I know I’ve missed the Chrome-rambling bandwagon by several months. Everything that can be said about Google Chrome has probably already been said, and probably a thousand times over. Luckily (or unluckily, as it may be) for you, I have not read any of those thousands of articles (except the ones about the original TOS; I did read those) and will approach my whining completely unaffected by such comments.
I’ve been using Google Chrome for the past few weeks, after several years of being a devoted Firefox user. I do like Firefox, but there comes a point at which even my lazy self won’t tolerate having all my preferences wiped at random when my laptop crashes. It crashes every day! My preferences didn’t get wiped every day, but even if they were only wiped 5% of the time, that’s once every three weeks. It simply wouldn’t do.
In the hope that Google Chrome would more reliably store my settings, I decided to try it out. I haven’t decided whether or not it’s an acceptable replacement for Firefox (I haven’t even set it as my default browser), but in certain regards it’s much better. It has not once deleted all my preferences, for instance. Unfortunately, there are also ways in which it really does not match up… Read More »
If you’ve been living under such an awesomely powerful soundproof rock the last two days that you haven’t managed to hear about Michael Jackson’s death, please tell me where this rock is and how much I have to pay to borrow it from you.
I’m so sick of hearing about him. He died yesterday morning, my time, so I first heard about his death on the radio. I listen to the radio for the music, not for inane celebrity chatter nor for ads, and the sudden news of Michael Jackson’s death lead to, it seemed, all music being pulled from the radio. Except music by Michael Jackson. But even that was played only sparingly.
Pretty much the entire Internet seemed ablaze with Michael Jackson discussion, and seemingly none of the 100+ people I saw whining about this death seemed to realise they weren’t being very original. Read More »
Thought I’d add something so this place isn’t neglected for too long. Right now I have this amazingly irritating illness of some kind which is infuriating me. Over the weekend I could hardly move due to dizziness. I COULD move, from about one chair to another chair, but once I HAD moved I’d be stuck there for ages recuperating. I got stuck watching almost a whole documentary on the plight of British Columbian salmon this way. It was kind of a sad documentary actually, because there was all this dramatic music and slow-motion replays of eagles snatching salmon out of some river, and seeing as I didn’t care about the plight of the salmon, it was really lost on me. Actually, the bizarre counter-productive way in which those salmon evolved (they have to swim upstream a river… in which water levels are too low to be traversable except during occasional floods… and can’t stop any earlier because they’ll throw a fit if they don’t lay their eggs in the EXACT SPOT they were born?) meant that I cheered on all the salmon’s predators in their quest to aid the cause of natural selection. Yep.
I thought I was slowly recovering from that illness. By Monday morning I could move around relatively freely, so I was able to go to school. This was a good thing, because I had two SACs this week that had to be done this week on pain of a $40 fine from VCAA. So I did them. But I think my illness got worse.
I currently have this unbearable, implacable cough. It’s like I’m trying to cough up something, but that “something” is every internal organ in my torso. Once I start coughing, it’s virtually impossible for me to stop. I have to brace my whole body, tensing every muscle I have, to force myself not to cough (or breathe). It’s painful. I haven’t slept well because I keep waking up and coughing in the night, leading to coughing fits and the like. I haven’t eaten well because I feel nauseous and for several days I lost almost all sense of taste.
This cough seems only to be getting worse, so I’ll have to see a doctor tomorrow, not go to school. But my SACs are done with anyway, so I don’t have to feel guilty. I hope I did well on them but to be honest, right this second I care more about getting over this illness.
Wednesday morning, I had a Psychology exam. It went well, except for area of study one question one (which is ostensibly the easiest question in the entire short-answer section), which as usual I managed to completely overthink until I had written the wrong answer. Keep in mind there were only two possible answers. And I’d written the correct one originally but crossed it out. So you know, it was irritating to know I’d already lost two marks for such an easy question. But that’s not actually what this entry is about.
Because it was exam week, I had no more commitments for the rest of the day after my Psych exam. That left me free to attend a rally on the steps of Parliament House. I’m embarrassingly ignorant of state affairs a lot of the time, but I was aware of the protesters’ concerns and volunteered to go with my dad. So I went.
It wasn’t the kind of protest that would attract a lot of attention. Read More »
It often irks me when people offer vocal support to our Prime Minister. It irked me far less back when he was Opposition Leader — I was as pleased as anyone when he defeated John Howard at the polls — but hating Howard is not a good enough reason to be wilfully ignorant of Rudd’s failings.
I often don’t see how people can offer him their unconditional support. Does no one read The Australian? Has no one read the multitude of articles outlining his and his government’s various flaws? Apparently not, because I keep hearing glowing praise about him. He apologised to the Stolen Generations! He single-handedly saved the economy from recession by paying half the population $900! He saves the environment, but not at the expense of economic growth! His idea of foreign policy is “being a good international citizen”! What’s not to like?
Yesterday, the reasons for some of these attitudes were revealed to me. The Australian published an article entitled “Rise of Rudd’s sentinels of spin”. It outlines the ways in which the dissemination of information has been centralised in the hands of the Prime Minister, and how the media is forced not to examine any decision too carefully. Read More »