I really want to like the Safari 4 beta for Windows–I do! L. told me about it one time when I was bitching about FF on Windows (which, in my defence, does take forever to start on XP, especially since I use it so seldom and it’s always got four thousand updates to do), and since he’d said the magic word–fast–I finally got round to installing it. He’s dead-on right that it’s quick, and it even looks pretty good, but goddamn it to hell anyway because I cannot for the life of me find a way to turn off that idiotic menu that drops down in my face every time I start typing in the address bar (or the search bar, for that matter). Why, why, why must every fucking browser assume that I want it to “help” me find something, or that I can’t search my bookmarks if that’s what I want to do? I learned to touch-type roughly a quarter of a century ago, I’m fast, and I can still manage it just fine. If I wanted help to go to a URL, I’d ask for help, but I don’t because…I don’t fucking want help. If I’m typing a URL, I know what I want, and all the browser needs to do is just sit there patiently and wait for me to tell it where to go. Auto-whatever is always fucking turned on by default, always a pain in the arse to turn off, and I abso-fucking-lutely hate it. A browser is a piece of software, not a personal bleeding-jesus assistant, and all I want from a browser is for it to DO EXACTLY WHAT I TELL IT TO DO! Not more, not less–exactly what I tell it, and hurry up about it. I can live with deleting the default bookmarks that come with a browser (though that is a minor annoyance because they’re never anything useful to me), and I can live with changing the home page from the company’s (which it is always) to whatever I want. What I can’t live with is “presumptuous” software.

I went into Safari’s settings and turned off anything that even remotely looked like it might maintain a list of sites I’d visited. I don’t have any bookmarks in it because this was only the third or fourth time I’d run the goddamned thing (I restarted each time I changed settings) and I didn’t import anything from anywhere. I told it to clear everything as soon as I closed it, and I even turned on something I believe is called “Private browsing”. Not that I care whether anyone can see sites I’ve visited–there’s nothing incriminating in my history–but I’d hoped that might stop it from trying to “help” me. Nope–it just presented me with a useless list of sites it got from…somewhere. I don’t know; maybe sites I’d visited two minutes earlier, or old IE favourites, or something from a FF profile, or maybe they’re not even mine at all and just came with the browser. I don’t care. Whatever they are, I want them fucking gone.

Stop “helping” me! Don’t remember anything, don’t save anything unless I tell you I want it saved–that’s why I have a mind of my own. Just do exactly what I tell you to do. Is that so difficult?

Incidentally, this is one of the reasons I hate Charter so much (one of many). I was frustrated and typed, “www.fuckoffsafari.com” into the address bar. By default behaviour, since Google is set as my default search engine, it should have at least taken me to Google search results (FF default behaviour for that is to take you to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” results, but dunno about Safari). It used to work, but a couple of years ago, those cocksuckers at Charter sold us out to Yahoo!, so now, if you type in an invalid URL, or try to use a keyword which you’ve not already “tied to” a bookmark, you’ll get taken to their search page. There’s no way to turn it off (all you can do is reset your default search engine to Google instead of the Yahoo! they made it, and I did that long ago), and the first results are sponsored. There aren’t many for this, but if the term is more popular, you’ll have to scroll down 2/3 of the page to even get non-sponsored results, and when you do, they’ll be crappy fucking Yahoo! results, even if your default search is set to Google. Bastards. They can all DIAF as far as I’m concerned.

I was using XP yesterday and decided I’d give in and update to the latest version of Messenger (okay, after I’d determined that there was an A-patch available for it). A 100+ MB download (I didn’t do the auto-update because I wanted to make sure I could patch the current version) and unchecking a whole lot of “install this, too!” options that were checked by default (Christ on a crutch), I have Live Messenger 2009. I don’t mind it–I’m neutral about it, at least after patching to remove crap I don’t want–but there is one thing I didn’t like, and it’s the reason that both L. and I were right about where avatars are stored, even though our opinions were opposite. I’d asked him why he had his Hello Titty (sigh) avatar when he’d only just installed Messenger, and he said it was stored on the MS server. I said it couldn’t be, since mine varies according to whether I’m using XP or Ubuntu, and upon which computer. I even booted the laptop to check for sure. We were both right. He was right because he had previously installed the 2009 version, and the option for “Use the same display picture and personal message wherever I sign in” is checked by default (and he’d probably left it that way, since he is not an anal retentive control freak like me). In order for that to happen, the image and personal message must be stored in a central location. I was right, too, because until yesterday, I’d never had 2009 installed on any computer, and I’d never had that option, so mine were all still locally stored. I still don’t have that option, since I unchecked it…because it’s presumptuous for it to be checked by default. If I want continuity over all of the computers I use, then I will check it. I don’t, so I won’t. Fuck off, MS. Then again, I’m hardly surprised when MS does shite like that; I pretty much expect it from them. 😉

I think it’s gonna be one of those days. I woke up with a tension headache, and nothing has yet happened that’s likely to make it go away. This week can’t end fast enough to suit me. Argh.