Wednesday, September 22, 2010

What the Heck?

Google Chrome is my preferred browser. For some reason, Chrome works better than other browsers on Facebook for me. Now, if you have a favorite that you feel works even better, great! Use it, but don't try to change my opinion. I've tried lots of browsers and Chrome seems to work best.

I have an inherent dislike of IE which goes back years; Mozilla Firefox is good, but since I spend (and here I make a confession and reveal something of my life in general) most of my online time on Facebook, I use Chrome.

Every once in a while, I do some maintenance on Chrome. Empty the cache, clear the cookies and all that stuff. I also clean the Adobe cache. I have to say here that I dislike Adobe almost as much as I dislike Shockwave, which is right up there with my dislike of Vista. But that's a personal opinion and based on past experience which may or may not be valid today. I still consider Vista to be extremely unstable and crashes with changes in the wind. Hadn't had much trouble with Shockwave until the other day when it kept crashing. A real annoyance when you're accepting gifts in Facebook games. You will lose the gifts and they may be the very item you need to complete a buildable, or level up in a game.

Today when I did my maintenance, I thought, hmm...I should see if there is more recent version of Chrome available. I did, there was, and I downloaded and installed it. I restarted my computer and that's when the trouble started.

I pulled up my Google start page and none of my thumbnails were available. If you don't use Chrome, it's a page similar to bookmarks which has a picture of your most visited sites. Click on it, and it works like a bookmark and takes you to the site. Okay, well I had Facebook bookmarked and clicked on it and got a dialogue box that said something to the effect that Facebook could not be found.

Huh? Facebook can't be found? I was there just before I began doing my computer maintenance. Okay....so I typed in the URL: facebook.com and got the same message. Okay....a search usually works and typed in Facebook in the search box. Google gave me the search page I expected and I clicked on the link to Facebook. Again, the same message.

I decided to work offline on some files I wanted to update. I pulled up Excel and watched it load..and load...and load. Okay, it's time for a time out. Yeah, I gave my computer a time out. It's not working with me, and more importantly, for me, so it needs a time out. I shut it down and, after a few minutes, booted back up.

I thought that at least now I should be able to get back online and tried IE and Firefox. I did get online with Firefox and loaded my email account. And it started acting funny. Kept defaulting to my Facebook email account. I have a regular account and and an account I use primarily for Facebook. I was signed out of the Facebook account, but it kept defaulting to it. Okay....it's not just Chrome, but Google that's having problems.

I finally got back into Chrome, which now seems to be working just fine. Same with Google. Just tried to get back on Facebook, but now the message says that other users are experiencing the same problem, so it's not just me.

I can't remember what it's called, but there's a thing where a hacker uses a program to "bomb" a site with thousands if not millions of incoming messages. However it's done, it causes the site to shut down. I wonder if that's what's happening or if it's just a glitch of some sort. I'm in a sort of conspiratorial mindset so that's where my mind is going right now. My more reasonable side says, nah....it's nothing.

But I still wonder.

Anyway....I need something to break my fascination...compulsion....okay, let's call it what it is...addiction...to Facebook. So maybe this is just what I need to break the addiction.

My name is Kitten, and I have an addiction.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

42 days to Mid-Term Elections
(6 Weeks)

Just a reminder to educate yourself on who and how to vote.