Whee!
We all know I’m pretty tech-stupid. We also know I bought a netbook a while ago. We may also know that I’ve been having problems with Safari (which I use on my Mac) for months and months; it freezes whenever someone even says the word “Flash” in its presence, for example. Or it’ll halt and stick when people have animations in their sig lines on forums. Stuff like that. But of course being tech-stupid-in addition to being someone with a semi-pathological hatred and fear of change-the idea of switching to a new browser made me Very Nervous.
Anyway. Last night I took a little break from working to mess around online. I’ve been using the netbook to write lately; I bought a portable hard drive to use for memory for it (it’s gotten lousy reviews, I see. Personally it works great for me, but again, all I’m using it for is extra memory for the netbook). I find the keyboard on that easier to work on; the keys aren’t as stiff as on the Mac so it’s less painful on my fingers. And-although this may change now-it wasn’t as easy to browse online on the netbook, which meant I focused more on work.
So I decided to do something bold, and download Google Chrome instead of continuing to use IE on the netbook. Yes, it was a crazy move, but I’m just wild that way. I also uninstalled Norton antivirus, because I’m sick to death of being constantly interrupted by it, and installed the Microsoft Malware/Virus tool thingie instead. If I could figure out how to uninstall IE and Netflix I would, because I like uninstalling things and making room.
Anyway. I played with Google Chrome for several hours last night, discussed it a bit on Twitter and io9, and today I decided I like it so much I wanted it on the Mac. So I’m not using it exclusively on the Mac and the netbook, and I’ve installed some nifty extensions (that I had no idea what they were until a Twitter pal and then my io9 pals told me about them and where to go) that make me all happy. It really is MUCH faster than Safari or IE were, and it’s pretty (you can customize the background & colors and stuff) and fun. So I’m recommending it, at least for now, assuming it doesn’t fall apart on me in the weeks to come. It imported all of my bookmarks and saves all of my passwords and does all kinds of nifty things. So I’m happy.
And, I’m about to get back to work. This is a pretty dull little post, I know, but what the heck. I’m in the final stretch of Downside 4-it’s never taken me this long to write a novel before, but hopefully it’ll end up worth it-and can’t really think of much else. All hell is breaking loose, and we have death threats and decayed bodies and nasty witchcraft and ghosts and bloodshed and the requisite personal intrigue and all of that. (And yes, I have used the name of my Name-A-Character-Contest winner.) So I’m at the point now where I’m having tons of fun and I’m about to have a LOT more. Heh heh heh.
And I’ll hopefully have a title to share soon as well; I just sent my editor a big long list of possibilities.
I’ve got a couple of longer ranty posts to go up, but those will have to wait until after the book is finished.
Originally posted at Stacia Kane. You can comment here or there.