.... random rants and rambles. no agenda. yet.

Hat tip to Joe for this information about why it is not a good idea to join Facebook....they're up there with G00gle, stealing your ID etc. I have enough problems with G00gle to even think about selling my soul to another devil (well, you know what I mean!)...

[Note to Deafies: This is quite interesting for about 2 minutes, and then it gets boring because someone starts waffling in voiceover and there are no subtitles. I know this because nothing seemed to be happening, so I touched the speaker to see if someone was talking instead, and they did seem to be, OK, Joe?! I.E. I am not a secret hearing person - only in your silly wee mind!]

SO, YOU WERE WARNED!

Sigh. This week has seen me grappling with V*sta, as I have mentioned several times (yes this is boring). While it is lovely to have a computer that works faster than my brain, it is also really annoying having to download updates alllllllllllll theeeeeeeeee timeeeeeeeeee and work out how to do everything a different way.

Take 0ffice 2007, for example, which is completely different to other versions. Using Word is a whole new experience(!) Confusingly, everything SEEMS to be far more complicated to do than before, but when you actually re-learn how to do things, you realise it's all a lot easier. I lost patience with it this afternoon though, and just emailed a weirdly formatted document to a very patient colleague, knowing that she has the common sense to work out what goes where.

If that doesn't mess with one's head, I don't know what does.

Also messing with my head is the fact that IE is now my default browser, and I DON'T WANT IT TO BE! It's psychological. It's like someone making me sit at a new desk that's too low, or use a weirdly shaped keyboard. It's unfamiliar and annoying and I don't like it! To be fair, I haven't finished G00gling for a solution - and if anyone beats me to one, I will be very grateful and buy them a drink - but everything I have tried so far doesn't work.

That's Micro$oft for you - control, control, control. "You must use V*sta how we want you to. You must use the browser we want you to use, and we will make it really really difficult for you to rebel and set Opera as your default, in the hope that you will give up and use crappy old IE and catch a virus and be doomed forevermore. Ahahahaha."

OK, so I got carried away there, but you see my point? It so reminds me of a time when I dashed round the Marks and Spencer food hall trying to find ingredients for a meal I wanted to make from scratch, but nothing was there... M&S wanted to sell me a meal *they* had made... it didn't want me to have the freedom to make my own. Agh! I was in the wrong shop(!)

We live in a ready made world, I guess. And sometimes that is useful, like when you can't be bothered to cook... or think. I digress.

There are other annoying things about V*sta, but despite them, I do like it. I would describe it as a pretty and fun way of working, as long as you don't mind being controlled, and having a number of rather useless things in your PC. For example, what is the point of Flip 3D?! Yes, it looks pretty...

... but what is it FOR, apart from making your windows spin round and round, adding considerably to The Confusion That Is The V*sta "Experience"?!

Whatever. It's Friday afternoon, and at least I can actually play Flash games on this computer, unlike my old one!

Have a good weekend if you read this beforehand!