Wednesday, June 30, 2010

2009 air mileage

4820 - New York (AA, DL)
4061 - Cleveland (UA, WN)
3868 - Cleveland, Detroit (DL, FL)
3420 - Chicago (AA)
16670 - Tel Aviv (DL)
4042 - Cleveland (CO)
4820 - New York (B6)
1356 - San Francisco (VX)
4820 - New York (DL)
15309 - Brazil, Argentina (AA, AS, JJ)
19400 - Delhi (CO)
3433 - Chicago (AA, NW)
4050 - Cleveland (AA)

90069 for 2009. Ugh.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

quick browser review

#1 – Firefox

Why I use it:

  • Great extension support – notably AdBlock Plus and xMarks
  • I like how I can dock my bookmarks.  It’s a great way to make the screen narrower (in other words, more readable) while making good use of that space.
  • It works.

Why I hate it:

  • It’s slow.  Ridiculously slow to open, and then if I leave it open for more than two days (on my work computers, for example, or when I put my home computer on standby), it gobbles up enormous amount of memory.  I really want a better #1.

#2 – Chrome

Why I use it:

  • It opens up really fast.  If I just turned on my computer and I don’t need to access my bookmarks and I’m doing basic browsing, I’ll just use Chrome.  This only happens on my desktop at home.
  • Good extension support.  It now has AdBlock and xMarks.  Finally.

Why I hate it:

  • Crappy page rendering and video playback.  Sometimes things just don’t work.
  • It’s annoying to use bookmarks.  I need to make a new tab and then click on the bookmarks menu and then click some more?  No thanks.  I’d rather just click on the bookmark like I do in Firefox.

#3 – Safari

Why I use it:

  • Best browser for the iPhone.

Why I hate it:

  • On the PC it’s installs itself whenever anything Apple needs to be updated.  DOJ should get on it, because it’s not cool to have a new version of QuickTime, Safari, Bonjour, and whatever crap installed every time I upgrade iTunes (which is now a beast).
  • Weird keyboard shortcuts.  Ctrl-T, Ctrl-Tab, Ctrl-L, Ctrl-E, Ctrl-W.  Thanks.

#4 – Internet Explorer 8

Why I use it:

  • Work.  Intranet sites.
  • It’s a good second browser if I want to be logged in using different accounts for different services (like Facebook, e-mail, etc.).  Any browser can do this, but I have IE installed on all my PCs so it’s the default.

Why I hate it:

  • It takes several seconds to open up a new tab.  Unacceptable.