forget to deploy your Telerik RadControls folder

This article applies specifically to applications developed using Telerik Rad Controls

I was having a stupidus momentus (tm) yesterday, I forgot to deploy the RadControls and I kept getting this error:

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
at Telerik.WebControls.RadWindowManager.BuildTemplates()
at Telerik.WebControls.RadWindowManager.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildrenInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ICollection children)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm.Render(HtmlTextWriter output)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlForm.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildrenInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ICollection children)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildrenInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ICollection children)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Page.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at Telerik.WebControls.RadAjaxManager.AJAX_Page_Render(HtmlTextWriter output, Control container)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildrenInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ICollection children)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderChildren(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Page.Render(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControlInternal(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer, ControlAdapter adapter)
at System.Web.UI.Control.RenderControl(HtmlTextWriter writer)
at System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint)

Telerik could do better with their exception handling, but anyway... I just needed another pair of eyes to see the issue

The type initializer for * threw an exception

The type initializer for *insert your favorite class here* threw an exception

This was driving me crazy, there's not a whole lot of info out there about this error, I should've used my psychic debugging powers (yes, I have those too =op) before

my scenario is a web service (.net 2.0) calling (deep down) into some code that does reflection to instantiate some classes, the exact same code works just fine under a web application, that's what's bizarre, how's a web service different to a web app on regards to permissions and security?

anyway, almost from the beginning I suspected it had to do with permissions, but being a web service, and the same code running fine under the web app made me leave that as a last option, so I looked and didn't find any real answer, then decided to configure a different user (with more permissions than the default asp_net) in IIS to run my web service, it ran just fine after that

ok, now I know the problem is permissions but I'm not happy with the "fix", so I'll keep looking and trying for a more elegant solution

free tip for those of you who may not know this one
enter "The type initializer for * threw an exception" in google... it's a beautiful thing, Google takes wild cards as part of a search, it works with multiple wild cards in one phrase too