Sleet and Opera 7.54u1 Beta

Memphis has become a frozen, unnavigable mess, and we had no warning whatsoever. "You might see some isolated freezing rain and snow today," the weathermen cheerily told us. I guess what they meant was, "It's going to sleet for six hours across the entire tri-state area, then the temperature will stay below the freezing point for the next three days, making it impossible to go anywhere or do anything." Fortunately, our crack Municipal Adverse Weather Patrol Squad, or MAWPS, a name which I just made up, sprang into immediate action by de-icing the interstates. Not the on or off-ramps or any other roads. Just the interstate. Whatever. It got me out of any sort of Christmas get-together, so I say, Go MAWPS.

I downloaded Opera 7.54u1 the other day. I actually like it quite a lot. Not enough to pay nearly forty bucks to get rid of the ad banner, but it's still very good, much better than the last version I tried years ago, and, like Firefox, it easily outclasses Internet Explorer in nearly every way. I particularly enjoyed noting that it's substantially faster as an application than IE, even though IE is half-integrated into Windows to begin with. Of course this means I now have four web browsers and four email clients installed. I'll probably go ahead and drop the Mozilla suite, as it's the least useful. I just can't seem to come up with an excuse to use it.

Which brings me to another thing that's bothering me. I still can't resolve any non-PeoplePC SMTP mail server using any email client. You only get one email account with PPC, which I can understand at 11 bucks a month, but this forces you to sign up for additional POP3 mail services unless you want to go with webmail. And I don't. I fucking hate webmail, because all webmail services suck. I want to use Thunderbird, or christ, even Outlook Express, anything. But when I try to send a message, any client I try will invariably time out trying to reach the outgoing server. I've tried every conceivable configuration. I've tried numerous support databases. I can ping any SMTP server I want, getting instant, regular returns. I just can't send mail to 'em. The only thing left to do is to call PPC support, and I know, as a former ISP tech support rep, that they'll just tell me it's not their resposibility. It's just so fucking maddening. I've even tried a POP3 service based in Ireland, for christ's sake.

The hell with it. I'm going to go watch the DVD commentary on The Royal Tenenbaums.