Technology

Farewell to Internet Explorer 8, 9, 10

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For those of you not in the know – Microsoft recently announced that they will be ending support for older versions of Internet Explorer (8, 9, and 10). IE 11 will still be supported, as well as Edge which is actually pretty good, but I’m too much of a Google user to give up Chrome. Last year, I upgraded to Windows 10 and used Edge for the first time – to download Chrome. And I haven’t used it since. But my experience with Edge wasn’t bad – it didn’t stop me from downloading Chrome. That would’ve been funny/annoying.

Anyway, for most people, this won’t mean a thing – and to people who are still on those old versions of IE, it probably won’t mean a thing to them either since they haven’t bothered to upgrade till now. I doubt any modern businesses are still running on those browsers either, so it’s not as big of a deal as its been made out to be.

I haven’t used Internet Explorer in a long time. I remembered it used to be the go to browser way back when Netscape was still a thing. I was on Netscape Navigator 3 or 4, I can’t remember, when there was a talk in school and they handed us CDs with IE on them. I remember getting all excited and pumped, installing a brand new web browser on my home computer (via a CD-ROM!). I think it was on that day I signed up for my Hotmail account as well (which remains active till this day).

IE was faster than Netscape (believe it or not). It was my browser of choice for the longest time. I can’t remember when or what it was that made me switch back to Netscape. I think I used Opera for a while, and then Firefox for a few years until Chrome came along.

I remember reading the newspapers at the time – Microsoft was labelled unfair and was using its position as the no.1 operating system provider to spread Internet Explorer by bundling the browser with Windows. Microsoft had to face antitrust lawsuits and shit. While Windows is still popular, IE isn’t anymore (though it’s probably still one of the most used browsers worldwide) and Windows Phone is barely staying afloat (correct me if I’m wrong). Oh how times have changed.

Anyway, I think Microsoft will probably kill of Internet Explorer 11 once they’ve developed Edge enough. I don’t see any reason why they would want to continue working on two browsers unless they both have very different uses.

But for all the years of surfing IE has enabled me to partake in – thank you. Welcome to browser heaven.

The aftershave: my initial post-electric shaver experience

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shaver

Exactly one week ago, I decided that I was going to buy myself an electric shaver. I picked it up on a Friday night and since then I’ve been a member of the electric shaver club. I picked myself up the Philips AT750 because – according to what I read online, a rotary shaver would be better for my needs (infrequent shaving, longer facial hair). I got the AT750 because it can be used wet or dry – since I had no idea if I would be using it wet or dry more.

Anyway, life with an electric shaver has been pretty good since then. Because it is so much faster than shaving with disposable razors, I’ve been able to shave more often. My face isn’t too sensitive, so I’ve also been able to do dry shaves.

I’ve only shaved wet with the AT750 once – my first shave, since I didn’t know how my face would handle it. I used the shaving cream which came free with the shaver and got rid of all my facial hair. It felt alright, except for my mustache which stung a little probably because it was quite long (in case you didn’t know, electric shavers pull the hairs on your face before cutting them off).

I haven’t had to charge the shaver yet since it has a 40 minute battery life and my shaves last only 1-2 minutes. It does take 8 hours to charge though – so I may or may not have issues with that in the future.

Regardless, after almost a week of using it, I don’t have any complaints and can wholly recommend it to anybody who feels that shaving takes too long to with analog shavers. Sure, it doesn’t cut as close as a regular blade but I feel that it does a good enough job. I’ll probably report back in a month or two if I have anything else to say but I doubt it’s going to be anything negative!

BTW this isn’t a sponsored post/advertorial. In case you guys were wondering if I turned into a shill of some sort. I’m just writing about my initial experiences with an electric shaver.

Automated Teller Machine Machine

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You know how when you’re in a rush, there’s always someone in your way? Like when you have to be somewhere, you’ll be stuck behind a driver that’s not paying attention to the traffic light. Or you’ll be behind people who don’t know that the right lane on the escalator is for people to walk. Or there will be people taking their time to pay for their tickets at the ticket machine.

But one thing I’ve encountered more than any other situation is people taking their sweet, sweet time at the ATM. It doesn’t matter if I’m in a rush or not but for some reason, there’s always somebody there before me. And he or she will take their time admiring their account balance or constantly try transactions over and over again despite failing the past three times.

I don’t get it – if you’re using a public facility and someone is behind you, shouldn’t you do your best to finish your task as soon as possible?

And why do people take so long to do their tasks at ATMs anyway? There’s not a whole lot of things you can do, and if you’re not there to just withdraw cash, you’re doing it wrong like I used to. There have been times when I knew that I had a lot of transactions to do (this was before I discovered the wonders of online banking), and I would always let the people behind me use the machine before I hogged it for myself.

Now that almost everything else can be accomplished online, there’s really no reason to use an ATM unless you need the bills. Anyway, I can’t wait until we can go fully cashless in this country or stores start letting you withdraw money when you use your card. That would be rad.

In other news, Public Bank recently upgraded their ATM/debit cards – I can now use Paywave with my debit card. I guess it’ll make it easier to accidentally pay for stuff in the future (yes, it happened to me before, topkek mate).