Google Punches FireFox in the Gut!!

Those of us that have chosen to move away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer; (for all the obvious reasons — we won’t get into that, here); and embrace Mozilla’s FireFox probably use Google’s gMail, as well.

With the release of FireFox 3.0; (maybe even a little before); you’ve more than likely been witnessing strangeness with your browser whenever you’ve gone to check your gMail. Slow downs, massive CPU consumption.. just stupid sh** that never happened before. And if you’re one of those people that goes looking in the community for answers to stupid shi**, like me then I’m sure you’ve come away scratching your head a little.

The resident uber geeks will tell you to “tweak this.. change that.. config those.. then run around the house three times and all will work fine!”.. AND, (again if you’re like me), you take some of that stuff with a big grain of salt… because what I’ve found is that some of those geeks will purposely break stuff just to give themselves something else to fix. ::shrug:: Guess they get their kicks like that; I don’t know.

I went into the about:config section of my FireFox and stared at the big Warning! Warning, Will Robinson! message for a good 10 seconds and ultimately said, “OK, fugg it! I can always change it back, right?”.. shaking, I clicked the “OK, I’m on my own” button. Went in and tweaked a couple things..

Went back to gMail and.. DAMMIT!! — biotch was still dragging along.

Now, at a point like this, (as the progressive thinkers that we are) you might be tempted to go back to the geeks and try to find some further instruction. Yet, this time something stopped me. Namely that new little browser that came outta nowhere from .. who?.. Google themselves; Chrome.

Now, when I first read about Chrome I LMAO because I’m thinkin’, “..these fools done LOST their mind”. I mean, there is NO WAY that Google can make a dent in the browser market. Yet, I can now see the method in their madness.

I loaded Chrome.. pulled up gMail bwith/b FireFox open.. and wouldn’t you know it.. smooth sailing. Now, what’s that tell you? Google isn’t really pushing Chrome; not like they are Google Apps or YouTube or AdSense or AdWords or… shoot, none of their stuff. Yet, there it is.. sittin’ there waiting on some frustrated Netizen to find it out of desperation.

OH, and don’t expect anything spectacular from Chrome. Its got its purpose and that is very apparent. With its ability to create (what they call) Application Shortcuts, the more you use it the more its bintended/b use becomes apparent.

So, there ya go. Now you can stop beating up your keyboard everytime you go to check your gMail.

Pimp My Job!

Recession seems to be the consistent word of the year; even though we’re only still in the first quarter. But, if you’re reading this then you might be able to digest the concept of the theme of this post.

Warning: This might turn out to be one of my longer posts.

A buddy of mine was telling me the other day how tired he is of seeing headlines like this one…

Dude! Where’s My Job? – Forbes.com.

The ADP Employment Report showed that 697,000 nonfarm jobs were lost in February as the U.S. recession persists, a wider decline than the 630,000 drop that economists had expected. It was the greatest number of monthly job losses on record.

Personally, I don’t mind them; as its kinna like watching your neighbor’s house go up in smoke. I mean, you feel bad; (of course — unless you’re just evil); but, deep down you’re feelin’ real good that it ain’t you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m as empathetic as the next guy when it comes to watchin’ people lose their jobs; then possibly their homes and other assets they’ve worked really hard to acquire. Yet, at the same time, deep down I am oh so happy that I left corporate America behind back in ‘97. Because, if I hadn’t, I’d be pretty stressed out right about now.

But, then again.. maybe not as stressed as most; which brings us to the second half of this post.

Gotta Love Technology, Man!
Even if I were in the corporate grind, today.. I’d be less stressed than most due to the field I’m in. Technology, today has been much more segmented as it gets more and more deeply woven into business models. That’s why the guys in corp.Am IT are sittin’ pretty sweet, right now.

See, those are the guys that were, back in the late 90’s, tinkering around with Gophers, Excite, Alta Vista, Netscape and IRC when everyone was tooting their nose at “that Internet thing”. Those guys.. right now.. are DemiGods in their respective companies because “that Internet thing” has turned into “THE Thing”; they have the early adopters experience.

Also, now that the Net is THE Thing, a good strong percentage of those newly jobless individuals that are spry enough to have rubber bumpers on their glutei maximi are going to be looking to The Net for restitution. Their already taxed out faith in the fallacy of job security has dwindled to nothing and they’re no longer going to rely on Big Brother to look out for them. (This, of course, is just my humble opinion).

So, if you’re reading this.. stick around. We’ll be helping people just like you Pimp Your Job.

Peace, Love & Prosperity,
tecHead