Persons of subnormal intelligence on our roads

You know how people always seem to say: “Look on the bright side!”? Well, for 6 years, I could not imagine what bright-side could possibly come from the rise of petrol prices... until today...

If you’re turning left into a street, and another car is in your lane (fully equipped with an 18-year-old P-Plate wanna-be-pilot), whose fault is it if you crash? The guy that’s in your lane of course! And it is times like this that you remember Michael J. Fox playing “chicken” in Back to the Future.

You have two choices: “sit in your lane (perfectly legal) and not move and wait for the other guy to move” or “reverse so that the other guy can use your lane to go the other way (perfectly illegal).” Or you can both just sit there and wait for a cop to arrive (hastened by a call on your mobile of course.)

It is also times like this that you are glad you have two 3-foot sparring sticks in your boot, and perhaps wishing you had a replica of a glock (real or otherwise) in the glove compartment.

But I digress.

Transitions

Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP gives a teaser for Microsoft’s next major release, Windows Vista. WMP11 is both sleek and smooth, has glossy menus and, most importantly, works very very well – the learning curve, I must say, is one of the smoothest I’ve seen to date, whether you be a newbie, or a power-user since the good ‘ol DOS days. You’ll actually find yourself torn between your favourite 3rd party music player (mine is “Media Classic Player”) and WMP11.

The only reason I still use both is because MCP loads about 3 times quicker than WMP (0.8 seconds rather than 3 seconds) and also responds quicker and eats up less system resources. WMP11 does give most players a run for its money in terms of aesthetics and supported formats, but it appears that Microsoft’s move to sync the desktop/laptop machine with “portable devices” such as USB Drives, iPODs and PDAs is their next ‘big thing’. However, I think that like Office 12, WMP11’s “ribbon” toolbars is the best feature Microsoft has implemented since the Disk Operating System Command Line.

Is anyone else thinking, “I actually want to upgrade my software” this time around?!!

Sex, drugs and electric bass

No matter where you surf, no matter how many filters you have and no matter how many ‘Moderate Safe Searches’ are “On” – I can guarantee that you will, at one point or another, ‘stumble’ across a picture of a half-naked (if not completely naked) girl.

I was on xda-developers.com the other night as usual and came across a thread ‘Show off your desktop’s screen’. I read few pages as innocently as a 24 year old can – beholding some of the most creative and aesthetically pleasing desktop screens to have ever graced PDA TFT-LCDs. But at page 45 or so, some dude had (not surprisingly) posted about 5-6 pictures of his PDA desktop with some 21 year old European model in a very lacey “swimsuit”. As expected the posts “diverged” for about 3 pages with Q&A on this supermodel… before getting ‘back-on-track’.
It was mildly amusing but the thought that the world has come from Christendom and is heading towards a: “what-life-is-really-about-is-not-religion-but-pleasure(through-sex)-until-we-die” - IE: The Sex, Drugs and Rock & Roll philosophy - is explicitly evident.

I’ve got nothing against sex, but isn’t there something wrong with sleeping with 1,000 women before getting married? (to one woman?) Or would it be a marriage to a few hundred women? You’ve had sex with 1,000 of ‘em, why marry just one? It’s absurd… But before judging me and my worldview, can I just say that sex was God’s idea in the first place, before you or I or our parents/grandparents/great grandparents/great great grandparents were born:

“Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man…
…For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh…
…The man and his wife were both naked, and they felt no shame.”

The same goes for Drugs and Rock & Roll. I’ve got nothing against drugs; I take them - Panadine Fort does wonders, especially with two in one hand. And music could not be better since the Rock & Roll enlightenment, with symphonies of drums, bass, double bass and electric bass amplified.

...“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

It’s all about the context. Who is your Light?

Walking in Light

The Sons of Korah, what a band, putting God-breathed Psalms into heart-felt melodies, and what melodies they are, making you want to dance like you’re an arm waving penty (I don’t mean ‘dance’ as in a 1 lux night-club at 3am in the morning.)

Psalm 24 has got to be my favourite (barring Pslam 46, but that one isn’t on Redemption Songs…)

“The Earth is the Lord’s and everything in it,
The world and all men who live in her lands…

…Who may ascend to the hill of the Lord?
And to stand in His Holy Place?
He who has clean hands and pure heart,
Who lifts not his soul nor swears to an idol...

…Such is the generation of those,
Who seek your Face, O God... O God of Jacob,

…The Lord, King of Glory.”

