Mozilla is about to release as 1.7, so AOL has announced the release of Netscape 7.2 due out this summer. It would appear the only code added by AOL will be the branding stuff (stupid AOL desktop items, integrated IM, etc.), and that any new features will be whatever's been added to Mozilla 1.7 since Netscape 7.1 was branded from Mozilla 1.4. This is an interesting write-up of what effect this new release may or may not have on the browser market.

I thought it was dead, myself. I mean, they laid off most of the Netscape programmers, moving a few to other projects, and I think everyone assumed that meant no more releases (not sure if AOL said as much, but the implication was very heavy). Even with Firefox being based on Mozilla 1.6, there are way more features (not to mention lots of useful, easy-to-install extensions) for it than Netscape 7.1 has. However, I'll probably stick with the Firefox line now that I'm used to it. It seems to start faster, even with the numerous extensions I have running, and I don't really need all the AOL branding -- I use Trillian for IM (both AIM and ICQ) and I don't plan on signing up with AOL ever. If I can get the time, I'm still planning on migrating my email over to Thunderbird.

So Netscape's essentially already lost me. However, I still use IE sparingly, almost to the point of not at all. In fact, at home I have Zone Alarm set to ask me every time IE wants to run, and I like it that way. I rarely use it to look at anything, and this way if I somehow manage to get some piece of spyware or adware that tries to pop up IE windows (they all seem to be hard-coded, rather than using the user's default), I'll really, really know it, and it'll be stopped in its tracks. Which is good, because oftentimes I've heard stories of each window popping up fires off another one, sometimes right away and others upon closing.

It's interesting; I've been a Netscape user since... 1.7? 2.0? Whatever was the first one on that little 3.5" floppy the UMR campus gave me when I got my internet account set up with 'em, back in August of 1995. And I've been using them to check my email since 3.01 Gold added POP3 email. I'd just telneted into the system and checked it on the system that way, using... shoot, can't remember now. Not Pine, not that godawful Mutt, but a much older one that UMR dropped 3 or 4 years later when 2000 was approaching and there was no support for the Y2K thing. That's when they added Mutt, which IMO blows chunks. But yeah, that was when email was pretty much still text. So I've used most of the Netscape browser versions out there, though I think I skipped 4.76 and 4.77, and went to 4.78 or 4.79 just for the sake of upgrading from 4.75. Then I held off until 6.1, and moved immediately to 6.2 and 6.21, with vast improvements (the tales of 6.0 were so horrible, that I couldn't bring myself to install it -- it was buggier than a cloud of locusts in breeding season). Then I went to 7.0, then 7.02, then 7.1. I was with that for quite a while, until I decided to try Firefox (then Firebird) 0.7. That took a little getting used to, since they did some major menu rearranging. There is no "Edit -> Preferences", that Netscape has had since at least 4.0 if not longer. And even within the options menu, a lot of things are moved around. However, in a way it's a simpler interface (though it seems a few less choices, unfortunately, a few of which one needs the Web Developer extension to get back). And of course I still fire up Netscape 7.1 for email -- which won't use the Default Browser setting to open links, so I have to copy any links and paste it with a couple mouse right-clicks.

The benefits of switching to Firefox (I just finally, last night, brought myself up to 0.8 even though I have 0.8 already at work) have far outweighed the inconveniences. For starters, I have the following extensions installed which I love:

