I admit it: I'm a Firefox Extensions addict. I mean, Firefox is great on it's own... but the carefree extensibility of it is a boon to those of us who spend a good part of the day researching questions, getting the latest industry news, and such.

I've had one big problem for a while, though: I was hooked on Tab Browser Extensions (TBE) for single-window browsing. This mega-extension is thouroughly non-standard and often buggy... but I kept telling myself that I couldn't live without it's list of features. I tried to replace it by adding just about every tab-browsing extension, but that's just ridiculous and never did everything I wanted. But more and more TBE was bugging me as it doesn't handle popups well at all.

Finally today I think I've found the perfect replacement: QuickTabPrefToggle. Beautiful! I set my defaults to be single-window mode for everything except "sized popups", and in a click I can toggle the mode to allow all popups. Works just right.

As I guessed in the other day's post entitled "Undistributable", Microsoft did end up quietly releasing a new version of the Windows Installer Redistributable, with the tag "(v2)". <sarcasm>I'm sure that will ease the confusion!</sarcasm>

Also, BTW, a <a href=http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=1435795F-2603-4913-A922-F8D31CE33F2A&displaylang=en"">minor update to the Application Compatibility Toolkit was recently published as well, which y'all may be interested in.

Another Dilbert-worthy, yet true-to-life, Shark Tank laugh on management and administrivia.

Another McSweeney's list that caused me to bust a sleen: Three Items
at the Supermarket I See in a New Way, Now That I've Read Some Books on Literary Theory.

I still occaisionally wander down the cereal aisle looking for Foucault Flakes.

Watching National Treasure at this very moment, from a friend's NetFlix rip. It's a hoot; alternating between whispered conspiracy theories and impossible action sequences. And, even more funny, Dave Barry seems to have accidentally predicted the plot, as some have already noted.

What happened to the new Windows Installer 3.1 redistributable? It seems to have disappeared from Microsoft's site! (Of course, the slightly older version 3.0 is still around.)

Methinks Microsoft is up to their old tricks, and a "fixed" version 3.1a is coming, don't you?

A note to those of us with MS certs: Microsoft keeps running some pretty good deals to encourage people to take the tests, so do you really need any more encouragement? Both of the following deal expire this month, so get on it!

• Second Shot: Take the same exam again for free if you fail it the first time
• 2-for-1: Two people can take the XP (70-270 exam) for the price of one
• Free eLearning: Online course on XP to prepare for the above-mentioned exam

On a more sad note, dear Auntie Em C. Pea is leaving MCPMag.com. Wish her well, will ya?

An update on our hit-and-run case from the other day...

For Franny's (the Subaru Forester) 100,000 mile birthday, I was able to announce to him that he's getting a new bumper cover, courtesy of the auto insurance company. The police report did reveal the name of the other driver, once my rep finally got ahold of it Friday&mdash;turns out we've got the same insurer. The culprit (who's now sorry, and says he "freaked" and doesn't know why he left the scene, according to his rep) gets the "100% fault" title.

Getting a little tired of design bloggers telling you how the Ajax method behind nearly all of Google's new web services is going to change the online world? Me too. It's not the technical part of how you do it that makes the difference, it's what you do and how well you do it that makes people respond. As Jason Kottke already noted, Google Maps wasn't the first to give us free satellite photos, they just did a better job than Microsoft's TerraServer and other competitors.

People have speculated about the amazing popularity of Google, the power of their seemingly limitless capital that allows them to buy other upstarts and bring new services to market fast, and the good graces of their household name which gets millions of people using their products quickly. With this incredible mindshare in the still-rising Internet market, is it safe to assume that Google does us no harm? Just the other day Nick Bradbury was saying we don't yet have a reason not to trust Google; and if you look back over the past few months, it's amazing what we do trust them with: our libraries, the integrity of our hypertext links, and even now our web caches. Crimey!

Robin Sloan and Matt Thompson have recently authored a little vision of the future&mdash;er, well, from the future, as it were, and looking back on the past&mdash;um, the present. And the future. Shoot... are you confused yet? Sorry&mdash;just a bit of silliness there. But this link is worth the couple minutes viewing time and even more thought: Where might the automation of our news lead us?&mdash;EPIC 2014

I forget to visit regularly, too, but McSweeney's Lists are nearly always good for a dose on inane humor. On my most recent visit I was ROFL over Adjectives Rarely Used by Wine Tasters.

Thankfully, now Mr. Kottke did a little learning project and put together an RSS feed for McSweeney's Lists. It's already in my Bloglines/FeedDemon sync.