Music, it is poetry at its best. Music reaches through time and space and touches the human heart in a way that words cannot.

Those things that are aesthetically pleasing to the eye

You have got to love the way big corporations respond to the smaller, more resourceful underdog businesses. Everybody knows Google, and everybody loves it. This is true especially for those into BETA software and have been testing it since computers were the size of football fields.

Google has had a very unusual history. Beginning with just 2 computers in a garage somewhere in the US of A, Google has grown into the most popular search engine. It is a no nonsense search engine, very slim, sleek and has zero clutter. And that is what makes it so sexy. No banners, no unnecessary (dis)colorations and is easy on the eyes.

Since their foothold in the search engine market, Google have released more BETA software than you can throw a lamb chop at, and even though their software is “technically” still in BETA stages, surprisingly (maybe not), it is as stable (if not more stable) compared to proprietary software (aka: Microsoft).

If you haven’t test-driven Google-Mail (GMail), sign up, you will not regret it.
(3GB inbox!)

Need a no frills, low memory IM chat client?
Use Google Talk (GTalk).

Want fast Desktop search?
Use Google Desktop Search.

The reason why Google is being blogged, is to show that Microsoft is responding to Google’s free software (yes, the above are all free services). If you have not heard, Microsoft has released – for the first time in history – public BETA versions of their software, namely, Microsoft Windows VISTA and Microsoft Office 12. These two software lines are Microsoft’s biggest revenue products, and they have made millions upon millions with every major release – so why change their tactic and release completely free-able-to-download-and-use versions?

If you’ve been onboard and have downloaded these two products, you’ll see the reasons why. Office 12 is very very sexy. The buttons entice you to click them even when you don’t need to, just so that you can see it highlight in beautiful glossy graphics, bringing the whole interface to ‘life’, the stuff you see only in computer games.
Everything within the document is ‘dynamic’, such that when you highlight a paragraph and change the ‘style’, it changes in real-time, so that you can simply mouse-over the style that you want and see each effect on your document, without the messy and clunky pop-up windows with the tedious “ok” button.

Right now, I’m writing this up in Word 12 and I could go on all night. The font is beautiful and the UI is very user-friendly. Office is no more idiosyncratic, although you can still customize the “ribbons” (toolbars) to your liking.

The most useful feature (which should have been implemented years ago) is the bottom left hand bar, which displays the page number “Page 1 of 2 … etc.” and also the real-time word count. No more going to “Tools - Word Count”, one ‘flick’ of the eyeball and you'll know exactly how many words are in your document.

Sexy.

Ripples in time

On the topic of thinking about the past, what to do in the present for the future, there is something to be said about making the most of every moment that you have.

For some, that might be "risk-taking", but for those entrepreneurs, it is opportunity.
There is a song that sums it up excellently:

"One shot in a revolution,
One drop from a poison pen...
One man to start the trouble,
One kiss to seal your fate,
One link in a chain reaction..."

It only takes one significant event to change the whole course of your life.
...be a blessing to others, Jesus was.

What is man that You are mindful of him?

When you think about the things that have happened in the world, are you surprised about where humanity is today? So many things that were done and so many left undone; all the multitude of possibilites that could have shaped this world but didn't.
What would the world be like if it weren't for:

Otto and his design of the internal combustion engine
Tesla and his man-made lightning
The Wright brothers and their first successful flight on their airplane
The USA developing and testing the Nuclear Bomb before other nations
µP development by Texas Instruments

I know it seems like a truism to say "well IF this didn't happen then it would be like this today" or "IF that happened, this might not be", but it certainly is interesting to look back into our past and think about what to do in the present for the future. That is, Past, Present and Future only occurs once in all of human history, and events in our world - whether we can perceive it or not - are strongly linked.

A singer/songwriter says:
"Generations will reap what I sow, I can pass on a curse or a blessing, to those I will never know."

Who would have thought that Adam's one disobedience, seemingly small and insignificant, would cost the rest of the human race, that we would all live in the face of death and decay as result?

BUT similarly, who would've thought that Jesus' one action, seemingly small and insignificant, would change the whole human race, giving life, peace and restored relationship between God and neighbour?

Our actions henceforth cannot be counted too small or too big; we do not know the links in the chain leading to the Final Days; how can we? We do not even know what is in store for us in the next hour.

"Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away."

