Unanswered

The wind barely moves the stiff, bare branches of the mulberry tree, and its thin twigs stir little more. Their shadows cross the moon-swept brick of the porch, concealing small strips of pale mortar, leaving the unshaded portions an incomplete lattice which appears to waver slightly as the shadows inch back and forth. It reminds me of something I can't quite remember. Was it a dream image, or something I saw long ago? Something barely noticed and soon forgotten as I went about my daily tasks? I puzzle, as might a scholar examining some glyphic fragments left by a vanished civilization, but the mystery will not yield. All I sense is this alluring yet vaguely troubling resonance with something buried deep, some cellular pattern, some charge firing in my mind. I look skyward and see Jupiter, a bright pinpoint like an eye spark, now running well ahead of the laggard moon. The more distant stars wink as they burn themselves toward oblivion, but Jupiter's persistent reflection is unwavering, despite the tumultuous air. The pattern in my head flickers out, another question left unanswered. My foot scrapes mere brick as I turn and open the door and enter the house, its air still, its bought light dissolving both illusion and night's reality.

Our Usual Post Will Not be Seen Tonight, Due to Technical Difficulties

My copy of Internet Exploder has decided to quit displaying images from the web. At first, I thought it was just LJ being hosed yet again, but I tried a Google image search, and the same thing happened. The progress bar shows that the page is loading, but the send/receive icons go dark and the images never appear. At LJ, I get a few user icons, and that's it. Not even a little red "x" to mark where a picture is missing. I also thought it might be my ISP's fault, but I'm now using my backup ISP, and the images still won't load. So, Exploder seems the most likely culprit. I'd fire up Mozilla, but every time I do that, Sluggo has conniptions, and Mozilla doesn't work as an off-line browser, anyway, which I need, being on dial-up. Oddly, Exploder has no trouble loading pictures from its cache off-line, but refuses to fetch any new images. Arrgh! Computers!

Update: OK, I took the risk and opened Mozilla. The images load fine, so it is Internet Exploder! It's been a bit unstable ever since I installed the recent updates and security patches. Microsoft!

Incidentally, when I did that patching and updating, Microsoft informed me that I needed a patch for something called "Direct X." It was a two minute download that needed to be installed by itself, so I left it for last. After it was downloaded, and the install began, another dialog box popped up saying that Microsoft was downloading...Direct X! The estimated time for dowload was 48 minutes. Microsoft had told me I need a security patch for a progam I didn't even have on my computer, and then downloaded the program itself (with the "cancel" box grayed out so I couldn't use it) just so they could have something into which to plug the unnecesary patch! As I said: Microsoft!

Does anybody know if the free version of Opera can be used as an off-line browser? I'm ready to put up with their ad banner, if it gets me out from under Bill's smelly thumb!

Further Update: I was mistaken. IE is not loading images from its cache off-line. It was earlier, but now it seems to have lost most everything but plain text from every web page. The progress bar claims that the program is downloading x nuber of items, but they do not load. That little hourglass icon clings to the cursor like a limpet. I'm back on Mozilla, for the time being. I have no idea what's gotten into IE, and I'd rather not start over with a fresh install of the program, and then go load all those updates and patches one by one. It's looking more and more as though it will soon be Mac time.