Fucking Microsoft

Yesterday I updated MSN Messenger. I _like_ MSN Messenger - it's nicer than any other IM client I've used, and if I could access AIM and Yahoo through it I'd dump GAIM in an instant. As it is, GAIM makes for a good second place.

Today, the PC wouldn't open Internet Explorer _at all_. Opening a Windows Explorer window and then going to a website worked, but then pressing Ctrl-N to open a new window would kill both of them (and the taskbar).

It took me about 10 minutes to connect these two facts and uninstall the MSN toolbar that MSN Messenger had handily installed for me.

And now it all works fine.

(Sidenote - on this PC I use Firefox and Lilian uses IE - that way we can both have our separate cookies and both be logged into LJ at once, without all the tedious back and forthing we'd otherwise have to resort to. If anyone has an alternate way of doing this - without either of us being forced to use IE, please let me know).

The Pope

On the one hand I have no feelings about the Pope - I'm not a believer, after all.

On the other hand, he was the head of a group which espoused a set of beliefs I find to be, at the very best, delusional and at the worst, actively oppressive. Which doesn't leave me glad he's dead, but does leave me with a strange disconnect from a world where his passing is major television news because the group is so large.

On yet another hand, he obviously caused all sorts of problems with his stance against abortion, condoms (especially as a prevention against AIDS) and the place of women generally.

And on a final hand he made frequent speeches against war, oppression, environmental destruction and all sorts of things I'm also against.

I know that various people have stepped up to say how much they despise him, and I suspect that we wouldn't have exactly seen eye to eye - but he did have a lot of good opinions in addition to the bad ones, and I'm not willing to join the ranks of those who focus entirely on his bad side.