Someone to watch over me

Wow. I think I just experienced the 'future of smart-software' (than opposed to "AI".) As any power-user would, I had 2 Opera Windows open. Both Windows were maxed in how many tabs each window could hold and as the massive 256MB of RAM was rapidly eaten up, Microsoft Window's fantastic memory management started to "transfer out" data onto my extremely slow (3200 RPM) hard disk. Whilst the magnetic platters churned away, I amused myself... with nothing much in particular, except for 'predicting' the next tick in our ticking coo-coo clock; do pendulums really have to make so much noise?

Anyways, as half expected, Opera crashed and being the good consumer that I am, I sent in an error report; is it just me or do people actually feel some sort of small hope that when you click 'send', you're thinking that it might actually arrive at an actual computer where some employee of Microsoft sifts through the thousands and thousands of error reports and files it accordingly so that in the next patch/major release of Windows (Vista), the report will be useful and help stop programs crashing...?

When the report was sent, it took another 5 minutes for my poor hard disk to catch up. It emptied the memory and dumped the error into a small file hidden away in some corner of my hard disk. In the meantime... the kettle boiled and I now have a mug of black coffee (sweetened).

I entered the room, sat down sigh-ingly and gently clicked (very controlled) the red-O in my quick-launch. A window opened, it was Opera querying me with 3 options:
1. Continue from Last Session
2. Start with Blank Page
3. Always start with Blank Page

I clicked (1) thinking, 'why would anyone possibly click on 'always start with a blank page''... a few seconds later, to my utter astonished amazement, Opera loaded BOTH windows WITH all the Tabs intact!

Wow!!!

I am loving Phil Collins' melodies even more; this has made my night...
...though my black coffee... hmm... *looks away from the clock*.

So the Sky is Falling, and no one knows...

It is certainly interesting the differences between the way people see themselves and the way you perceive them; especially so in cases where you and them disagree significantly on their personality.

Do people really know what they don't know, and do people really not realize what they are capable of?

I had an interesting conversation tonight; I thought that this particular person was quite insightful, knowing the in's and out's of 'social-engineering'; apt to percieve another's personality only after a few conversations/interactions. For it is even through my own conversations that they have frequently been the 'interceder', able to interprete both parties with precision, consequently quelling any idle chatter we might otherwise have been engaged in.

This rates quite highly for me; you don't get many people who are perceptive enough to see a person for who they really are, understand where they are really coming from; as a matter of fact, the exact opposite is true for the majority of people in our Fallen world. IF first impressions suck, they stick, and forever is it the projection of that person, even if it is completely false and unwarranted. What's worse, is that their friends pick up on this false impression, and the cycle is endless - if you stick around in that circle long enough - until they and all their friends see the grave.

Anyways, back to social-engineering... Questions have been raised: What is it to push someone's buttons? Why do some guys 'reveal' more than others? Do you have to push the right button(s) for revelation? Are there actual buttons to push for guys? Especially so in the context of one female who is "just a friend" with another male with no romantic interest?

...and on that note...

Matthew 12 : 32-37

It is said, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." I just want to say that whoever said that must not have spoken a word at all in their life. Words are powerful, they build up or tear down.

FOR it has also been said:

"Whoever speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the {age} to come. Either make the tree good and its fruit good, or make the tree bad and its fruit bad; for the tree is known by its fruit. You brood of vipers, how can you, being evil, speak what is good?

For the mouth speaks out of that which fills the heart. The good man brings out of {his} good treasure what is good; and the evil man brings out of {his} evil treasure what is evil.
But I tell you that every careless word that people speak, they shall give an accounting for it in the day of judgment. For by your words you will be justified, and by your words you will be condemned."

The LORD Jesus could not have been clearer that words spoken reveal what is in one's heart, truly and in fullness; not only that but they have eternal consequences.

Breaks down the common Aussie misconception that words uttered "only jokingly" are 'excusable'... does it not?

The ominous Blue Screen Of Death

BSODs, are what they are commonly known as. It is Microsoft's way of preventing critical errors from destroying either their software and/or hardware as well as providing useful debugging code to their analysts and other programmers. But to the consumer, it is laughable - for some. However, for others BSODs are annoyingly painful, especially if it starts to happen on your daily workstation that stores all your E-Mails since 1995.

Like the Poweruser that I am, I got sick of seeing the BSOD. It started happening 5 days ago, out of the blue (sorry for the pun), whilst switching between Opera and WMP/Explorer. Last night I tried to transfer some of my albums between my PDA and laptop. In the middle of the transfer, Windows gave a bad_pool_caller at address cX000000D1... which obviously makes no sense to me. Upon reboot, it ran fine for 5 minutes, then "froze" again.