• Popup Count - shows how many popups have been blocked by the browser's blocker.
• Paste & go - adds Opera's functionality to either ctrl-shift-v or right-click -> paste & go, so that when you paste the link it automatically loads it.
• AdBlock - This is a good one. Any image can be right-clicked, and the context menu will show "AdBlock Image" as a choice. It brings up an "Add Filter" dialogue that will filter out that image, or you can back it up and add a * for a wildcard to block images/flash from the whole domain (with or without subdirectories, so that if the whole domain serving the image isn't for ads but they have a subdirectory called "ads" or something, you can block everything from that subdirectory in that domain). Also, all Flash components will have a transparent tab either at the top or bottom marked "AdBlock" which can be clicked to bring up the same dialogue (since you can't get much on a right-click on a flash component).
• Tab browser Extensions, Preferences, and TBE tabbed session management - I haven't figured out yet if these two extensions conflict or compliment; I have TBP enabled at work but disabled at home, and it doesn't seem to make a difference in my usage. But these are great to add features to the tabbed browsing that isn't there by default. I never keep straight which does what, since I kinda added them all at once and never paid enough attention to the differences. However, amongst them, I can rearrange tabs, Undo closing a tab (used that a few times...), etc. Plus it gives a bunch of extra tab options in a Tab dropdown right next to the Tools dropdown. You can save tab sessions to be opened later, duplicate tabs, change the color of a tab (that way if you have lots of 'em open all to different pages on the same site, but they have the same title, you can tell 'em apart, I guess), and get to a whole host of TBE preferences on how the browser behaves (which tab gets focus when you close the one you're on, etc.). So this stuff is awesome.
• Status Bar Clock - I auto-hide my Windows status bar, at least at work -- no auto-hiding in LiteStep which I use at home for my desktop shell -- and so this way I don't have to bump it just to see what time it is -- the clock shows up in the bottom status bar of Firefox, all the way to the right.
• Things They Left Out -- I don't use it much, but it adds back a lot of things that are no longer in the Options menu, such as whether to use HTTP 1.0 or 1.1, better certificate and MIME-type management, website language preferences, whether to show website icons ("favicons"), etc. Plus it adds "find as you type", so that if you're not in a text box or the location bar, you can just start typing and it'll do on-the-fly searching.
• Firesomething - This isn't really a useful utility per se; rather it's just fun. It basically makes fun of the names Firefox has gone through before settling on one that can't get them sued (they started with Phoenix, then went to Firebird, and are now on Firefox, hopefully the last one). There are 3 wordlists: Vendors, Prefixes, and Names, which are preloaded with just Mozilla in Vendors, plus several in the other two (mostly animals). So each time you get a new window, it makes a choice at random from each of the three lists, and that's what you get in the window's title bar (including child windows opend via Javascript). You can get some really interesting combinations (right now I'm using "Mozilla Spaceemu" ). I added several other animals to the list right away, of course.

So to say I like Firefox would be an understatement. I think it's great. However, I'm also glad Netscape isn't completely dead as has been thought for quite some time, though I hope this isn't just a last dying gasp. Even if I've switched and probably won't go back, at the same time I hope AOL can eventually get the ball rolling with Netscape, and keep it in the picture. It's a name more people know (or at least, everyday, non-geek people), more so than Mozilla or Firefox, and competition is nothing but good.

I talked with my mom later this evening; she said the best the nurse can figure it, the problems are most likely pulmonary fibrosis and pulmonary hypertension. I'll have to look 'em up, but they sound awfully grim.

I talked to my father about an hour ago. My grandmother doesn't have a whole lot longer to live. She's been getting weaker and weaker, and shorter and shorter of breath, even with the oxygen. She hasn't been able to get out of bed on her own for a couple days. And the doctors haven't a clue why. The rhythm was she'd faint, my grandfather would take her to the hospital, they'd hook her up to an IV and oxygen and stick her with a bunch of needles (the IV would even hurt her a lot, since she's never been one with easy-to-find veins), they'd do tests, etc. Then they'd find nothing specific, she'd seem to get better and be fine off oxygen, and they'd send her home, only to have her pass out within a week or so. Lather, rinse repeat.

So they're having a nurse come over, I'm not sure how often, and have given up on the hospital since they haven't a damn clue what's wrong with her or how to fix it, and she's just been getting weaker. Why should she suffer in the hospital at this point? The nurse agrees with my grandfather's assessment that she probably doesn't have long, probably weeks if not just one or two weeks. My aunt and uncle in Charlotte are going to try and come in town this weekend if at all possible, as well as others I'd imagine.

