It’s been a relatively lax day at work today so I have been catching up on tech news. Little did I know today was the release of Google’s web browser, Chrome.
Needless to say, I’ve been reading about it and even watched a bit of their announcement before my F5 / refresh was fruitful. I immediately announced the live download link to my coworkers (fellow helpdesk techs) and away we went. Here’s what we found within the first thirty minutes.
- 2 out of 4 installs failed. Two guys are getting an application error when trying to launch Chrome. Re-installations failed as well (although they have not tried completely uninstalling first).
- One guy noted that Chrome messes up the myspace moods list. It doubles the list, throwing one half of the list in non-alphabetical order.
- The same guy notes that word wrapping in our ticketing system is not working right as it displays the same letter twice when getting to the edge of the window.
- Chrome does not prompt me to save and quit if there are multiple tabs open. It just lets me accidentally close all eight tabs!
On a more positive note, Chrome does seem to be a rendering beast! It has opened espn.com and Flash-ladened myspace pages much, much quicker than IE7 and Firefox. What I look forward to is the stability Google promises — if a webpage “crashes,” it should not affect the entire Chrome browser, just the tab the page it is opened in. That’ll be a good change in pace as I have been having problems with both IE7 and Firefox lately. (Flash causing IE7 to crash and Firefox not playing Flash movies after being opened for days.)
As a self-proclaimed Google loyalist (that one’s for you, Ann!), I say it’s definitely worth downloading and trying out. Let me know how it works for you!
The lack of posts recently is because of my right arm acting up again. The pain is spread out more than before and I am feeling some finger numbness (mostly the thumb and pointer finger). I’ve iced it a few times today and have been putting off work projects. It may be carpal tunnel or it may be a pinched nerve, considering, the pain starts at the back of my shoulders. I’m going to start doing stretches and working out everything but my arms to see if I can strengthen my body. Sitting around the computer and sleeping do not make a healthy Nina.
I did get a sweet tip from an unsuspected source. Thanks to my friend Jody, I went to see the world premiere screening of Frag at the AFI Dallas International Film Festival. This movie showed the ins and outs of professional gaming and although, I’m definitely a casual gamer at most (I enjoy TextTwist, Tetris, and Wii games every now and again) I could relate a little to these guys. Just because I can fix computers doesn’t mean I spend all day with ‘em!
Anyway, one of the main characters of the movie is a guy with the screenname, “Fatal1ty.” He is one of the best professional gamers in the world and has paved (and continues to pave) the way for this sport. His story is incredible and now he is making $$$ selling specialized mouse pads and gaming gear plus he just signed a 2.5 million dollar contract with a television channel and gaming league.
This long story is to tell you that after the film during the Q&A session, one person asked, “Do any of you suffer from carpel tunnel?” Both gamers (Rafik “LoSt CaUsE” Bryant was there as well) answered a surprising NO, NOT AT ALL, and added they both run several miles a day. Fatal1ty highly recommended resting the forearm on the mouse pad instead of the wrist to relieve the pressure from the nerves in the wrist. Coming from a guy that played games 24-48 hours straight and started his company from mouse pads, I’m going to give it a try!
If you haven’t noticed, I’ve started to use Twitter. You can see my Twitter updates on this blog (to the right, to the right!) and I’ve set Twitter to automatically update my facebook status. I was hesitant about using it at first, but now I’ve jumped on the bandwagon. Guess I’ll find out if that bandwagon goes anywhere!
For a neat, quick explanation of what Twitter is and does, check out the video:
