First, let me quickly point out that the post title was created by the Linkbait Generator, providing some of the best laughs I’ve had since, basically, ever.
I didn’t have much luck with Google Chrome when it first hit the Web. I’m willing to take the blame for that. I’d been using Firefox for a long, long time, even after people I trust had warned me that it had turned into a real resource hog. It was familiar, it was comfortable, it was serviceable. The bookmarks folders were bloated, hideous things, like long-ignored crisper drawers, in dire need of trashing and steam-cleaning.
So. I’ve been moving toward an Android phone (a process rendered much more gradual lately), and in the process I’ve been exploring a lot more of Google’s offerings. I don’t know how long Google Calendar has been staring at me from the iGoogle page, but I do know I’ve been pining for a calendar as effortlessly and elegantly simple as iCal on my work computer for over a year. And there it was, begorrah, right on me home page. Fancy that.
Now, wait a minute, Chester, you might say in an inexplicable fit of Band quotation, you have a Crackberry – why haven’t you been using Outlook Express? Sorry, mate, I come from a generation that regards Outlook and Outlook Express to be horrible cesspools of virus and hack bait, oscillating its hips on a street corner of the Information Superhighway, and saying Oo-la, sailor, fancy a butcher’s at me user’s contact list?
I have no idea where all this strange dialect stuff is coming from. It may be time to explore medication.
ANYWAY. This has led me to explore other Googlesque offerings, and as I am sure you know, there are many. Poking around the “Labs” tab on many of the apps brings up even more chimerae lurking in the menagerie. I’ve been using Gmail for years, but I’ve now unlocked functionalities within it I had only dreamed of, previously.
So obviously, it was time to revisit the Chrome Plunge, which should really be the name of a techno pop group. My first encounter with it was marred by the fact thatit was just different enough to put me off my stride, and, remarkably, the Scott McCloud comic that accompanied its launch didn’t help – in fact, I may have been suffering from sensory overload, much like the first time I read Understanding Comics. McCloud’s a smart guy, and unfortunately, I think he believes I am just as smart. No, don’t be put off by my blitherings, this is good stuff. I can’t read philosophy texts either, I’ll read the same paragraph three times and then wake up covered with brightly colored scraps of paper and a slightly inebriated pug-dog.
Man, all this just to turn on a light switch. (Ah, Rube Goldberg, you are the gift that keeps on giving!)
So I eschewed McCloud’s illustrated tract, uninstalled the old version of Chrome lying fallow on my hard drive, installed a new one, and found the process unexceptional and friendly. That was two days ago, and I have not yet turned into some sort of cyber-zombie or suffered any other sort of doom normally associated with mucking about with alien technologies one does not fully comprehend.
So what we’re really getting at here is, as a geek, I am sadly lacking. I continue to poke at Chrome, and I am finding it a slightly different beast on my work computer (which is a Mac) than I am at home (a PC). Wrestling it into a form on the Mac similar to what I was using at home was more involved than I had assumed, but the dust has settled, I’m still standing. I’m looking at an extension list quite different from what I use at home, because I use Chrome for different things at home, and that is one of the best things I’m finding about the browser – I am loving the customization. There have been a few times I’ve been surprised by what it won’t do – with an unspoken “yet!” lurking somewhere in the background – but overall, I guess I’m ready to be welcomed into the fabulous world of 2008.
And I’m going to take another crack at that Scott McCloud comic. Maybe I got smarter.
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