Past Diatribes

Many new things to report. Most importantly, THE PUB ACROSS THE STREET HAS FINALLY OPENED!!!

This beast of a building has been under construction since before I moved in last August. They had a real rush on as '98 drew toward a close. Everyone though they were determined to have it open for Christmas. But, so I hear, the publican asshole who owns that gutterside dive, The Foxhunter, raised some sort of an injunction and spannered the works. Apparently he recognized what a lousy pub The Fox is, and knew he'd lose all his business if he didn't have a monopoly in these here parts. No matter--- it took him until March, but the proud owner of the Palmerstown House, Mr. Fitzgerald, managed to open the doors of a bright new establishment right here in Lucan. THE PENNY HILL.

Carmel and I went in for a pint last Saturday, two days after the gaff opened. I tell you, once those doors opened they never closed. Constant was the stream of people coming, and huge enough to hold them all the pub. There are about a half a dozen separate lounges and bars in there, with dining rooms and off-license shop areas and an entire upstairs floor yet to be completed and opened. It's a mammoth of a place.

The Guinness, I must report, wasn't the best. The decor lacked distinction as well. All the same, it's nice to have A LOCAL. A place literally around the corner where I can nip in, some evening or Sunday if I like, and have me a little pint. Ah, it's great.

Yes, a pub, supermarket, chipper, Chinese take-away, bus-stop and video store all within two minutes' walk. And a good-lookin chickie. THIS IS THE LIFE RIGHT HERE. Dublin, Ireland, 1999.

In other news, I had an unpleasant surprise. I went to show this here website off to a mate who had Netscape Navigator. All of my carefully-laid out tables in the "Deadline" area , all the links from my "Thea's Greatest Hits" section, a bunch of other bits and bobs- all screwed up!!! Yes, I must admit, to that point I had done all my designing and surfing with MS's Internet Explorer 3. While this was adequate to gain acceptance to their esteemed Site Builder Network, Level 2, I've sold myself short and alienated about half the netizens out there. Woe and shame unto me! O tragedy sad.

Well, even though I was recommended not to, I downloaded Navigator 4.08 and have been setting shit straight. True, like I was warned, my computer is not at 100% with an HTML 4 browser, but it is letting me broaden my view. Navigator's a good browser, and it supports new tags and features. I like the three-part toolbar and the superior presentation. Explorer has its strengths, though, too, such as (a stupid nitpicky thing) displaying page sources in text rather than non-editable HTML. It's good to compare pages in Explorer and Navigator-- (you can have both, you know. They don't conflict. One just acts as default.)

Let me throw this link at you again: it's a brand-new page all about my computer. It's the page I made to compare the two browsers, and also to refresh my JavaScript and table-building skills. You might think it's an ad for IBM, but it's not. This ThinkPad has served me well, so I'm giving it a cool page's worth of endorsement. Check it out!

That's it for the installment, Halpster fans. Think I'll shut off the computer and go get me a pint. Cheers!

Peace!