I pulled out my external Hard Disk and transferred all my laptop data onto it. Then i inserted my Windows XP Install Disc and deleted the partition on my laptop. It felt satisfying, to delete your 80% fragmented hard disk and create a brand new partition (I skipped the Low Level Format.) Four hours later, everything was up and running, all my essentials and peripherals - the feeling was great; since Windows now loaded within a fraction of what it used to.

The BOSD is still phantasmous to my system however, sticking its ugly head during one shut down (!) and without fail upon remote connections.

...next up, memory module diagnostics...

From needles to haystacks and everything inbetween

Apparently there has been a "silent rebellion" against BLOGs (short for Weblog.) This came as a surprise to me, since a BLOG allows one to keep up-to-date with loved ones, "just friends", and acquaintances (and also those would-be-listed-above.) Now I know some are thinking, "but BLOGs are so impersonal"... if we traverse down that path, "ain't all cyber-'stuff' impersonal?" I'll consider that POV rebutted.

A few reasons come to mind as to why BLOGs are a great way to communicate - first, it is like a journal, diary, or rambling-post, depending on the personality behind the screen. However, it is also unlike a journal, diary or rambling-post, since it is impersonal, and whoever is writing it is sure to know that the audience is a little bit larger than one's own voice in one's head (sorry, stuck in 3rd person.)

I have seen BLOGs where it is just drama after drama in someone's daily life, but I've also seen some awesome BLOGs that categorize one's life - into a creative and interesting read... it's just like picking up a good book (and that's saying a lot.)

People have been writing a lot of rubbish since the dawn of time, and don't I know it, working in a Remainder Bookshop - what makes it all worthwhile however, is that one gem that you find in this massive stockpile of rubbish. If I may adapt an analogy, it is like finding a 24 carat solid gold needle in a 4 metre radii haystack.

It is well worth it.

Colossians 3:16

Music. It invokes emotions deep within; affecting our hearts and our minds like nothing else can; at times it even brings out the things in us that we did not realize were there, to feel what we had never felt before. What the most articulate person cannot communicate, the musician accomplishes in a few minutes.

What is it about music that makes us emotional; reveals what is in our hearts, in our innermost self? And what is it about listening to your favourite track that can make the gloomiest day into a joyful day? - as the music brings you back in time to the days worth remembering, and remember them you will, so vivdly and so gloriously.
It is music that can take us into the realms of another person's life, put us in their shoes so to speak - as they sing the song so emotionally and so powerfully.

... You may have heard it said, "it's just 'music"... that might be true void of all external forces; in the grand scheme of things however, music is not just 'music'. It seems to me that while society and the 'quality of life' has improved since the adoption of Cartesian mechanics and philosophy, this extreme view/application is simply not true.
To be made in the Image of God (a non-negotiable "condition" of our existence), we as humans are effected by the things arounds us, and this includes music. So the music we listen to is important, just like the friends we hang around and the stuff on TV/Movies that we fill our minds with.

And whilst I do hold that the material 'stuff' in our world does not hold any sort of special property (contesting Aristotelian metaphysics), the world is a little bit more complicated than that,... and isn't that the truth.

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as you sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in your hearts to God."

The following takes place between 7:03 AM and 7:10 AM

If you've ever followed Jack Bauer, the ex-Marine Black ops agent, and 'allowed yourself' to be absorbed into his world, you'll know that this is one of the best scripted TV Series around. Agent Bauer almost always uses the element of surprise against the enemies of the United States, which means that most of the time he is unarmored, carries only a sidearm and very rarely has other agents as backup - on the rare occasion that Bauer does have backup, you can most certainly say "KIA" before the hour is up.

So what makes this show so interesting? Well, the above is a precis based on 5 years of 24 broadcasting. If you're not addicted yet, and want a chill-out 'thing-to-do' after a hard day's (week's) work, 24 is right up your alley. I haven't given anything away so if you're blessed enough to have friends whom own the DVD (or if you are going to collect them yourself), then that is the way to watch this series, on DVD, with episodes back to back.

Anything can and will happen - the writers of 24 have proven this - which I suppose in a sense reflects what is in the 'real-world' that we see and live in everyday. Without trying to "justify" a TV show to say that it is humanity personified - Jack Bauer in 24 gives us a glimpse into the world that most of us do not (will not) see; our world that is not perfect; our world that has enemies; our world of freedom in that which we live has a blood-stained-history, which continues to be stained by blood, because as long as humanity has differing agendas, the world will be at war, if not at a global level, then at a local level.