Guh. I couldn't help but cry on the phone, and my dad even choked up quite a bit. Jeremy was so sweet. He heard me crying while on the phone, and Pele was on her box lid so he picked her up with it and set her on my lap. Heh, she actually stayed for maybe a whole minute. Then I told him what was going on, and he held me in his lap, then we moved to the bedroom where there was lots of tissue to be had and I could snuggle up with him better. After that I've been alternating between crying, sniffing, blowing my nose, trying my best to detach myself somewhat, and just sort of... leaking. For a bit, it helped playing with the wireless router to get it so J could actually get a connection (he was getting a signal, but no internet). So fiddling with that, all the way down to force-restarting (holding the reset button several seconds, then pulling the plug for a bit, then plugging it in and setting everything up all over again. So that gave me something else to do. Then I was playing mindless point-and-click games on the internet, trying not to think about it.

I'm hoping against hope that she'll somehow decide she's too stubborn, and that whatever the problem it is will just have to go away, and she'll surprise everyone and recover. But that's one of those that's just the tiniest sliver of hope, and I'm not putting any real stock in it. Stranger things have happened. On the other hand, she's lived a long, happy life. She's over 80, she and my grandfather celebrated their 60th anniversary not long ago, and while this really probably started with the troubles leading to her heart bypass a few years ago, she really hasn't had any long-suffering illness. This last bit that has seriously incapacitated her came on and worsened relatively quickly. So that's better than lingering for years and years, either withering in a hospital bed or in a nursing home healthy but completely out of her mind and not recognizing anyone. Still... my grandfather's losing his wife of 60 years, my mom's losing her mother... I can't even imagine what they (and my uncles) are going through right now. Not at all. I'm so going to miss her. Damn, I was hoping she'd live long enough and healthy enough to see a great-grandchild or two. I know she'd love that.

We're going to try and make time soon to see her; not sure whether we'll go just the two of us, or try and go with my parents, etc. I don't know how I'm not going to cry. I love her so much, and I don't want her to go. I think I'm going to go off and cry now, and maybe read so I can lose myself in pure fantasy and pretend for a while all this isn't happening.

I changed the counter. Bravenet kept getting more and more annoying -- they insist on writing bad HTML, and that the format has to be in a table (!). So, I'd taken a look at the Javascript source to see what it was writing, and basically recreated it myself, and was using that. However, they decided in the last little bit (not sure, since I rarely visit my homepage itself so as to keep my hits from counting -- you can "don't count me" but my IP keeps changing) to change the code. And now they've got it buried deep enough, and in such a certain way, that I can't use that method anymore. Believe me, I tried.

So initially I was going to grab a tutorial on how to write my own PHP counter with what I wanted (i.e. browsers & OSes used, color depth, screen resolution, referrers & visitors' IP addresses). Well... a Google search on '"php tutorial" "web counter" statistics' gave me a whole lot of available counters for download, some using a database and others not. I downloaded 3, but ended up keeping Power Phlogger, which also seems to offer counter services itself (I chose to grab the code myself).

It was a pain to get it working, and I couldn't do it the "usual" way (the documentation had an alternate PHP/JS combo that (a) only works when the code is on the same server as the counter, since PHP isn't supposed to let you do remote includes, and (b) isn't fully tested). While this way doesn't do images, but uses text instead, I'm actually happy with that -- this means I don't have to worry about choosing colors that look OK on all my different themes, because now that it's text it'll just use whatever I have defined anyway.

Also, Bravenet used to show the "last 50 visitors". Now they show 10. I can choose to see a helluva lot more than that if I want, which is great. And yeah, I have my own web stats available via CPanel itself, which is nice, but those track every single page, image, and file, and the counter thing is more for how many people make it to the front door, where they came from, etc., and the CPanel stats don't really associate the referrer directly to the page.

So, while I certainly haven't been doing what I planned on doing -- I noticed the counter off by accident today, and needed to fix it -- at least I've been doing something productive. (I was going to get all my stylesheet array info into a database table in preparation for redoing the theme switcher for it, then go walk on the treadmill and take a shower.)

