adventures of a las vegas dullard

[spatch]

First person to answer "Why doesn't IE on a Mac recognize that if I'm in a text entry window and I hit the HOME key, chances are I wanted to go to the beginning of the text line and NOT the beginning of the page?" without using the words "microshaft" or "internet exploder" or any tiresome "use some other browser" bullshit wins the privilege of not being socked in the snoot. I don't feel like explaining or justifying myself to zealots. It's just that I can't do what I want with what I've got, and I'm rather ... mystified. Some developer never did much online writing, that's for sure. (-1, I Am Tired)

I stayed up most of last night on the 20th floor of the Sahara, window open and Stratosphere blinking ahead of me. Had a lot to write about, but now that I'm actually in front of a computer I don't have anything to transcribe because, well, the paper's all back in the room. Hopefully being read by the housekeeping staff. If they can decipher my scribbly late-night handwriting, more power to 'em. As it stands I feel like the biggest dullard in Las Vegas right now, not having gambled or clubbed or even bothered to throw away money on anything except food.

There were some ideas percolatin in my head about what to do while I'm here. Unfortunately the Young Electric Sign Company has its neon sign boneyard open "by appointment only" and getting an appointment involves making a minimum $50 donation and hanging around on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. So it goes. There's a group that's taken a few of the signs from the boneyard, refurbished them, and stuck 'em around Fremont Street if you wish to take a free walking tour, but it involves hanging around Fremont Street at night.

I am going for Pho though. You cannot deny me my weekly bowl of beef noodle soup, no matter how hard you try.

There was a loudmouth tourist on my flight out. Lord I can't figure out who I was more embarrassed for: him, or the rest of us. He was on his second or third vodka tonic (eh?) and was loudly explaining to his seatmates why he loves Vegas.

"CAUSE IT'S SIN CITY, BABY, I LOVE IT, THERE'S NO RULES, YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT, IT'S AWESOME, I CAN'T WAIT TO HIT THE BEE JAY TABLES, AND AFTER THAT I'LL GET THE OTHER BEE JAY IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, YEAH, YEAH, LOOK AT HIM, HE'S NODDING, YOU KNOW HOW I ROLL, BROTHER, HEY BABE CAN I GET ANOTHER ONE OF THESE, YEAH, BOY THEY SURE KNOW HOW TO PICK 'EM ON JETBLUE DON'T THEY, DO THEY LET YOU OUT OF THE AIRPORT HONEY? DO YOU WANNA PARTY WITH US? I BET YOU'RE A PARTY GIRL, YEAH, I WENT TO BODY ENGLISH LAST TIME I WAS HERE OH MAN I HAD A BLAST, I COULDN'T GET INTO PUR OR RAIN THOUGH, I'M NOT SURE WHY, BUT I'M GONNA POUND EM BACK LIKE NOBODY'S FUCKIN BUSINESS NO MATTER WHERE I AM, YOU KNOW, OH YEAH, HE'S WITH IT, YEAH WE'RE GONNA PARTY IT UP, NO RULES IN THIS TOWN, NUH UH, IT'S LIKE OH SORRY COMMISSIONER, I DIDN'T KNOW SHE WAS YOUR DAUGHTER..."

I sat in my seat, headphones over my ears, and silently said little prayers like I hope you get fucking taken for every cent you've got, you bastard. I hope they roll you right outside Cheetahs. I hope you "roll, brother" to some strip mall and end up gettin that Bee Jay from someone named Coco, and I hope she rolls you, brother, for all you've got.

But that's just how I roll, brother.

Comments

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, this particular question isn't one for which "stop using IE" is the most relevant answer. However, there are others for which it is.

On the other hand, it always bothered me around 2000-2001 when Mac users complained about "Micro$haft Exploder", since for a while, IE 5.x for Classic Mac OS was actually one of the very best Web browsers available on any platform. Yet there were Mac-zealot Web pages at the time explaining that Netscape 4 "rendered pages better", a statement that was wildly incorrect according to W3C specifications, however it may have made sense according to someone's resentments against Microsoft.

The Mac OS X version, on the other hand, always felt like a not-very-smooth port of the Classic version, and with little work being done on making it better, it was eventually overtaken by the Mozilla-based browsers and others. But it shipped as the standard Mac OS X browser until Safari came along, so on many older Macs that are not yours to install software on, you're likely to be stuck with it.

[yuda.livejournal.com]

In this case, "stop using IE" is part of the answer, though. Mac/IE was very good software for its time, but that time is long past. I go back and forth between Safari, Firefox and Camino, myself. Safari is winning lately.

As to the home/end usage, I'll reiterate what was said above about the original mac guidelines, but I'll also say that, in many cases, I think the Windows guidelines are more intuitive: if I'm in a text editor, the beginning-of-line/end-of-line function is much more useful.

However, in a web browser, home and end going to the beginning and end of the page makes an awful lot of sense and is behavior that I hope never goes away.

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Yeah, my usual behavior on Macs is to use Safari and switch to Firefox for the few sites that Safari can't handle (usually complicated commercial or finance sites of some sort). I prefer Safari but they're far more likely to have actually tested it with Firefox. It's possible that I may be able to use Camino for some of those sites instead, but I haven't done enough experiments, since I only just started looking at Camino again after a long hiatus.