TrainsMag.com follies

Last night (Tuesday, April 29, 2008) I decided to order two books online from the Classic Trains web-site.
So I cranked “http://www.ClassicTrainsMag.com/promo” as requested into my FireFox, and got the ClassicTrains promo-page; the one you crank the promo code into.
So I dutifully cranked in the promo-code, and it brought up one of the books I wanted to order.
Okay, rolling right along, I fill out the order-form in its entirety, crank in my Visa, and hit “submit.”
Seconds pass, then minutes.
Uh-ohhhhh. Looks like “www.ClassicTrainsMag.com” has gone into the ozone.
“Go do something else,” I say. “Brush your teeth, make coffee; we’re into the ozone........” (ABYSS ALERT!)
“Haven’t you had this happen before with the Trains site?” Linda asks.
“Yes, I think I did,” I think to myself.
Time for Internet-Explorer; the horror-of-horrors; my browser of last resort, because it makes such a mess of things.
I think the Famblee-site still supports it — they were saying they would no longer support Netscape; that I should download-and-install FireFox or Flock.
My blog-site makes a mess of anything I posted with IE, and won’t show the picture-tab. You can’t fly pictures on the blog-site with IE.
—And furthermore, view the blog with IE (as Linda has) and it makes a mess. It shoves text up into my blurb alongside my HTML picture-boxes. I had to no longer use HTML picture-tags so IE wouldn’t do that.
Needless-to-say, everything looks right with FireFox.
I already had FireFox, so installed Flock, which appears to be a FireFox clone, and I was thinking of installing anyway.
Flock also grabbed all my Netscape bookmarks, so I view my MyCast weather-radar with Flock. (I’m also doing FlagOut with Flock — it’s my Flock homepage.)
So “http://www.ClassicTrainsMag.com” is still mired in the last century; they haven’t upgraded to FireFox yet.
Fiddle with IE and “http://www.ClassicTrainsMag.com” works. FireFox eventually showed the “too much time” page; and IE got the confirmation-page, which I printed.
Order number-two:
IE is still running so I crank “http://www.ClassicTrainsMag.com/promo” back into the browser-line, hit “enter,” and watch the globe spin.
Uh-ohhhhh; into the ozone again. Force-quit IE and start again from scratch. Even IE is spinning. I guess it can’t take a browser rewrite.
“http://www.ClassicTrainsMag.com/promo” from scratch works. I order book number-two.

“FireFox” is an Internet browser. I do this blog with FireFox. —So are “Flock,” and Netscape has an Internet browser, although it’s now a FireFox clone.

I’m a railfan. Have been all my life. I get “Classic Trains” magazine. These two offers were on it.

“Linda” is my wife of 40+ years.

All my siblings use Internet-Explorer (“IE”) on Windoze PCs, so therefore my macho, loudmouthed brother-from-Boston, the ad-hominem king, who noisily badmouths everything I do or say, insists I worship him, and use Internet-Explorer. I do, but only rarely, since it mucks things up. This blog wants FireFox.

“FlagOut” is our family’s web-site on MyFamily.com, named that because I had a mentally-retarded kid-brother (Down Syndrome) who lived at home, and loudly insisted the flag be flown every day. “Flag-Out! Sun comes up, the flag goes up! Sun goes down, the flag comes down.” I fly the flag partly in his honor. (He died at 14 in 1968.)

I use “MyCast” as my weather-site. It has updating weather-radar for specific locations you set up and name.

With MAC OS-X you can “force-quit” individual computer applications without possibly disabling the entire machine.