NEVER JET HOT

I am one of the most fickle people around when it comes to Internet sites, tools, and gadgets. I don't even need a reason, I'll jump ship in the blink of an eye. This is why I love this Firefox add-on for managing your bookmarks, Xmarks.com - I hardly use the regular bookmarks, but it puts a little "i" in the address bar, click it when you are at the website of one of the tools you like, and it will provide a short list of VERY similar sites- I know lots of social bookmarking sites have a feature like this, but the key difference is that somehow Xmarks hones in on sites that are very similar. Case in point, I have been using MyHq.com for a portable "one screen" most-used bookmark manager for months, (maybe years!) because I didn't see anything similar- but Xmarks turned me on to MyLinkVault.com - Haven't set it up yet but it looks like it does the same thing but the categories roll up, and it's much easier on the old retinas. They are both fr...

I got the new 2009 version of Quicken, I don't know where I got the idea that they would have made it more svelte, and it wouldn't have that annoying habit of reserving a big rectangle for the quicken logo in the middle of the screen, preventing me from doing other computer stuff while waiting (and waiting) for it to load. I mean, they could have made it a thing on the side instead, at the very least. Tried to sell the wife on a poor man's multi-monitor setup, which involves getting an old laptop do do the easy stuff on the same desk, but unfortunately she thought of an even cheaper version of that idea, which involves playing solitaire on the computer desk with a real deck of cards. Oh well, at least I get to cheat that way.

I downloaded Google's new CHROME web browser last night. So far, I sort of like it. I like searching from the browser bar. The window that comes up with displays for most-used sites, I like it but Firefox's FAST DIAL addon does it better, and comes up every time I open a new window. (At least, that's how I have it configured.) I did have the flash crash while trying to watch a YOUTUBE video but the rest of the browser window I had opened were unaffected, had a bunch of other programs open too. The "Incognito" feature is interesting but I have no real practical use for it, and even if I did, who knows if it really works? It might be like the "Cone of Silence" on the old "Get Smart" show. Lots of the "Internet Pundits" are down on this browser and of course they came up with security flaw(s)... But geez it's a very early beta... Give the gentle Goliath of search a chance before you start throwing rocks at him...

The flock browser has 7 windows open, using less than 100k! I was using Firefox earlier under about the same load, it was using over 400k of memory. So far I like this new browser...

Checking out this Flock browser, supposed to make blogging, posting to flickr, etc. a lot easier- Looks like it does that, and I like the intro screen that presents your recent sites, etc. without any tweaking first. It made me a bit leery at first, took a long time to install (by modern standards) and seemed to be doing a lot of fiddling with my computer's internal dials and switches. Does seem to run faster than Firefox though. More on this later. PHOTO: Teresa at the Everett "Sausage Festival" in 05. I thoughtfully included porta-potty row in this picture. Blogged with Flock

I was just going to purchase Aston Windows Shell online, I had it a few years ago on my Windows 98 machine and it was kind of cool. So I click Paypal, it brings me to a screen which demands that I type in all my details, down to phone number and bra size if I was a girl, nevermind that paypal already has my billing details. But I figured, well, I have a website that does that to customers, (they say it will be fixed in the next release) so OK, I dutifully type in all my particulars. To my shock and dismay, at the order confirm page, they add $3.00 for "manual processing" - Why do they have to "manually process" a PAYPAL order? I still wanted the program though, so I backed up to switch to a credit card (I was going to use my Paypal debit card- nyaaaah!) ... But all the information I has so laboriously typed in was GONE! So I gave up and blogged. PS I went to tell them about the problem but could not find an email link on their home page!

Another web 2.0 service with a clever name, I installed the Lijit search on the sidebar here, what's interesting to me is that you can search this blog, but on the search results page you can expand it to search other blogs... Now, I know I'm not an expert on a lot of things, but we here at The Restless Mouse are getting good at locating novelty items... Other people are experts in their fields... When they come back to the barn you can ask them stuff. Try it! It's kind of cool!

It's quick and easy to use this new Jing.com picture sharing thingie. Here we have some men looking for missing sewer workers in St. Paul Minn. after recent torrential rains. But, aren't they technically storm-drain workers? OH, apparently it doesn't put the image on the PC clipboard, just a link to it. Shoot, what good is that? Back to using Picasa and HELLO I guess.