I haven't actually deleted the files, but I've nuked the Netscape 4 stylesheet from the list of choices. I was no longer updating it, because it was too much effort to do so, plus it was starting to become a waste of time to update it anyway, since it would appear no one was using it anyway. Not to mention, every time I add another theme I keep it last, which screws up the cookie. So, I figured that since my site's accessible without it, and I don't do any detecting looking for Netscape 4 to give that stylesheet as default instead of the usual default, there's no point in having it.

What I really, really need to do, is to store style info in a database table, and each style has its own static ID and order placement. Right now it's just all a big array of arrays, with all inside arrays needing to stay in the same order. With the database idea, the cookie info stored is the ID, but I can still order the themes however I want when listing them and providing them as alternates. If/when I get around to doing this, I'll use whatever order they're in now as the IDs so no one's current choices get hosed.

I decided that the kitty cat dance I posted about earlier had a few lyrics I just couldn't understand, so I went looking for them on the G-Shack.com forums. Here they are, 3rd post down, provided by the guy who created it.

CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance, and I Dance Dance Dance
[So on so on...]
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I meow meow meow, and i meow meow meow [so on so on...]
I say sexy things to myself when i'm... DAaaancing!
I say sexy things to myself when I'm... Daaaancing!
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
PERRRRRAVACOTIVE POSING!
bat-im a picky pat- and i boop be boop babba boop boop boop
CAT, I'm a kitty cat, and I dance dance dance, and I Dance Dance Dance

My normal internet handle:

My LJ username:

From Go-Quiz.com

Edit: Changed 'cause (a) I pasted the labels backwards, and (b) there's no need to have two sets of "get your warning label" buttons.

Editx2: For those of you who're using a Moz variant that doesn't understand the meaning of Wingdings or Webdings as fonts, this is what they look like in IE:

It's a chart arranged the same way, and with similar reasoning, as the periodic table we all know and love, but it's all beer. You can't tell from the pic what all beers are on there, but there's a technical description of how it came to be, how things were ordered, etc. It's quite scientific and based on the chemistry of beer.

Now I want one.

I have to add it to the Fruit Fucker t-shirt (see Penny Arcade to find the reference) that I want for my birthday.

I just went to run my fingers through my hair a bit, now that it's dry, to fluff it up a little. I just discovered I left my little clippies in that I'd put in *temporarily to get my hair trained not to fall in my face*. Thankfully only one or two people have seen me face-on, since I've mostly just sat in my cube all day. Whoops...

Edit: And I just realized I've posted 3 times today already. Looks like today is a post-whore day.

You should see some of the stuff this guy has collected. It's all kinds of different flash animations from various points on the web. A couple I'd seen before, such as stuff from RatherGood.com, but many I hadn't. However, I do need to warn you that they are definitely Not Safe For Work. If nothing else, at least make sure you have your headphones plugged in. (I found at least one, though, that had no sound in the first 3 seconds it was on my screen, but was definitely not something I wanted on my screen at work. That one was fulabrudar -- don't click this if you're at work or there are kids around. Really.)

A few are kinda dumb, but some, like MadCow, are quite amusing. So you should definitely go look, but probably do it at home either alone or around other (near-)adults.

OAK
You are boisterous and affectionate. You are the kind of tree that takes nothing sitting down, and is always ready for an adventure. You like to see everything that goes on around you. You like the warm weather, but you flourish when the nights tend to grow slightly colder. You are someone who likes to extend your days into the night hours because you never want to leave anything unfinished. You love an audience when you do things and you like to show off sometimes, but others admire your attitude. You fear past mistakes coming back to haunt you, but try to live day by day. You admire the strength of others and try to find the same in yourself. When you leave this word, you want to make an impression so that you'll never be forgotten.

What's Your Inner Tree? brought to you by Quizilla

It figures my inner tree would be the tree that registers higher than any other of all those I'm allergic to. I wonder if that in itself means anything....

There are 3 new Funny Forwards up. There may or may not be more than that by the time you see this.

I haven't updated my resolutions progress in just about 2 weeks. So I guess that'll take up a good... I dunno, hour. And that's now that I've figured out what to put for everything between May 1 and yesterday. That's 13x4=42 entries to make, then I have to set 'em all to "publish" instead of "draft", then rebuild... yikes. I hate it when I get behind. This far, and it's really hard for me to remember what I did or didn't do, and when.

