Thursday 15 November 2001

Pic of the day: Strangers in Paradise. Still one of my favorite comic books, even though it is in black & white and about relationships rather than superheroes. Funny thing, that.

The Lucky One (6.0)

A friend sent me a mail pointing me to a free MP3 on amazon.com, a song by Alison Krauss & Union Station. (Sorry, it is an itty bit country. I apologize to my Tennessee readers.) The song was appropriately called The Lucky One. I can see how people would hear that and think of me! ^.^

Despite the funny American accent, I think I've desciffered much of the lyrics. "Loved by many, hated by none" certainly fits me, and how about this: "Not a care in the world, not a worry in sight, everything's gonna be all right, 'cause you're the Lucky One." Oh yes, I guess that's pretty much how the current stretch of life goes here at the Chaos Node.

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Today, for instance, I found the beta 1 of Opera 6.0. If you don't know it, Opera is the small and fast web browser from Opera Software. Despite including the newest standards, it is about as small as ever and faster. It also has some new options to make it easier for migrants from MSIE. Oh, and now there's an explicit menu choice about how to handle popups: Accept popups, refuse popups, or open popups in background. (Whyever would anyone open popups in background? Because some music sites use them to play music. Believe it or not.)

Oh, and it downloads and displays correctly the compressed pictures that crosswinds.net uses. Finally. Getting those up in a fast browser is reason enough for me to upgrade. Actually I finally registered as a paying user too. I would have done that long ago if their system had accepted my credit card long ago. They didn't, long ago, and I don't try again every other day. My hunger and thirst for righteousness is not quite that well developed. Especially since there are other free browsers out there. But I must say that in my experience, Opera is superior. And now it is noticably more superior than before. Lucky me.

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In other lucky news, as you may have seen from today's picture, Strangers in Paradise arrived with its newest issue today. The cover, incidentally, is a reaction to certain recent events in our reality and does not pertain particularly to the contents. It's another tear-wringer for the female readers, I guess. I'm not so easily moved by fictional accounts, but I keep finding it fascinating.

I wanted that comic book from the day I saw a picture of a SiP cover in another comic book. It took me a year or more to get a local dealer to get it from America. I don't know what made me desire it so strongly. Perhaps the fact that the dark-haired girl, Francine, is so very much my type of girl. (She reminds me of an old friend, a lot.) But the title certainly helps too. Because I tend to feel like that. A stranger in Paradise, living a life that is way too good for me. Because I am the Lucky One.