Browsers & Pretentious Bloggers

What browser do you use to surf the web?

I was reading this pretentious girl’s website today, and she was bitching about people who use Internet Explorer. I happen to use IE because I prefer the way it renders websites. I used to use Netscape exclusively until their development team decided they didn’t feel like adding any new features to it.

And unlike a lot of people out there, I am not necessarily that interested in having the latest, greatest designed site in the universe. If you can view it and it doesn’t look like crap, I’m happy. I also don’t like people who think just because they like something better, it’s the only thing everyone else should be using. Kiss my ass you snobs. Good for you that you prefer -insert software here-, that does not mean you’re superior to anyone else, so step off your high horse already. There’s nothing more annoying than people who have to brag about what they have and how it’s so much better than what anyone else has. That’s all objective anyway.

That being said, I did decide to look into the other browser alternatives, particularly because Joe and I have been hit with spyware too often recently. I was reading this is particularly because of how IE is so integrated with Windows; it’s easy for parasites and the like to get into your system folders and wreak havoc on your machine. It happened to me at work two weeks ago and I managed to “fix” it, other than an error I get upon startup that I cannot fix without access to the Registry, which I do not have. Leave it up to my I.T. Department to disable RegEdit but still allow me administrative rights to my machine. Not that I’m complaining – I like being able to download and install things. :)

Joe ended up having to reinstall Windows this week due to a parasite that wouldn’t go away. Personally, I think there should be a way to prosecute the website owners where this comes from. I got my parasite from visiting a website with restaurant listings and before I knew it, my machine was downloading and installing programs without my consent and I couldn’t even get them to stop in time. It was very frustrating. It’s no longer safe to do casual surfing online without the fear of jacking up your machine.

I ended up downloading Opera and Firefox to try them out. So far I prefer Opera because it has a lot of neat features, particularly how it handles pop-ups and new windows. I did notice that both new browsers render this journal a bit funky, so I may work on that in the coming days if I’m up to it. But everything else looks ok.

Which reminds me – another thing that aggravated me off about this girl is how she was all high and mighty about people designing their sites using tables. Well excuse me Miss Know It All, but some of us do not have the time, nor the knowledge, to design their sites in nothing but CSS. Maybe you should just shut up.

Anyway, can you tell she touched a nerve? Yes, I design with tables, because I know and understand tables and they give me the result I’m looking for. If perhaps the default layout that MT provides didn’t go all funky, I wouldn’t have been forced to use tables to correct it. But I digress …

I came across this really awesome software (free, mind you) called Yahoo Pops. It’s really cool because it allows you to read your Yahoo Mail from your preferred email client on your machine without having to upgrade to a premium Yahoo! account. Very nice.

Good news and brunch

Ugh! Why do I keep forgetting to do the Sunday Brunch ON Sunday? I have the worst memory, I swear.

Before I get to that, though, the good news: Our upstairs neighbors are moving on June 13th. Woo hoo! We might actually get peace and quiet then. Yay! Also, management offered to reimburse us if we purchase air purifiers that you attach to the vents. Apparently they can filter out the cigarette smoke. If that’s true, we should be ok staying here. Cross your fingers. I really don’t want to move.

Now to the Sunday Brunch …

Potpourri

1. Which television series do you think had the best final episode? None. You just can’t end a series properly. It never lives up to your, er … my, expectations.

2. Do you own something that you really should throw away but can’t part with? I probably own a lot of things like that cause I’m a packrat.

3. Would you be willing to spend a night alone in a house that is supposedly haunted? Hell no!

4. Go back to your childhood … What did you want to be when you grew up? I can’t say that I ever really thought about it.

5. What do you need to make your favorite pizza? Lots of cheese!!!

The grass isn’t greener

We looked at a condo for rent today and oh boy, did it suck. And honestly, it wasn’t that bad, but compared to our place, it looked terrible. The bathroom tile was that ugly small tile with the nastiest color (off white and green), and the kitchen appliances were old as dirt, plus the cabinets were this ugly white. Size-wise, the place was nice. It was 1100 sq feet, which is 310 more sq feet than our current place, for only $10 more a month in rent (although we would have to pay for the central air in the summer which is currently free). There was a nice walk-in closet in the master bedroom. But it wasn’t worth it. I wasn’t terribly fond of the area, especially since the place was right off a very busy street without a traffic light, and I’d have to be turning left out of the lot to get to work every morning. Now, I’m the kind of driver who takes the “path of least resistance”. I will always go a bit out of my way to a traffic light as opposed to turning left against oncoming traffic, particularly on a busy street. So that alone was a huge turn off.

The place gave us a profound appreciation for our apartment. I wanted to come home and kiss our carpeting. Sure, we pay a bit more for a small one bedroom, but all the kitchen appliances are brand new, the tile floors are immaculate, and the bathroom is very attractive, not to mention quite large. If only we could get rid of the cigarette smell, we’d stay here until we found a house. But I guess we’ll just keep looking and hope we can find a nice place like this without all the issues.

It’s just amazing to me how other people live. You should have seen the condition of the carpeting and walls in this condo. The carpet was matted and dirty and the walls were scratched all over and also dirty. How do people live like that? We’ve never had our walls or carpeting cleaned in the two years we’ve been here and they look fabulous. Our maintenance guy has commented more than once on how clean and nice our place is in comparison to other apartments he’s been in. I just don’t get why people would live in such filth. It makes me uncomfortable just being around it. I guess people are just disgusting.

So long

Today marks two years of living in our apartment. Sadly, we also came to the decision today to start looking for somewhere else to live. I haven’t written about it lately, but things have just escalated to the point where we are inconvenienced on a daily basis by our neighbors.
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