Edit: Yep, took me right at about an hour.

And I dance dance dance and I dance dance dance!

Very weird little animation of a cat in different poses dancing to a guy singing. Sort of... it's a little hard to describe. Just go watch and listen! It's funny!!

Edit: I changed the link directly to the file, because the link no longer goes to the file but to some forum listing. And the site's in a language I can't read, so I can't figure out how to search for the page, or even if there is a search box. So, yeah... might be best just to right-click -> save as.

Editx2: Well, shit. I just looked up the PvP thread it was posted in, and the link works from there. And it's the same link I had originally. I'm not sure what the deal is, really. Here is the original link if you want it.

Editx3: I finally figured out what was wrong. I copied the link directly, but somehow my RegEx in MovableType that changes ampersands to "&" in my URLs (to be XHTML compliant) is losing the character immediately after an ampersand, which of course screws up the link. I'll see if I can fix that.

However, I did go to the URL shown at the end of the movie, and I found the the page it's listed on. It's just a link to the movie itself, that they made, rather than a page with the movie embedded in it, but it is a source page. And who knows, maybe they have some other cool movies.

Yesterday afternoon, I was just finishing up watching a back episode of Kingdom Hospital (one I missed recording and spent 2 or 3 weeks downloading), when J came in. He told me to look out the front window towards the main street. I went out and there were a bunch of cop cars, an emergency responder truck, and a van crashed into the lightpole on the corner. And they had someone on a stretcher. I walked over to the neighbors' driveway (both they and we are 1 house off the corners), to talk to the mother and daughter who'd been outside longer, apparently. They said the woman driving the van had had a seizure and driven straight into the light pole (the street curves a bit to the left on its final approach to Lindbergh). A guy in a white SUV had been in the lane next to her, said they were both doing about 40 (speed limit is 35, so not much over) and he thought he saw her shaking and it looked like a seizure, then saw her obviously not making the turn and then hitting the pole. He immediately turned around in a neighbor's driveway after going to the next street after ours and called 911. By the time I came out, he'd parked in front of our house so he could fill the police in about what he'd seen.

Can you imagine? If you're prone to seizures, I'd imagine that's one of those underlying fears of what could happen -- what if you experience a seizure in the middle of driving and have an accident? Fortunately, no one else was involved, she hit the lightpole with the dead-center of her front bumper (the hood was of course all pushed up, and the windshield had shattered but held in place). The SUV guy saw her airbag deploy. She was conscious after the accident at least at some point, though in one helluva daze and not really with it. She'll be OK, it would seem. As soon as they left with her, the police were already cleaning up the mess the car had left (there was antifreeze all over the street, and it smelled like maybe a bit of gas as well, though certainly not from the gas tank and not enough to cause a potential fire). A couple hours later and the only evidence was the sand or whatever they'd put down to soak up the spillage; there wasn't any glass left from what came out of the windshield (which was mostly intact due to the nature of safety glass). Heck, the pole wasn't even seriously damaged -- it had a few scratches on it this morning when I looked, but there were enough that they couldn't all have come from her van). So it's better than it could've been. I do hope she (a) gets a doctor to help her better control her seizures, and (b) seriously reconsiders driving (once she's healed enough to where she could drive) in the future, since it could happen again and she might not be as lucky then.

Anyway, I went back in and watched my taped episodes of Kingdom Hospital that followed after the last downloaded one. I had time for one before 8pm, and wasn't sure whether I had 1 or 2. So I knew one was at the end of the tape and watched that. I felt like I'd maybe missed something, but I wasn't sure. I got done right at 8, and lo and behold -- no Kingdom Hospital! Damnit! So I check the listings, and it's nowhere to be found. I was pissed that I might've missed it because of moving it back to Wednesdays, or that they might've moved it to yet a 3rd day and time. Googled the show, since TVGuide didn't really have any worthwhile info, and found two sources, both of which say there won't be a show this week; one says the next one will be next week at the usual (Thursday) time and the other says it'll be a week after that. No choice but to watch the listings for next Thursday, I guess. So I went back looking for another episode I should have, and it turns out I watched them backwards. It was kinda weird watching the older one after the newest one. Oops.

