Category: Comment

This morning when I went to check my mail and have a quick surf, Firefox and *Thunderbird had both lost my profile. Firefox had actually done it a few weeks back, too, but back then I had been running an old version and decided to take the opportunity to upgrade to the latest “preview release”.

So when the same thing happened this morning I was kind of peeved – and I don’t believe it’s the fault of either of these fine Mozilla products. Y’see, since Fliss got The Sims 2, the computer has been acting all weird. After she’s played it, when you shut down it insists on re-starting instead, and runs the scandisk utility as it does so, claiming that there’s a problem with the disk integrity.

I know I can probably rescue my *Thunderbird and Firefox profiles by re-installing both of them – I’m sure they’ll pick up the old profiles, as they’re still there, but whatever is causing this is a mystery to me.

The hunt is on for the connection between the above events, though.

I’ve made a few changes to the site, which you can probably see. The grey is a bit of a departure from the usual hues of blue I tend to go with, but I decided I needed a bit of a change of direction for a while.

It’s not totally done yet – the archives page hasn’t made the transition yet, and there are aspects of it I’m not completely happy with. As a rule I like to get this site out of the way in a couple of days, though, before it becomes a pain in the ass as opposed to being somewhere I can just go off on one.

The CSS validates, which is nice, although the XHTML doesn’t because I have targets and other non-compliant stuff in the URL‘s, so although the code is safe and sound I cant really wear the validation patch on my sleeve with any authority. Validation is for geeks and students anyhow – I’m too much of a loose cannon for all that! ;o)

Regular(!) visitors will probably loathe the new look, I imagine, so if you have any comments to make you can drop me a line at robert@infoxicated.com.

I decided that since I’d been using the Firefox browser for over a year now, I would buy some stuff from the Mozilla store by way of contribution to their efforts. So a couple of weeks back I ordered a t-shirt and a little firefox plush toy, the former because I like having tons of t-shirts, and the latter because I thought it would be a good gag.

On Monday my order arrived, and although the t-shirt was as expected, the plush toy didn’t look too much like a fox. Workmate Adam said it looked more like a racoon, but then Adam’s eyesight was never too hot – unless this particular racoon had been wallowing in a chemical bath, this was just not the colour expected of a racoon.

When I introduced Fliss to the so-called fox on the way home, she was suspicious of the species from the get-go. Doing the sensible thing, she read the label to find the small print that said “red panda”.

A panda?

A red panda?!

I didn’t order no stinking panda… I ordered a fox. Something was rotten in cyberspace.

So I go back to the Mozilla store to find out that their picture of the plush toy was a good likeness of the one I’d been sent. Wow. The great red panda conspiracy was unfolding before my eyes. I was amazed that it could have gone this far without anyone else noticing that they were mailing people panda’s instead of foxes. And red panda’s at that.

I mailed the mozilla store, just to clarify that I’d ordered a fox and not a panda, and they sent me this hilarious but terse reply:
Please read the following factsheet regarding this mammal:

http://www.wellingtonzoo.com/animals/animals/mammals/panda.html

Red Pandas are found in the temperate forests of the Himalayas and some
high mountain areas of China and Myanmar (Burma).
The Chinese name for red panda is hunho or FIREFOX (name for the
browser), due to their colour and similar size to a fox. The soft plush red panda has a nice face and expressive eyes.
This information was posted next to the item in the store available for you to read.