Today, I convinced another co-worker to try making the switch to Firefox from Internet Explorer. Yay! Being an open source advocate is fun. (The really fun part was that I wasn't actually setting out to convert him - I was just showing him something on the web and he asked about the browser.)

The temptation to turn that last parenthetical into some kind of absurd analogy about the current state of American political discourse is strong. (Clearly, if we "red browser" users stop being so condescending toward those "blue browser" users, and show ourselves willing to compromise our hard-line positions on things like, oh, Internet security, then we can make common cause and share our love of tabbed browsing.)

My other great accomplishment for today was to put together a bit of JavaScript that launches a flash movie in a new window from an HTML help topic. This is remarkable only because I don't know any JavaScript. (I bought some books on it, but I haven't had time to read them.) It's amazing what you can do by smooshing together bits of other people's code that almost do what you want. For me, reading JavaScript is a lot like reading Italian - it looks enough like other languages I know that it sort of seems to make sense as long as specificity or precision is not required.

Right now English is starting to sort of seem to make sense as long as specificity or precision is not required, so I think it's time for me to go home and get some dinner.