Our friend swirly is coming out this afternoon. I'm almost done with the books he so graciously lent me several months ago, and so he's, without my asking, bringing out more. Yea!! I'm in book 2 of the Belgariad (I'd show it in the "current reading" but the plugin isn't working and I've yet to figure out why), and it's pretty awesome. Really fast reading, but awesome anyway. So he's bringing the rest of that (3 more books), plus 4 others, 3 of which (I think) are belonging to 2 other series I've read the first books of in the first batch. Rock! Plus he's bringing a movie called Stripes which I've never seen, and he (and J perhaps as well?) thinks I must see. He won't be over until around 6 thereabouts, so if I need one I should be able to get in a nap and maybe a shower before he arrives.

Every member of the TechTV staff has been given 60 days' notice. So Comcast plans on keeping some TechTV shows in the merger of it and G4, yet they're going to fire everyone who currently staffs them, including the ones ina front of the camera everyone watches the good ones (like Screen Savers) for? Smart move, Comcast. Really.

So that's another channel I probably won't watch. From the suckitude I hear G4 exhibits, and the fact that any TechTV shows they keep probably won't have the same wonderful people on it... I can't say I see them even keeping a good number of the TechTV viewers, let alone gaining many new ones.

The article does say they're going to hire back up to 100 spots for those who're willing to relocate to LA. However, we'll have to see who all they're talking about, and which ones will even be interested, etc.

Well, that's it. From Friday Five's main page:

This is the end of the Friday Five. I know most of you have seen this coming and I appreciate you humoring me. I haven't enjoyed it for some time now and because of that I can no longer justify the bandwidth. I'm not going to give it away or sell it or bring anyone on to help; Two-and-a-half years is a good run. Let's let it go.

[...]

There's more, mostly thank-yous and such. But it's done. Heh, between that and no more Saturday Scruples (the site hasn't been updated in months, and their homepage hasn't been updated in nearly as long -- seems they've just up & disappeared net-wise), there's going to be no more regularity in my posting. Ah well, I think I can manage that. It's clear the owners of both aren't really interested or able anymore, so kudos to them for while it lasted, and good on them for moving on when they felt they were done.

Okay, just so we understand... it's pretty obvious that once a Windows exploit is made public, and there's even a critical update patch made available for it, that within less than a month, there's going to be a virus exploiting it. Right? So it would behoove company IT teams who are responsible for pushing such patches out to the company computers, to get cracking testing said patch, just to double-check that it doesn't fuck anything up (since MS has released such things before that cause real issues that necessitate backing the patch out until they can rerelease it). That testing shouldn't take more than a week.

So why is it said people at my company, only saw fit to begin pushing this update out to our computers after a worm exploiting the latest one (i.e. Sasser) has already arrived on the scene? They announced that this patch would be pushed out starting May 1. Guess what? I found out via my computer's auto-reboot (which I have since turned off) that lsass.exe had terminated improperly (or however it was phrased) and that my machine was rebooting in 60 seconds, that it'd already gotten me. And no, this wouldn't appear to be something you have to be stupid enough to run from an infected email. Especially since I haven't run dick shit from email attachments that don't get scanned first. Wanna know what else? P.O.S. McAfee never detected it. I ended up having to grab a removal tool from f-secure.com (after Googling lsass.exe and finding their link from the 6th or 8th result that gave a broadbandreports.com post that mentioned it), run that, and patch the system myself directly from MS's website.

I think I'm owed about an hour (between time lost and time spent patching) of pay coming out of the sysadmin budget, for being forced to deal with it because they didn't bother patching till after there was a worm already using the exploit, and for having to patch the system myself, 3 fucking days after they said they were going to start pushing this out. And I checked the CP add/remove programs to see if it'd been pushed out, and no it hadn't. (Win2K hotfixes are listed in there, and they're numbered, so it's really easy to see whether a hotfix has been installed already.)