AND it takes people within their certain "day jobs" and their daily sacrifice to keep the rest of us safe; protecting the interests of our freedom. And we are indeed a blessed generation, a generation of westerners who can do almost whatever-they-want, so freely and unrestricted; dare I say most of us will probably never see anything close to what our grandparents or great grandparents witnessed, the World Wars of I & II... hard to imagine those wars were only less than one hundred years ago.

...that was probably a little bit too heavy for a one-hundred-word review of 24.

What do the red dots on the radar map mean?

The Command and Conquer (C&C) series was groundbreaking in technology in RTS (Real Time Strategy) gaming. Since its debut in 1996, it has grown from seedling into a full-grown apple tree, complete with franchised products. Alas in its growing pains, Westwood, the creator of C&C (which saw 1 sequel and 1 prequel) was bought out by the arcane Electronic Arts.

Electronic Arts have been around since I can remember IRC (Internet Relay Chat) when it was free(!) - and that was back when 33.6K Modem on dial-up bandwidth was "top of the range". They made quality games, solid in engine and beautiful in aesthetics. Firefight brings back awesome memories, much like 1942 does to those who remember the explosion of arcade-gaming-machines.

But the expansion of EA proved that growing too fast with money as your end goal is nothing but disasterous. Those who own C&C: Generals with the Xpac: Zero Hour know about the bugs that litter the game's code. While aesthetically pleasing, the engine was that of an old Ford Laser. It leaked memory like nobody's business giving way to hackers that would exploit flawed code to their advantage. For those who MPed (Multi-Player) online know the frustration, as they witnessed 1% completed SCUD Superweapons being launched endlessly without cooldown time, laying waste and luminously-neo-green biotoxins throughout the map in a matter of seconds.

But kudos to EAP (EA Pacific) for going back on their "offical last patch" - to patch the biggest flaw seen in RTS gaming. It took months, and it cost EA. Online gamers disappeared in a matter of days, and the EA Servers saw no activity. The patch fixed up major problems (which to EA's credit, every game released is bound to have problems) but the General Servers would never be the same again.

For the fans of Tiberan Dawn spanning the Red Alert series to Tiberian Sun, the Command & Conquer series have proved the best in imagination and creativity in SCI-FI storyline. The graphics have been beautiful to watch, whether that be seeing the multitude of lights light up your LCD as 100 tanks get obliterated by 10 rocketmen in bunkers with MIGs as air support, or just watching the door open as your first Minigunner runs out of the barracks, pretty technology has never come so far so quickly.

Generals and the expansion pack Zero Hour is highly recommended by a love-at-first-sight Real Time Strategy Gamer, the first C&C to have full 3D graphics and most diverse army and arsenal at your disposal; where micromanagement is key and often turns the tide of the battle. And if the game does not improve your strategy thinking, it sure will improve your mouse-precision, even if it is just improving the speed and accuracy of clicking cell Z-239 in your cubicle at your office while you're working overtime because you've played Zero Hour for the past 70 hours straight.

...now when does EA release the next C&C...

Why Adam and Eve weren't created as babies

---
The early chapters of Genesis, which can be found in another best-seller, would have been a little different if Adam had been a five-year-old.

God: You may freely eat of every tree of the garden...

Adam: I don’t like those trees. The fruit is ewwie.

God: Ewwie?

Adam: The bananas have brown spots. Can you make a fruit cocktail tree?

God: Please, let me finish…You must not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil...

Adam: That tree is ewwie, too. The fruit is green. Green tastes funny. Can I climb the trees? I want a tree house...

God: Okay, enough about the trees. Let’s move on to naming the animals...

Adam: I already did. I named them all Rocky. When I call them for dinner, I only have to use one name...Rocky, here Rocky, come on boy...oh, look a stampede...

God: I’d really prefer that you give each type of animal a different name.

Adam: How about Rocky, Rocky II, Rocky III, Rocky IV...it would be just like that movie! Maybe we could name all the girl animals Adrian...Yo, Adrian! Here girl...come on girl...

God grew exhausted talking to young Adam and caused a deep sleep to fall over him, although it took a while because Adam insisted he was too big to take a nap and said he needed a story...and a drink of water...and his binky...

