The Harsh Demands of Internet Explorer

For those of you who are viewing this site with the assistance of Internet Explorer, allow me to apologize.

The fragmented Picassoesque nightmare that was until recently displayed by IE at this web address was the main inspiration for changing from my time-honored travertine textured theme to the sleek Black Cherry Jello color-scheme you see today.

(Editors note: I have changed themes to the most excellently rocking Thesis since I originally wrote this piece, but in that time IE has become no less evil.)

At the time I had hoped that this gesture of humility and subservience would placate Lord Gates and his scurvy minions…

At the time I had hoped that this gesture of humility and subservience would placate Lord Gates and his scurvy minions and allow my transmissions to travel through his esteemed portal unmolested.

But that was not to be the case.¹

Those fearsome software barons, I learned with great unpleasantness, require far greater sacrifice that mere graphical transplant. They required blood.

So I cut open the bleeding heart of the Comma and ripped out some of the most innocent html tags of its precious code, hurling their mangled carcasses in direction of Redmond Washington.

And Lord Gates was pleased and smiled upon me and caused all the exploded pieces of my theme to be restored to their rightful places.

And everyone lived happily ever after…at Castle Microsoft.

Perhaps at this point you may be wondering why your selection of web browser so drastically affects the way you perceive the internet. I was a bit curious myself, and as a licensed Internet Resource I felt it was my duty to get to the bottom of this mystery no matter how much diligent research it would require from whoever I could talk into doing it.

So in this spirit of community service I took the issue to my personal web guru DangerDan who proceeded to explain the matter to me in a presentation brimming with technical expertise and cool little bullet points, the majority of which have since been lost to the impenetrable jungle of my memory.

Microsoft has a difficult time following any system of standardization that they themselves did not personally invent

But the essence of the problem is this: Although there are universal web standards and procedures in place to prevent exactly this sort of ugliness, Microsoft has a difficult time following any system of standardization that they themselves did not personally invent.

As a result, any unwary blog, no matter how fully saturated with witty humor, no matter how fully operational it may be in every other browser known to man, woman, and the occasional sasquatch can still unwittingly run aground upon the jagged reef of software incompatibility.

For my American readers who may have difficulty picturing any group of people with this staggering level of pride and obstinacy, allow me illustrate with a story.

Imagine if you will that the entire world had agreed to a universal system of measurement, one based in and easily divisible by units of ten, a fairly standard number of human digits.

Imagine also that one group of rather stubborn group of people chose to ignore this standard, clinging instead to a charmingly archaic system so chock full or fractions and bizarre measuremental units that even its country of origin had abandoned it with disgust.

Now picture these same people naively expecting the other 98% of the planetary population to measure things according to their standard just because they’re the biggest and because they invented nuclear weapons…DOS… slinkies.

Hard to imagine, I know.

Countries Not Using The Metric System

Anyway, please enjoy the newly non-surrealist visual presentation of the Comma, fully immersing yourselves in the total ominous experience, including Camille’s very own page.

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Tagged as: humor, metric system, microsoft, resources, tech tips