This is what peace and quiet sounds like

After all the hoo-raw yesterday, I am loving the sounds of silence. (Hello darkness, my old friend....) I haven't turned on the TV at all today, and I'm enjoying the absence of talking heads. I've been reading some of the reaction to yesterday, though, and it seems that there are some people who are actually a little disappointed that things didn't descend into madness. I suppose it would have made better news, but I'm so glad that things stayed relatively civil!

I think that what really got to me the most was that so many people chose to further their own agenda rather than let the graduates have their day of honor, as was their due. Obviously, things turned out okay, and I'm sure the Notre Dame class of 2009 will never forget their graduation! It really is a topnotch school, and a great accomplishment for them all. In the class which started four years ago, 95% of them graduated yesterday, a remarkable achievement matched only by Harvard and Princeton. For anyone who tried to take the focus off of them, I say "Shame on you! Shame, I say!"

Did you like my melodramatic scolding? That brings me to my next topic, and I think that was a fine segue, if I do say so myself. In the process of moving my favorite sites over to Chrome, I've had a chance to tidy up a bit and toss some that I don't use. I've also come across some old favorites that I hadn't visited for a while, and one of those is the site of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I known I've written about it before, but it's been some time since I did. The BLFC is a chance for people around the world to submit a sentence that is over-the-top in its attempts to show what a great piece of writing it really is. We've all read some bad novels with some really really bad writing, and this is a chance for people to purposefully write something in that vein. It is firmly tongue-in-cheek. I had fun reading the 2008 winners and runners-up, and I think I might have to work on some bad writing of my own. You can submit multiple entries, and I think I'll have fun with this. There's plenty of time to submit--the deadline is April 15, 2010--and I'm looking forward to writing some really bad prose.

One of my favorites from a couple of years ago described a man as having eyes the color of Tidy-Bowl blue. I loved that, and have never forgotten it!

Have I mentioned Chrome here before? I know I did on Facebook, but I honestly can't keep up with what I write and where. I've had increasing problems with AOL, and I was getting fed up. I thought that all along, my browser was IE, and when AOL wouldn't allow me to get into my Twitter page, I sent a very frustrated email to my pal Milwaukee Dan #2. He knew what the problem was (thanks, Dan!) and it turns out that AOL was my browser. Apparently they haven't updated that for a long time, so it's becoming increasingly incompatible with new programs. I was shocked to find out that AOL was my browser. Shocked, I tell you! (I'm practicing for the BLFC.) I started using IE then, and moving some of my stuff over, but I'd been intrigued by Google's browser, Chrome. I had looked at some of the features, and thought it looked kind of nifty.

Dan said that he'd heard pretty good things about it, although he's happy with whatever he's using (Foxfire, I think?), so I asked our British friend Simon, who is a computer guy. Not just a guy who knows a lot about computers, it's actually what he does for a living. He actually has all the available browsers on his computer, because sometimes he has to change code in order to get it to work on all browsers. His favorite is Opera, but that doesn't work with Facebook, so he uses Chrome and likes it--and now so do I. It's very simple, and as he put it, uncluttered. I find it easy to create new tabs to open another site, and he said that Chrome is the only browser that he's never had to tweak code for, so it seems to be a friendly little browser, quite compatible and jolly! Ha! I still have IE, of course (and that's what Ken uses), but Chrome is now my default browser.

Kind of a cool name, too. I use Chrooooome, man. Okay, maybe not. Just another step in Google's nefarious plot to take over the world. I'd say you're doing pretty well with your plot when your name becomes a verb. Maybe one day you'll be able to say that you've been Bethed.