2009

Time to start getting mentally prepared to write "2009" rather than "2008" for the current year. Usually I do not bother until the new year is actually here, but then it takes me awhile before I stop mistakenly writing the old year. I do not have any (or at least not very much) trouble writing 2009 for dates in the future, but I am usually on auto-pilot when it comes to writing the current date. The good news is that most of my trouble in the past was related to writing checks, but these days I write very few checks. The moment of truth will come when I write my first rent check of the new year within the next few days.

It is hard to believe that we have already blown through most of the first decade of the 21st century. And what do we have to show for it? How many of us can say that we are much better off than ten years ago? For a lot of us, the keywords are "survival", "struggle", "hang in there", or even "bankruptcy" and "rebuild."

It will be interesting to see what "keywords" come to describe the next decade for most of us, as opposed to an elite few who can (or might endeaver to) claim that everything is wonderful.

The good news is that a lot of improvements are occurring incrementally in the background, so that we are not able to see them as major forces in our lives today, but they will incrementally become much more visible in the coming years. A lot of the pain many have experienced in recent years is simply the dying off of the old as the new (very) slowly takes hold.

I did not mean for this post to be about traditional new year's resolutions, so I will not make any claims as to what I will or will not do in the coming year, other than to be sure to refer to it as 2009 rather than 2008.

-- Jack Krupansky

Oh well, IE 8 Beta 2 is not compatible with McAfee AV

I updated IE to IE 8 Beta 2, but unfortunately it is not compatible with McAfee Anti-virus, so I had no choice but to revert to IE 7. Oh well.

The problem symptoms were that clicking on an email message subject line in Outlook Express took several seconds to repaint the OE window and left it blank for most of that time, plus the McAfee SecurityCenter window would always come up blank, so that you could not check status or change settings.

I found a message on a McAfee discussion forum which basically says that the problem is known but that no fix should be expected until IE 8 comes off of beta status.

So, I am back to using IE 7 as my system default browser, but I still use the new, non-beta version of Google Chrome for most of my browsing.

I will play with Chrome for another week or so and then decide whether to make it my system default browser.

-- Jack Krupansky

Google Chrome browser now out of beta

As noted in the media, the Google Chrome browser is now available in a non-beta release.

I just updated and it took less than five minutes. Go into Tools > About and you will see a message saying that a new release is available. Click the "Update Now" button, and wait. After the update is installed, you have to exit from Chrome and restart the browser.

I updated from release 0.4.154.29 to 1.0.154.36.

So far, I haven't seen any problems.

All of my bookmarks are intact, but I still do not see any option to sort them.

I am still not using Chrome as my default browser. I'll give it a week and then decide. I should see if IE 8 is available yet... yes, it is... downloading Windows Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 now! It will be interesting to compare the two. I found Chrome to open tabs much faster than IE 7, so we will see how IE8b2 compares.

-- Jack Krupansky

Using Twitter

Just recently I have started using Twitter more frequently. I still do not have any handle on how to use it to create some real value and return on effort, but it at least feels like it is worth at least some minimal effort.

Me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/JackKrupansky

Feel free to "follow" me.

-- Jack Krupansky

Economic depression watch?

I am in the process of starting a new blog, Economic Depression Watch, which will focus on the factors that could determine whether the U.S. economic may or may not slip into a depression in the near future. My personal opinion is that a depression can be easily avoided and will most likely be avoided, but technically one is possible if the government behaves stupidly enough.

The new blog is at: http://economicdepressionwatch.blogspot.com/

I have also registered www.EconomicDepressionWatch.com with stealth redirection to the new blog, but it may take some time for the new domain name to become functional. The blog is already functional, although I have yet to start adding "real" content.

-- Jack Krupansky

Why can't I see charts and quotes in Google Finance using Google Chrome anymore??!!

Just a couple of days ago I noticed that Google Finance was not displaying charts or quote information for stocks when using the Google Chrome browser. I thought maybe it was some service outage on Google's end, but I just tried again and those features are still broken. Even worse, those features do work fine in Microsoft Internet Explorer. What happened?!?! I have no idea. It is amusing that Google Finance is working better with IE than Chrome. Sigh.

I did a little Googling, but found no mention of the problem.

Wait... I just found something:

I discovered that if I empty the cache then pages would display properly.

See: http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Chrome/thread?tid=6ba0171cffa12713&hl=en

But first I simply tried to empty the cache from within Chrome by going to "Customize", "Clear browing data..." and selecting only the checkbox for "Cache" and clicking the "Clear Browsing Data" button, but this still did not fix the problem.

So, I navigated to C:\Documents and Settings\xxxxxxxx\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Cache and saw that there were five files there, "data_0" through "data_3" and "index". I suspected that maybe those cache files might be corrupted, so I deleted them (after closing Chrome first). Nope, that did not fix the problem.

Next, I cleared the browsing history from within Chrome. Still doesn't work!!!!

So, I bit the bullet and selected all of the check boxes to clear the download history, cookies, and passwords. Now... it works fine!!! Yeah!!!

My suspicion is that the cookies were the problem, so if you run into this problem, start by clearing the cookies. Unfortunately, my browsing history is now gone. Poof. Sigh. Maybe some cookie got corrupted. But, it is curious that Google Finance was still working fine with IE.

-- Jack Krupansky