My new home page!! SoYouWanna speak with an Irish accent?
hee. no, I’m kidding. My home page is the boring but always error-free about:blank. I know! so non-descript! If it were espn, or nytimes, or something then that would tell you a little bit more about me, right?
No, my “Home” page serves a much more practical purpose than that. It’s a throwback from my “unreliable internet” years when my connection would be completely crap (read: AOL). I despised (and still despise) getting those “page cannot be displayed” messages. I think it’s part of my hidden deep-seated resentment at being told I can’t get what I want (harhar). So this scenario would often happen:
pearl gets on computer. she is cheerfully opening up applications. on reflex, she opens up IE.
wait! she’s not connected! doh!
computer is heard humming away, workin’ all 120mHz of pentium power with all its might….
Pearl: no!! stop!!
pearl hits stop button. frantic click click click.
computer still hums away, stuck on trying to open IE and open page…
Pearl: NoooooOOOOOOOooooooO!!!
computer finally realizes its being told an alternate command, ceases looking for page, but only after having just realized it’s not there and just before displaying “page cannot be found.” Browser displays “action cancelled” instead.
pearl sighs in half-relief, half frustration
So you can tell I got really tired of this after a while. When my young teenage mind discovered that you can set your home page to about:blank, needless to say, I was very happy.
One of the things I miss about Netscape (-sigh- rest in peace, you now-clunky browser) was that you can set the page you start up with about:blank, but have your home page be something else. Isn’t that kind of special? Netscape had some good ideas back in the day. Now it loads too slow, pages don’t display properly, and it’s [voice]now more unstable than ever[/voice]. I’d go purchase Opera, but I’ve wussed out so much on my anti-Microsoft stance nowadays (Apple sticker on monitor notwithstanding) that I don’t even mind IE anymore.
[weeps]