Netscape, IE, FF and Opera

Webrowsers have come a long way. Back in the day of IRC, I used to use Netscape Communicator (version 3.8 - 4.5.) That was great. It looked pretty, and functioned quite well. Then I remember Evil Microsoft - the software giant that wasn't then, but is now - attempting to 'integrate' the 'offline' with the 'online'. How? Its solution was Microsoft Explorer; coupled with the release of (a neat function) ActiveX Desktop. I looked and played with ME for a while, but still stuck with what I knew, the pretty Netscape Communicator.

ActiveX however, was fun - it allowed you to "paste" 'stuff' on the desktop; so that your desktop was not static (as today's desktops are) but could have animated pictures such as "GIF" files. It undoubtedly slowed down your machine, but at that point ActiveX was still new, and there was great potential for dynamic desktops.

That is until the United States Department of Justice took on Microsoft and 'forced' them to make Microsoft Explorer a "non-integral" part of the Operating System. Microsoft complied (not that they had a choice) and essentially 'renamed' their new browser into what we all know today: Microsoft Internet Explorer. They also removed ActiveX (from their Operating System) which to date I still miss (although the protocol is still within their Internet Explorer browser.)

I used MIE for a good number of months, just because it was so easy and resourceful. It came with the OS and I did not need to download newer versions of NC. MIE also supported the 'newer' standards of HTML, which in effect made a lot of the webpages prettier. There was no ugly 2CM borders and scroll bars for the sites which still used Tables and there was the promise of a new type of code that allowed webpages to have Tables without the ugly boxes that seperated the different sections.

While MIE was good, it was flawed, and has seen more viruses than any programmer would in any two lifetimes. Trojans, Worms, Brute-Force, Standard, Mass Mail, MBR, you name it, MIE has seen it.

And that is when we all switched, to Open-Source Code, Mozilla's Firefox. I will say that Firefox is fun, you can customize it (skin it), you can download a multitude of applets and "plug-in" your FF and most of all, FF supported almost all standards of HTML. FF was taking the world by storm, and it even had a reliable download manager for your massive 10GB downloads. Most of all, it did not have security issues like MIE did. Alas, FF would crash in the most important of 'surfing' and when it did, you lost all 600 tabs which would be open simultaneously.

The browsing experience was almost perfect... if it weren't for the crashing...

...I read a review a good 2 months ago and stumbled across yet another webrowser. Opera. I took a quick look at their website and was throughly impressed.
The "wow" factor was adrenaline pumping, so I downloaded Opera. I used it for 5 minutes and was hooked.

Not only does Opera have a Tab feature like Firefox, but it also saves your "last session" and "reopens" it the next time you execute Opera. I think this feature alone is enough for one to switch browsers. You can have your Weather report, your Inbox and your other favourite sites open all the time. And even when you shut down the application to run your favourite game, and reopen it after, it simply restarts when it left off - it is what the Windows' "hibernate" feature should be. Now I can have my 600 tabs open and if it does crash, I won't lose all my precious (un-bookmarked) websites.

Moreover, the download manager appears better than Firefox's. It can actually resume files, rather than give an error about not being able to find the file, consequently restarting the download from the beginning (from the site where it mysteriously could not find the file.)

But all is not well, and a sad reminder that we do live in a Fallen world. Opera is not as widespread as MIE or FF (for those who don't know, NC is dead.) That means that certain pages will have problems in displaying correctly (GMail is one) and can cause some annoyances (sometimes even using MIE so that you can view the webpage.) Another is the "tag" feature of this blogger site - in Opera, the content within the tags do not display properly, which is sad, since this site has been so well generated.

Alas, one cannot have everything - if they did - what would be left for Heaven for all of eternity? Certainly only the best of the best should be reserved for all eternity; I sure would not want it any other way... but I digress...

On the topic of Bill Murray movies

Stifled meaning without the fireworks - reminds me of Memoirs of a Geisha - what is life, without purpose? And what becomes of your purpose when the world around you so radically changes?
Similarly to MOG, Lost in Translation is sad, depressing but fun all at the same time ("down to earth" i suppose); however, what can be said about Life Aquatic? Except that it is absolutely hilarious - fun for the whole family ('tho. it is rated MA15+)...

Now here's some trivia for ya - did you know:
"The kiss between Bill Murray and Scarlett Johansson at the end of the movie was not in the script, but was an "in the moment" ad-lib between the performers."?

And remember, "for relaxing times, make it Suntory time."