Big Flub...

No, that's not my new Rap name.  Just a mistake I made.

I guess in reviewing my history, I've been a bit of a stick-in-the-mud when it comes to browsers.  

Back in the dark ages, when we were all connecting to the internet the original way - putting the smaller flat rock on top of the larger more rounded rock and then using it to pound sand to send the morse code representation of what ever it is we couldn't send in smoke signals, well, I relied on, yeah, the old original standard.  That is, Netscape. 

Remember that?  The old standby.  The stalwart.  I used it for many years, and was temporarily, for a few days, seduced by that new browser, Microsoft Explorer - er, I'm sorry, that was a typo that seems to have made it into production.  That was Microsoft Exploder.

Mind you, for some few months, I enjoyed the combination of Explorer working with Front Page, allowing me to slap all manner of cool widgets into web pages without having to learn to code.  Then the ActiveX controls were released into the wild, er, that is, the software was "Released" and the original demented little bastards got their hands on it and began to wreck havoc.  That is, do bad things to your computer when you were daft enough to trust a Microsoft Product on the Internet.

Yes, my friends, the glory days of every mail delivery bringing at least TWO AOL CDs, along with a magazine or three, legitimate messages and mail, you know, things like bank statements, bills, and ... yeah.  All that stuff that went out with the 20th Century, give or take a bit.

But when Netscrape - er, Nutscrape - whoops, Netscape - finally decided to take that long walk into the ... well, apparently due north into the rear end of some northbound animal who had chosen to stop shortly before contact was achieved, if you know what I mean, I had to make the switch to Firefox.  

And that has been my default browser of choice for ... well, let's see.  Probably the last twenty or so years.  Give or take a dozen or so.  

Then I recently found that my Firefox 78 was woefully behind the now Firefox 101.  Which does mean that the particular software versioning numbers are utterly useless, and we can instead call them "Firefox that worked" and "Firefox that broke."  That's right.  

I had rather heavily tweaked my Firefox installation, in part in self-defense.  I mean, I run a particularly inexpensive, older computer here.  Yes, good old Windows 7, hiding behind three firewalls, because you know I don't rely on only one level of protection.  But I'd managed to train FF (Firefox or Fouled Fox or your option for the first F as you wish) to use limited system resources because I regularly kept about 9 windows open, combined with probably six to ten spreadsheets, word processing documents, CAD drawings, DOS Windows, File Explorer Windows, and ... Well, a whole lot of stuff open.  Because I never knew what brilliant idea would land on the floor next to me after obviously falling from my brain, seeking to see the light of day, or because it missed falling into a certain floor-mounted bowl that was partially filled with water and used for the disposal of brilliant ideas which are somewhat damaged by said light of day and turn out to be exactly what you'd dispose of with a quick flush of some appliance or other, if you know what I mean. 

But with the upgrade to Brokefox, I discovered that while the field that allows one to specify the limited number of processes one might wish to restrict the browser to using still existed, the blithering idiots now "in charge" of Brokefox development (that is, the monkey who has for the longest period of time resisted the urge to fling his poo at any of his co-workers - or cow-orkers - I am not exactly sure how the term is spelled when it comes to software development these days - been out of that field for some time now) decided to remove the programming logic which would reference that field and use it as a limit.  I believe it was replaced by a code snippet which sends a smiling face emoji over a waterfall, for the sick and twisted delight of some demented Monkey - or whatever enjoys that sort of abuse of simple, harmless emojis.  

So now, where I used to be limited to six processes, and maybe only a maximum of 70% of the system's CPU and memory used up, I'm now blessed with sixteen to TWENTY simultaneous processes, causing my arthritic, ancient computer to quite literally fall to it's knees.  Fortunately, one of the programs I keep running constantly is the Task Manager, running in Admin mode, so I can kill nearly anything that runs amok, unless it's tied to my AV scanner, because when it runs off the rails and uses some 85% of the four GIGS of Ram I have installed, my only option is to reboot.  

So yeah, I'm upset and disappointed.  I'm not going to go Chrome, because I'm not thrilled with that option either.  As for Edge, well, I think I made it pretty clear up top here that unless you're using Edge in a walled garden of sorts, you're probably better off to simply take off the helmet and run into the concrete block wall head first.  Full speed.  Not that there's anything known to be wrong with Edge, mind you, it's just that we normally don't hear about Microsoft vulnerabilities until they've managed to produce a patch - about six weeks after they found out it was a problem and out in the wild, expanding around the world.  I know, a couple of you are certainly expecting the old Russian Premier joke - that is, the healthy old Soviet leader died suddenly from a disease the rest of the world knows as an illness that shows up and takes years to kill you, but in Soviet Russia, Diseases do not take time to kill you, they kill you instantly, after years of preparation.  Cough cough.

Anyway, yeah, I'm struggling with potential browser changes.  Mind you, should I become lucky and win the lottery in the next few weeks, I'd probably buy a couple of high end laptops, use one exclusively for browsing the internet, and use the other one to get work done.  Or, that is, I'd do that if I ever came into stupid kinds of money.  You know, multiple millions.  Which is about as likely as me dropping 30 years and ... well, let's just stop right there before I say something even more stupid.  Every so often, the self-preservation brain cells do show up for the party.  Stone cold sober, in full command of their faculties, and looking around at the wreckage the rest of the brain cells created while creatively exploring disaster potential, I suppose, they come in, turn down the wild music, and to the tsk tsk tsk against those wild few who thought it might be a good idea to try swinging from a trapeze while, say, wearing something less than normal attire.  

I shall stop here because I have come to learn that eating is required for most of us to continue to exist, and some mental images are simply counter-productive to that ... well, let's just say "healthy goal".  

And so on that note, I'll wander off to see what else the evening has in store for me.  Still tossing lines into the water, fishing for a new job, and being ... well, I suppose I should say "gently mocked" by the news that in this state, there are 214,000 jobs who need people, and only 93,000 people looking at them.  Mind you I'm trying to be a bit picky, as I have a few more weeks before they pull the tablecloth out from under my dishes, and I'm finding that I'm better at my soon-to-be-gone job than I thought.  Not to blow my own horn, but I get a lot of questions on "how/when" things are done, and I know most of the answers.  Like dad used to say, Experience is what you get when you wanted something else.  Sure wish he would have said "A billion dollars is what you get when you wanted something else" but then I suppose I might want to have that specified as "A legally obtained billion dollars" rather than just the flat "billion dollars".  I mean, when I was at the hardware store a couple weeks ago, I could have bought a couple of million dollar bills for a buck each.  But then again, I suppose they belong in the same cash drawer as the ones the fellow made when he thought he'd be an original counterfeiter, and cranked out a bunch of $18 bills.  Then pretty much realized his mistake when the first fellow he asked for change asked him if he'd prefer three $6 bills or two $9 bills.